Ann Boland, MBA

Ann has almost 40 years retained executive search, management consulting and industry (CAO, CIO, EVP HR) experience. She co-founded the national Top Echelon Mission Driven Search practice in 2021. Since that time Ann has led over twenty CEO searches for mission driven nonprofits. She focuses on working with all volunteer community boards to identify, attract, recruit and retain their next CEO. Because these positions are often held for decades, and have such a critical, long term impact on the community served, Ann brings a highly consultative approach. For many board members, this is the only CEO search they may ever conduct: a comprehensive approach and independent process are key to ensure continued public trust, the widest possible community engagement and broad buy-in to the ultimate outcome. Ensuring that internal candidates receive full consideration is also critical: only external candidates who are demonstrably superior to the best internal candidate are considered. Ann relies on a proven process which she tailors to each nonprofit: scheduling interviews at the outset of the search, tailoring specific interview questions to include unique cultural considerations, conducting refreshingly candid reference checks and following up to ensure successful on-boarding.

Ann conducted her first nonprofit Executive Director search as Board Chair of the Florida Gulf Coast National Multiple Sclerosis Society. At the time, she was a founding Principal with IBM Consulting Group, facilitating strategic planning sessions and advising Board Chairs, CEOs and leadership teams. An IBM client, Value Behavioral Health, created by the merger of a nonprofit with a for-profit, recruited Ann in-house as SVP and CIO. Ann’s first experience with retained executive search came when she was recruited as the first direct entry female partner to join the Management Consulting division of Ernst & Young (EY), a “big four”. Her experience as a ‘candidate’ ultimately led her to join a top five global retained executive search firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, as an Executive Director in the firm’s Global Technology and Healthcare practices. She co-founded the Global Professional Services practice, and ultimately left Russ Reynolds in order to recruit the first European Partners for the Chair of KPMG Global Consulting. She returned to the states during the “dot com” boom, recruiting for multiple high tech start-ups. One of these, a Morgan Stanley Venture Partners portfolio firm, wooed her in house by as Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and Executive Vice President (EVP) of Human Resources.

When the dot.com ‘bubble’ burst, Ann co-founded the Boland Group (TBG), a woman-owned boutique executive search firm. Initially TBG recruited for small, privately held companies under $500M revenues: primarily C-Suite executives and client facing sales and marketing roles. Gradually, TBG transitioned to its current focus on recruiting CEOs for mission driven non-profits in three areas: community development, community health and other local community nonprofits.

A published author, industry speaker, and occasional media commentator (Wall Street Journal, Washington Post), Ann holds an MBA summa cum laude from the University of South Florida, and a B.A. in Mathematics summa cum laude from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.