Creative & agile global executive search
Philosophy
Client-first approach
Philosophy
Jago believes successful leadership appointments rely on a relationship of total trust and transparency. Working in partnership with an independent consultant affords his clients a higher level of accountability and enables a more creative and collaborative approach to attracting and hiring the right talent.
Experience
Client-first approach
Philosophy
Jago has an unusually broad networks and sectoral experience, spanning the private, public, and nonprofit sectors in the UK and globally. He has led assignments for all sizes of organisation, a c-suite, board, and senior exec levels. He is particularly experienced in supporting new organisations, looking to build a complementary and diverse senior leadership team.
Values
Client-first approach
Client-first approach
Jago's approach is built on honesty, rigour, and a total focus on delivering the right hire for your organisation. He has supported many of his clients on a range of senior leadership appointments, reflecting the trust and insight gained by long-term partnership. This empowers him to challenge clients to consider non-traditional and creative candidates, ensuring they gain from diverse experience.
Client-first approach
Client-first approach
Client-first approach
Search firms serving social impact clients are typically bloated, volume-oriented operations content to recycle the same applications and while the most junior staff undertake candidate engagement. This serves clients badly in a time of flux. Jago helps clients to build a search process that accounts for your strategic priorities, focusin
Search firms serving social impact clients are typically bloated, volume-oriented operations content to recycle the same applications and while the most junior staff undertake candidate engagement. This serves clients badly in a time of flux. Jago helps clients to build a search process that accounts for your strategic priorities, focusing on high-value work and prioritising proactive search, thoughtful scrutiny, and rigorous referencing.
Clients
Approach
Leadership challenges in a times of turmoil
Leading a global social impact organisation in 2025 is demanding in ways that are both familiar and newly complex. Senior leaders are navigating persistent uncertainty, rising expectations, and a world that feels less predictable year on year. Decisions carry more weight, and the consequences of getting them wrong are harder to undo.
Financial pressure is an everyday reality. Funding is less stable than it once was, with governments, foundations, and corporate donors asking tougher questions about impact, governance, and cost. Inflation, political change, and economic fragility have made long-term planning more difficult, while new models of giving and blended finance require leaders to rethink how their organisations are funded and sustained.
The operating environment is also becoming more constrained. In many countries, civil society faces tighter regulation and growing suspicion, particularly where international funding is involved. Even in established democracies, compliance and reporting demands continue to increase. Leaders must find ways to protect their organisations, their people, and their values, while working constructively within shifting political and regulatory limits.
Technology brings both promise and unease. Digital tools and artificial intelligence are opening new possibilities in fundraising, communications, and service delivery, but adoption is rarely straightforward. Many organisations are moving faster than their systems, skills, or safeguards can comfortably support. At the same time, cyber risks and reputational threats are rising, often without the resources needed to address them fully.
People remain at the heart of the challenge. Expectations of social impact leaders are high, yet the pressures of the work are unrelenting. Burnout is common, senior talent is harder to retain, and succession planning is frequently postponed in favour of urgent operational demands. Creating resilient leadership teams and healthier organisational cultures is now essential, not aspirational.
Trust, too, is more fragile. Donors and partners want clear evidence of impact and strong governance, while public scrutiny is immediate and unforgiving. Reputation, once built slowly, can be damaged quickly.
The leaders who will succeed in this environment are not those with all the answers, but those able to exercise sound judgement, adapt to change, and lead with steadiness under pressure. For organisations seeking to protect and grow their impact, the quality of leadership has never mattered more.
Adaptable and personalised executive search
The global social impact sector is changing at a pace few leaders have experienced before. Public expectations are higher, scrutiny is more intense, and the space for error is shrinking. Organisations are being asked to deliver meaningful results while navigating political pressure, funding uncertainty, and growing complexity. In this environment, leadership quality is no longer a secondary concern; it is central to an organisation’s ability to protect its mission and sustain its impact.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the competition for senior talent. Attracting, appointing, and retaining effective leaders has become significantly harder at the very moment when the cost of a poor appointment is at its highest. Traditional, volume-led executive search models are ill-suited to this reality. Rigid processes, standardised shortlists, and transactional candidate engagement do little to address the uncertainty, risk, and nuance that senior leaders must weigh before considering a move.
In times of instability, organisations need search partners who bring judgement, discretion, and deep sector understanding. Identifying the right leaders increasingly means building trusted relationships with individuals who are fully committed to their current roles and not actively looking to move. These candidates require informed, credible counsel to help them assess risk, opportunity, and alignment with mission, often over extended periods of engagement.
Jago works in close partnership with clients to design a search process shaped around their specific context, challenges, and ambitions. By leading each assignment personally, from initial brief through to appointment and transition, he reduces risk, maintains momentum, and adapts the search as circumstances change. This approach allows for creativity and persistence in reaching the right individuals, not simply those who are immediately available.
The result is leadership appointments that stand up to scrutiny, endure through uncertainty, and strengthen organisations at moments when strong, steady leadership matters most.
About Jago
Jago has over 18 years’ experience in international executive search. He began his career with a leading boutique search firm, where he worked across the education, arts and not-for-profit sectors on both executive and non-executive board-level roles. Later, with the Education and Social Enterprise practice of Heidrick & Struggles, a top-three global firm, he advised multilaterals, arts institutions and civil society organisations on a range of senior leadership appointments. He brings insight into the practices and approach from his time working with Lygon Group, a leading board-level search firm, where he worked on non-exec appointments for the FTSE 100 and 250.
Since 2015, when he established his own practice, he las led a range of leadership assignments for UK and overseas clients. His clients have included philanthropic foundations, impact investors and intermediaries, for-profit social impact agencies and consultancies, think tanks, policy and academic institutions, and a range of campaigning and advocacy organisations. Typically, his clients are global in reach and mission, concerned with hiring diverse, multicultural and global leaders. Many of his recent clients have sought to bring new technology, ideas, and approaches to bear on addressing crucial issues concerning the public good. Jago's ability to work across sectors, helping candidates transition to a social impact career, has been valuable in attracting the right talent to lead this transformation.
Jago studied sixteenth and seventeenth century painting under T.J. Clark at the Courtauld Institute, where he obtained an MA in History of Art. He has a BA in Politics from the University of Durham, and has also studied at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Aix-en-Provence and Birkbeck College, University of London.