Q: Tell us about your professional experience prior to joining the firm. 

A: I have worked in the executive search industry for my entire career; it’s not a path I chose from a young age – it happened somewhat by accident. I studied French and German at the University of Oxford, and after completing my degree I was applying for various jobs. One day, I saw an advert seeking a French and German graduate to help grow a recruitment business in London, focusing on the French and German markets. I applied, was offered the role, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Q: What was it that made you decide to stay in the industry and deepen your expertise? 

A: It took me a year or two to find my footing and understand the business environment, as I had no prior insight into it, but I quickly realised there were a number of things I loved. One was working with clients: I really enjoyed partnering with businesses, understanding their challenges, and helping them find the right leadership to address those challenges. I loved that from the very beginning. There’s something rewarding about forming close relationships and building trust with clients, being the person they come back to for advice, whether it’s about hiring, building their teams or their own careers. Watching these relationships grow and evolve over time is even more fulfilling. 

Because I am fluent in French and German and spent part of my childhood living in those countries, I naturally gravitated towards the international element of executive search. Working with people from diverse cultures and business contexts felt familiar and rewarding, and I found that these experiences added real value to my career in a field I hadn’t previously considered. Executive search and leadership advisory work is highly relationship- and context-oriented, which I found naturally appealing. 

Q: You’ve worked for several executive search companies and partnerships before joining Amrop, right? 

A: The simple answer is that it’s complicated (laughs). I worked for a small recruitment business until 2010, when I joined a company called Augmentum, a boutique UK-based search firm. In 2012, they became Amrop’s UK office, grew quickly and were acquired by a global top ten American executive search company in 2013. I stayed until 2015, which is when I rejoined Amrop. The team at the time had been asked to set up a new UK office and needed a Consumer Sector lead - I was with the UK team for three years, when a former colleague asked me to join him at Norman Broadbent. I spent nearly four years there before Amrop UK approached me again: they had rebuilt the UK team and wanted me to rejoin as a Partner, become an equity holder, and help them grow the UK business. I loved the clear vision of growing something quite different and special within the industry, and was keen to work again with old friends and colleagues. 

Q: It’s quite a story, where you’ve always come back to Amrop somehow. 

A: I haven’t left many companies, but I’ve been involved in new ventures several times through acquisitions and joint ventures. While that process has been painful at times, it’s also been incredible for building networks, getting to know different people, and understanding how various businesses operate. But there’s always been something about Amrop that keeps pulling me back. I believe it ultimately comes down to culture - the collaboration, the focus on clients and colleagues first and foremost. There’s something truly powerful in that approach for me: the people, the collaboration, and the genuine willingness to help - I’ve never seen that anywhere else. 

Q: Your focus at Amrop is the Consumer and Retail sector. Can you tell me a bit about the types of clients you’ve been working with and/or share an observation on what the greatest shifts the sector has recently experienced are? 

A: Since the beginning of my search career, I’ve always had a connection to the consumer industry. A notable early client was AOL, a consumer tech business: I helped them hire senior leaders in Italy, Spain, the UK, and the Nordics, assisting them in effectively localising their offerings - so, that initial international, consumer-facing aspect was there from the start. 

I also did some work early on in the travel, leisure, and hospitality sector, with lastminute.com being a major early client of mine. The high energy, customer-centric, forward-looking culture was a great fit for me. However, it wasn’t until I joined CT Partners through the acquisition of Augmentum that I had to choose a sector focus, and I decided to specialise in the consumer sectors because my common theme has always been people, culture, dynamism, which fits strongly with those industries. I find that people in the consumer-facing sectors tend to be very open and engaging. Most of the clients I serve are involved with products or services that touch on people’s daily lives, whether they realise it or not. For example, a project with a large, very well-regarded international FMCG drinks company. We see their brands on shelves in supermarkets, hotels, bars, and pubs every day, and that brings a spark of connection. Conversely, I’ve also worked with companies that do the testing for food and drink businesses. While we don’t see their brand around us every day because they’re largely unknown to consumers by name, they still impact positively on the products we consume daily. It’s much easier to connect with, and understand, these companies because their products are part of our everyday lives. 

Q: Could you share your observations on what the greatest shifts the sector has recently experienced are? 

A: The sector has changed quite significantly. If I look back ten, fifteen years ago, there were typically very clear experiences that clients wanted candidates to have had. For example, we did a great piece of work with a major global airline, and their main requirement was to bring FMCG-style best practices, processes, and rigour into their commercial function. Today, such requests are less common. Instead, what we now see is along the lines of: “Things are really challenging right now. Everything is changing every five minutes. Please, can you find someone who can keep teams engaged, and deliver results amid ambiguity and change?” Businesses need leaders with the qualities to keep driving teams and achieving results, even though we can’t predict what the landscape will look like next year. It’s more about leadership, rather than the functional experience. 

I think it’s generally a very interesting time for the consumer-facing industries because the global landscape is quite challenging right now – we have politics, conflicts, tariffs, inflation, and numerous other factors impacting consumer confidence and spending power, affecting business in turn. Then we have technology with the potential to completely reshape how business is done, along with the associated challenges and opportunities, not least the ethical and governance-related points. It will be fascinating to see where pockets of growth continue to emerge and how change occurs in what feels like a pressure cooker environment. 

Q: Speaking of the uncertainty, are there any more qualities that you’d say are nowadays essential for leadership positions in modern retail? How important is, for example, the tech savviness? 

A: I believe that in most businesses, there’s a growing awareness of technology - what it can do, what it can’t do, and where it makes sense to leverage it to drive change. Understanding where technology can truly add value, when to deploy new solutions, and when to focus on other areas is very important. However, I don’t think businesses necessarily need people with very deep hands-on technical experience. It’s more about the understanding that technology can significantly help us and play a strong role, but at the same time, we need individuals with deep human judgement, who have a clear “North Star” and understand what their businesses need to achieve. These are the people who understand that success isn’t solely about technology; it’s about people, teamwork, clarity of strategy, vision, and knowledge of the consumer. This human judgement is just as important—and often even more so. Technology is typically a piece of the overall picture; it’s an enabling factor rather than the main driver. We are noticing an increasing gap between organisations who have a clear understanding of this, alongside the ethics and governance needed to safely harness the potential of AI, for example. 

Q: You are one of the leaders of Amrop’s Consumer and Retail Practice which brings together specialists from Amrop’s offices around the globe. Can you tell me what the main benefits are - for partners and for clients - of being part of the Practice? 

A: The Consumer & Retail Practice is absolutely invaluable - it provides immediate access to a group of colleagues with many hundreds of years of collective experience and deep knowledge of the industry. It’s very rare to ask a question and not have someone respond quickly with a deep, insightful answer. It’s like having instant extra knowledge at your fingertips, and the responsiveness is incredible - people are always willing to help, share their knowledge, and leverage their networks. That’s truly amazing. 

There is enormous value in understanding and tracking changes and shifts in leadership within the international consumer markets. Combining regional insights gives us a powerful snapshot of what’s happening across the sector at national, regional and global levels. 

It also allows us to track and build trusted relationships with truly international leaders. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I spoke with a retail finance leader who is a Romanian expat, placed into a company by our Romanian office 11 years ago. Today, she’s in the UK in a head office leadership role. I was reconnected with her through our Danish office. There is real value for the whole triad of search firm, client and candidate across these long-term relationships: trust, depth, quality of conversation, insight into individual and markets. 

Amrop’s Global Consumer & Retail Practice offers a broad group of experts who can combine a rare level of knowledge and interconnectivity across different combinations of regions and sub-sectors. We now count 27 Partners across the practice group, spanning 22 countries. 

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To find out more, contact Lucie Shaw or the members of Amrop’s Global Consumer & Retail Practice in your country.