Aileen Alexander is the Vice Chair of Diversified Search Group, the largest woman-founded executive search firm in the world.   She leads the firm’s Global Corporate practice which advises clients across the Consumer, Financial Services, Industrial, Life Sciences, and Technology industries, including Private Equity.  Aileen is a member of DSG’s Management Committee and a Global Board Member of AltoPartners, the firm’s international alliance.

Based in Philadelphia, Alexander is a recognized leader in the executive search and talent management industry, having led C-Suite and Board level searches from large, global corporations to high growth entrepreneurial companies.  She leverages her expertise in technology, cybersecurity, risk management, leadership, and succession planning to enable clients to achieve their purpose and strategic priorities.  Alexander is committed to ensuring client service that is creative, nimble, responsive, and centered on people first and building diverse teams that drive innovation, growth, and inclusive cultures.

Prior to joining DSG, Alexander was a Managing Partner at Korn Ferry where she co-Launched and co-led the firm’s Global Cybersecurity Practice.  She had leadership responsibilities for Philadelphia and was also a member of the Technology Officers and Aerospace and Defense practices. She entered the industry with Heidrick & Struggles, in their Washington, DC office.

Before embarking on her career in executive search, Alexander worked in international security and defense policy at the Department of Defense and U.S. House of Representatives.  She is also a military veteran, having served as a Captain in the U.S. Army.

Victor Arias is a Managing Director and Practice Leader, Consumer and Retail at Diversified Search Group, working primarily in the Board of Directors practice. He is the leader of the firm’s Dallas-Fort Worth office.

Arias joined the firm in 2019 from RSR Partners, where he had been a managing director in the board of directors practice. Prior to his time at RSR, Arias worked at Korn Ferry, where he served as senior client partner in the board of directors practice and global leader of the Diversity and Inclusion Initiative. Previously, he served as both a partner and a co-managing partner of the diversity services practice at Heidrick & Struggles from 2004 to 2007. Arias was also previously a partner at Spencer Stuart.

Arias served on the board of Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen (NASDAQ: PLKI) for 15 years, until 2016. He is past president and co-founder of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs, a former member of the Notre Dame Institute of Latino Studies board, and a founding board member of the Latino Corporate Directors Association, a membership group of Hispanic corporate directors.

Arias is a trustee emeritus for the Stanford University board of trustees, the current chairman of the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, and a prior member of the Stanford GSB Advisory Council. In addition, he serves on the Development Board of the University of Texas El Paso, and is a former White House Fellows Commissioner.

The leader of Diversified Search Group’s Board Practice, J. Veronica Biggins  brings more than 15 years of search experience to the firm—including several years working in the White House.

Biggins served as Assistant to the President of the United States and Director of Presidential Personnel under Bill Clinton, a role that tasked her with selecting and hiring all political appointees within the federal government. She worked directly with the President on appointments at all levels of the administration, including the placement of agency heads, ambassadors, and members of presidential boards and commissions.

Biggins has also served as Vice-Chairman of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. She also served as Chairman of the Czech Slovak American Enterprise Fund—a role that earned her a Points of Light Award from President George W. Bush for her leadership.

Biggins’ background also includes 20 years’ experience with NationsBank (now Bank of America) and its predecessor, The Citizens, and Southern National Bank. There, as Executive Vice President for Human Resources, she was one of the highest-ranking women in the banking industry.

Judy Boreham is a Managing Director and Co-Practice Leader, Human Resources at Diversified Search Group, where she manages a broad range of clients including those in the corporate and nonprofit sectors. As co-leader of the firm’s Human Resources practice, she specializes and is engaged in placing senior executives at the local, regional, national, and global level, and has gained expansive experience covering a wide variety of human capital related roles including CHRO, compensation/total rewards, talent acquisition and development, learning and development, organizational development, workforce planning, shared services, and business partnering assignments with such clients as LabCorp, Ametek Inc., AstraZeneca, Radius Health, Barnabas Healthcare, and Lidl.

Prior to joining Diversified Search in 1995, Boreham worked for a search firm in Central London serving the consumer market. Working with a portfolio of blue-chip international clients such as Kraft, Duracell, McKinsey, AC Nielson, Guinness, and SmithKline Beecham, she managed key business assignments across the United Kingdom.

Prior to her search career, Boreham held various business and marketing leadership positions with the largest and fastest-growing division of Baxter Healthcare, Inc., where she was responsible for launching a range of product lines that gained worldwide recognition, and more recently as Business Manager for the Critical Care division at Johnson & Johnson, where she was responsible for the development of a patient monitoring technology product in the provider healthcare space.

Danielle Coppola is the Senior Associate and Vice President for the Corporate Practice and is based in the New York office.

Coppola began her career in fully retained executive search in 2001 as the Director of Customer Care with Carlsen Resources, Inc.  From there, she rose in the company throughout her tenure.  She became the Vice President of Client and Candidate Relations, where she was responsible for helping to facilitate the overall search process and placing candidates in various senior leadership positions within the cable, broadband and telecommunications industries.

Prior to her move into executive search, Coppola served as the Assistant Director of Student Services for Brooklyn Law School.

Kyle is a Senior Associate in the Corporate Practice group at Diversified Search Group. He earned a BA in Business from Temple University in 2015 and has been in the Talent Management space since then. He focuses his time consulting with executives helping them with their next career growth move. Kyle enjoys the talent space and has attended numerous Executive Talent functions over the past couple of years to continuously learn about new market trends.

Harold T. Epps is a Senior Advisor with Diversified Search Group. A significant and steady presence in the Greater Philadelphia business community for more than thirteen years, Epps focuses on business development across the firm’s 16 industry and functional practices. Epps concurrently serves as an advisor for Bellevue Strategies, a government relations firm.

Prior to joining Diversified Search, Epps most recently served as the Director of Commerce for the City of Philadelphia in the James Kenney administration, where he was responsible for working with metropolitan business leaders across industries to enhance the city’s business environment.

Prior to his time with the City if Philadelphia, Epps served as Vice Chairman of the Board of PRWT Services, where he served as President and CEO from 2007 to 2014. One of America’s largest minority-owned firms, PRWT is a $100 million provider of high-performance business solutions, facilities management, and infrastructure support services. Some of Epps’s prior executive roles include positions with Quadrant, Menasha Corporation, Polaroid and Digital Equipment Corporation. Throughout his career, Epps has built a solid reputation for positioning organizations for sustained growth, successfully managing change and restructuring, improving efficiency, spurring innovation, and maintaining a focus and discipline of continuous process and performance improvement.

Epps’ personal commitment to workforce development and business opportunity through diversity and inclusion efforts continue to drive his civic and board activities. He currently serves as Co-Chairman of the Comcast National African-American Advisory Council and as a member of the Board of Trustees of Community College of Philadelphia. Formerly, Epps served as the Chairman of the African-American Museum of Philadelphia, and was an executive committee member of both the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and The Urban League of Philadelphia.

Hugo Fueglein is a Managing Director in Diversified Search Group’s New York City office and is a core member of the Global CIO practice for Diversified Search. Fueglein is also a leading member of the Global Technology practice at Diversified Search, a role that has allowed him to place technology executives in key positions across all industries. He specializes in the placement of chief information officers, chief technology officers, and technology executives in IT architecture, IT infrastructure, application development, and IT operations.

Prior to joining Diversified Search, Fueglein was an Executive Vice President with DHR International, and formerly an integral member of the CIO and IT practice at CT Partners, where he served clients across industries, recruiting talent to fill critical roles in corporate technology functions. He has completed assignments for CIOs and key leadership positions in technology for a broad scope of clients that continuously utilize technology as a strategic initiative. Industry sectors he has served include technology, consumer goods, retail, energy, financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and industrial.

Fueglein’s search career also includes being a Principal with both Korn/Ferry International and Morgan Samuels. During his seven-year tenure with Korn/Ferry, he was instrumental in the creation of the CIO Center of Expertise. Earlier in his career, he was an economist with Chase Econometrics and the Wharton Economic Forecasting Associates (WEFA) Group.

Robin Goolsbee is a Managing Director in the Corporate and Life Sciences Practices of Diversified Search Group. She is based in Chicago. As a trusted advisor and consultant to her clients, Robin identifies and recruits leaders to C-suite and other senior-level roles across all functional areas. In addition to corporate and life science clients, Robin also focuses on professional services. Her experience in this realm spans nearly two decades.

Robin began her career in management consulting at Boston Consulting Group in their Boston and London offices where she served consumer goods and industrial firms. Later, at McKinsey & Company in Chicago, she served retail, consumer goods and media and education clients as an Engagement Manager.

Prior to joining Diversified Search, she served as a Senior Principal at Business Talent Group. Now, a Heidrick & Struggles subsidiary, Business Talent Group is the leading provider of on-demand consultants and experts. While at BTG, she scoped and sold consulting projects and curated consulting talent from BTG’s network of 15,000 independent consultants. Her clients were Fortune 500 firms, leading professional services firms, and Private Equity portfolio companies. Her work included placing C-level executives in interim roles as well.

Robin is also a skilled business development executive. Earlier in her career, Robin served as Director of Business Development at MTV International. She then worked as an Assistant VP of Business Development at UNext, a corporate training and MBA-education provider offering courses in partnership with Stanford Business School, Columbia Business School, The London School of Economics, University of Chicago’s Booth Graduate School of Business and Carnegie Mellon.

Robin has served on a number of civic boards including the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital and spends her time with her husband and three children.

Julie Kanak serves as a Managing Director with Diversified Search Group in the firm’s Chicago office, where she contributes expertise in global business, banking, and natural resources. She is active in the Industrial, Life Sciences, Consumer and Retail, and Natural Resources practices, as well as being a key member of the Board, CEO and CFO practices.

Kanak has recruited board, general management, and financial executives for public, private equity-backed and family-owned enterprises. Her clients range from Fortune 500s to emerging companies. Her banking activity encompasses senior level placements in coverage/corporate finance, treasury, risk management, investment banking, and capital markets for the world’s leading financial institutions.

Prior to joining Diversified Search, Kanak spent four years with a leading global search firm and boutique global agribusiness firm. That work complemented her 26 years in banking and corporate finance, where she principally focused on agribusiness, food, and energy. The bulk of her global corporate and investment banking career was spent as North American head of AgriFoods at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank. Her career also includes more than 10 years as a global banker and senior executive with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, and State Bank of South Australia in New York and Chicago.

Marjorie Kean is a Managing Director in the Miami office of Diversified Search Group and the leader of the Consumer and Retail practice. Her practice is focused on the Latin American and U.S. Hispanic markets, and the majority of her clients are Fortune 1,000 multinational corporations.

Although she has experience in a vast number of industries, she has particular expertise in the areas of consumer products, telecommunications, retail, fast foods, life sciences, banking, and entertainment. Her current focus is on pan-regional searches.

Kean is formerly a Managing Director with Edward W. Kelly and Partners, which was acquired by Diversified in 2008. Prior to that, she served as Managing Director of the Caracas office of Korn/Ferry before becoming head of its Miami office. Kean lived in Mexico for 10 years and Venezuela for 16 years. In the latter location, she helped open Korn/Ferry’s Colombia and Puerto Rico offices.

With more than 20 years in executive search, Kevin B. Kelly is a Managing Director in our Atlanta office and co-leads the firm’s Industrial practice. He conducts senior-level assignments in general management, finance, sales and marketing, operations, security, and other functions for clients in the industrial and consumer sectors. Kelly is also an active member of the firm’s Board practice, and also works with private equity firms and their portfolio companies.

Prior to joining Diversified Search Group, Kelly was Executive Vice President & Managing Director with Slayton Search Partners, with oversight responsibility for the firm’s Atlanta and Washington, D.C. offices. Earlier, he spent 13 years with Russell Reynolds Associates, where he was a Partner in the firm and managed its Atlanta office.

Before entering the executive search, Kelly pursued a career in marketing and advertising, most recently in account service with the Atlanta ad agency Cole Henderson Drake. Earlier, he spent several years in marketing with the Coca-Cola Company. He began his career in the management training program at Universal Leaf Tobacco.

Kelly Keough is a Senior Research Associate at Diversified Search Group, joining the firm in 2018. She works primarily in the consumer and retail, energy and natural resources, and industrial sectors.

Keough boasts a deep knowledge of Latin America. She studied in Bolivia and has written extensively on Latin American business, politics, and culture. A native Spanish speaker, she also has broad experience as translator and served as an intern for the America Society/Council of the Americas, where she prepared policy briefs for the senior director as well as providing logistical support and event planning assistance for various programs and forums.

David Kuguru is a Managing Director in the Corporate and Technology Practice with Diversified Search Group based in the Washington DC office.

With a 20+ year global career, Kuguru has worked in entrepreneurial startups, the corporate world and strategic consulting. His seasoned experience with global teams includes hiring executives, managing matrix teams, assessing market strategy and partnering with C-level decision-makers in Fortune 500s and global multinationals. Additionally, Kuguru has worked on digital solutions such as IoT Innovation, Mobile Payments and Telco technologies that impact the Future-of-Work and Tech-for-Good. Moreover, he has worked in numerous corporate organizational structures, go-to-market strategies and operating models. The confluence of Kuguru’s industry and advisory experience will provide unique insight and diverse perspective in the search for new strategic leaders in our changing world.

Whether working for or partnering with, Kuguru has experience with 30+ global corporations and institutions such as Sprint/T-Mobile, Dimension Data (NTT), PepsiCo, International Finance Corporation, Arizona State University, Vodafone and the United Nations (UN). He has held prior roles with progressive leadership responsibility including Global Client Partner, Head of Sales, Strategic Advisor and Director. Furthermore, Kuguru has lived and worked in multiple global cities such as Johannesburg, New York and Washington DC.

Jim Langston is Managing Director and Co-Practice Leader, Financial Officers at Diversified Search Group. After beginning his career in public accounting, Langston spent eight years with Prudential Financial in audit, finance, and treasury operations. He later founded a consultancy providing succession and estate plans for business owners and high-net-worth individuals and families. His executive search career began in 1995 with an at-that-time boutique firm—now Kenexa—where he was instrumental in starting their retained Financial Officers practice. He was later a Managing Director with both Heidrick & Struggles and Korn/Ferry, continuing to focus on Financial Officer searches. Although his business has often focused on Fortune 1,000 clients, working at the director, VP, and C-suite levels, he also works with international early-stage and venture-backed organizations to identify and recruit world-class management talent.

Langston’s process is built on his varied and unique business experience. Using a consultative approach, insight, and intuition to understand an organization’s dynamics and operating environment, he identifies leadership that is best suited to its particular needs. Having built management teams for both domestic and international clients, he has been retained by such premier global clients as Genworth Financial, IMS Health, Sun Life Financial, Cisco, AmeriHealth Caritas, EMC, Saint Gobain, Ascension Health, Drexel University, and Cigna.

Tony Leng is a Managing Director of Diversified Search Group and leads the firm’s Digital Transformation and CIO/IT Officers practices from the San Francisco office. Previously a Managing Partner of Hodge Partners, Leng has conducted C-Suite-level searches for organizations where leaders are transforming and/or building organizations that are taking advantage of digital technologies. His clients have included Axalta; CommonSpirit Health; Blue Shield of California; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan; Delta Dental; Esurance; Herbalife Nutrition; GI Partners; Kaiser Permanente; Novant Health; PG&E; Polycom; Sutter; Symmetricom; TE Connectivity; Trive Capital and Wellmark.

Prior to joining the executive search field, Leng served as a board member of three public companies and was the CEO of a $600 million public company. Prior to that, he ran a $1 billion division of a telephone company focused on corporate users. While there, he was founder and chairman of its ISP and a board member of its two-million-subscriber cell phone subsidiary.

Leng leverages his operating experience from being a CEO, his financial background as a CPA and CA, and his technical knowledge from work done for tech companies to drill down and understand, at a nuanced level, what his clients are seeking to achieve as they build their teams. He has written numerous papers on technology leadership and the challenges facing technology leaders today and authors a blog at tonyleng.com.
For the past 17 years, Leng has also facilitated the Fisher CIO Forum, a monthly venue where CDO’s, CIOs and CTOs discuss topics of strategic relevance, learn, network, and seek peer group input on a confidential basis. Participating companies in the Forum have included Ancestry, Blue Shield, Bank of the West, Blackrock, CitiGroup, Clifbar, Clorox, Cost Plus, Databricks, Delta Dental, Dignity Health, Dolby, Esurance, Facebook, FitBit, Franklin Templeton, Gap, Genentech, Juul, Kaiser Permanente, Levi Strauss, Lumentum, McKesson, Macys.com, Matson, Mulesoft, Okta, PG&E, Recology, Red Hat, Restoration Hardware, Ross Stores, Safeway, Salesforce.com, Schwab, Splunk, SFO, Uber, VMWare, Williams-Sonoma, Workday and Zendesk, among others.

Carla Logan is a Managing Associate in the Atlanta office of Diversified Search Group. She has more than 15 years of experience in executive search in the industries of consumer-packaged goods, retail, transportation, financial services, and more.

As a Senior Associate, Logan collaborates with members of the search team to execute the search. Her responsibilities include search strategy development, direct candidate recruitment, and development. Utilizing various internal and external resources, she also contributes to business development by providing detailed market analysis and company information.

Before coming to Diversified, Logan spent 12 years as a Senior Associate with Heidrick & Struggles. Prior to that, she was the Project Manager for the boutique research firm Innovative Search LLC, where she was responsible for business development, client management, and candidate development.

Logan began her career executing C-suite search assignments for Fortune 500 corporations with Egon Zehnder International.

John Mestepey is the Managing Director of the Miami Office of Diversified Search Group. Earlier, he ran the Miami Office of Edward Kelley & Partners, and for 19 years was the Managing Director of the Miami Office of A.T. Kearney Executive Search.

Mentioned as one of the top 250 executive search professionals in the U.S. in “The New Career Makers,” Mestepey has focused his practice on key management assignments at the Board of Directors, CEO, COO and CFO levels across many industries, including the restaurant, retail, consumer products, financial services, healthcare, higher education, travel and leisure, technology, and biopharmaceutical sectors, among others.
Mestepey began his career in recruiting with AETNA Life & Casualty, where he was Director of Recruiting. He later co-led the in-house executive search firm, Career Development Corporation, at Lincoln National.

Following university, Mestepey was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, and served a tour in Vietnam, where he was a rifle platoon and rifle company commander. He was awarded the Purple Heart.
He is a trustee of the Board of Directors of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Orange Bowl Committee.

Denielle Pemberton-Heard is the Chief Legal Officer for Diversified Search Group, based in the firm’s Washington, DC office. As CLO and a shareholding Managing Director with Diversified Search Group, Denielle Pemberton-Heard partners with corporations, boards of directors, and not for profit leaders to identify executive level talent for corporate boards and c-suite roles across multiple sectors. She recently served as CEO of STEMconnector, the largest professional services firm committed to increasing the number of STEM-ready workers in the global talent pool and under her leadership STEMconnecter merged with POD, an innovative technology platform that powers STEMconnector and its Million Women Mentors (MWM) initiative. She now serves as a Board Advisor to POD and is a member of the Board of Directors of Skout, a P/E backed cybersecurity firm.

Pemberton-Heard previously spent fifteen years as Group Counsel, Programming and Business Affairs at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the nation’s largest non-commercial media enterprise where she directed work on behalf of PBS and its 300 plus member stations, and led negotiations between and among PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Department of Education, The Kennedy Center, National Endowment for the Arts, National Science Foundation and others while collaborating with on-air talent, arts and cultural institutions and funders. Before joining PBS, she served as Group Counsel for Thales, Inc. and as Vice President, Legal and Business Affairs at Time Life (TWX), and as a Legal and Business affairs leader at Discovery Communications, Inc. (DISCA) where she supported the production teams as well as corporate philanthropy and community affairs.

Pemberton-Heard began her law career in private practice as a commercial real estate attorney with Wiggin and Dana and was subsequently associated with the New York firm of Cowan Liebowitz and Latman, where she focused on intellectual property litigation and portfolio management. She has published scholarly works in the area of Copyright and Trademark Law and has experience in compliance and Board Governance matters. Pemberton-Heard has a B.A. in Political Science from Tufts University, a Law Degree for Case Western Reserve University, and is an alumna of Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

A past Regional Judge for President Obama’s Presidential Commission on White House Fellowships, Pemberton-Heard is committed to emerging leaders, talent pipeline development, community service and corporate social responsibility initiatives. She was a Founder of Level 8- a committed group of women focused on leveling the playing field and providing equal access for Washington, DC youth. She has also served as a Trustee of the Toy Industry of America Foundation; on the Advisory Committee of DCVLP (DC Volunteer Lawyers Program to end domestic violence) and on the Board of Governors of the Case Western School of Law. Pemberton-Heard has lectured on business law as a member of the professional faculty of the Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business and has served on panels as a career coach to students at American University.

Pemberton-Heard, who was recently featured as a guest on the Michelle Obama Podcast on Spotify, serves on the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) Diversity Leadership Group and on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Business Collaborative (WBC). With a commitment to service, she is a member of The Links, Inc. and Delta Sigma Theta, a public service sorority. She is the proud mother of two college aged students and enjoys travel, classic films and dancing.

With nearly 20 years in executive search, Kent Rapp is a Managing Director in the St. Louis office, where he conducts executive-level searches for clients in consumer, industrial, business and financial services, healthcare and nonprofit sectors for general management and functional leadership positions in marketing and sales, operations, manufacturing, finance and human resources. Rapp joined the firm in 2019, following  Diversified Search Group’s acquisition of Grant Cooper. He has built an extensive list of clients ranging from family-owned and private equity portfolio companies to global public corporations, and often serves as a trusted advisor in an ongoing capacity. Rapp joined the firm in 2019, following Diversified Search’s acquisition of Grant Cooper.

Prior to entering executive search, Rapp’s early career was spent in domestic and international general management, marketing, and sales leadership roles with Fortune 500 (Johnson & Johnson, Pet/Pillsbury) and privately held (Spectrum Brands) consumer product companies.

Rapp is active in the community and serves on the Board of Directors at Sherwood Forest, a member agency of the United Way, where he is the immediate past Board President. He also serves as the current Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School.