Core capabilities
Key appointments we deliver include:
- Chief Marketing Officer
- Chief Commercial Officer
- Chief Revenue Officer
- Chief Growth Officer
- Chief Digital Officer
- VP / Director of Brand, Performance Marketing & Sales
The Essenta difference
Why Essenta?
Essenta brings genuine functional depth and global reach, evaluating complete leadership capability to secure transformational talent that stays and delivers through business lifecycles.
Deep functional expertise
Proven specialization across marketing, revenue, digital, and growth functions for corporate, investor-backed, and private equity businesses.
Global talent networks
Maintaining a live view of global market moves to engage proven leaders building notable reputations.
Proprietary Discovery Process
Combining market mapping, leadership intelligence, and rigorous referencing to base decisions on evidence, not merely an impression.
Context-led Assessment
Evaluating track record, scale, and digital exposure to match leaders precisely to your operating model, where you are in your business lifecycle and growth agenda.
Case studies
Proven lasting impact
We deliver tailored Executive Search, Interim and Advisory solutions that secure transformational GTM executives, creating a lasting leadership advantage.
Related experts
The team behind our GTM solutions
Bryony Hallett
Analyst, Technology and Digital
Technology and Digital
London
Emily Little
Principal, Consumer
B2C
New York
Ewan Peaston
Consultant, Consumer
B2C
London
Geoffrey Arner
Associate Partner
B2B
New York
Alex Teague
Principal, B2B
B2B
London
Jiarong Guo
Consultant, Consumer
B2C
London
Katriona Windsor
Partner, Consumer
B2C
London
Connect with Bryony 
Email Bryony Professional overview
Bryony is an Analyst with a particular focus on the consumer sector. Research is at the heart of her role. She maps markets, identifies and assesses leadership talent, and works closely with Consultants and Partners to turn research into clear, targeted search strategies, and strong insights for clients.
Bryony also supports business development, proactively tracking leadership moves, sector developments and emerging talent themes.
Personal perspective
Getting a senior appointment right starts with understanding what the client is looking for, the context around the role, and the capabilities that will matter most. I bring a curious, rigorous approach to my research, to provide insight beyond the obvious profiles. Leadership takes many forms, but in my experience clarity, adaptability and the ability to build trust always stand out.
Professional overview
Fashion, retail, and the wider consumer world are what Emily knows best. She has built her career recruiting C-suite and senior executives for publicly listed and private equity-backed businesses, as well as founder-owned brands.
At Essenta, she leads every stage of a search, from defining the role and mapping the market to assessing and benchmarking talent, guiding clients through to a successful hire. Her clients range from founder-led start-ups and private equity-backed portfolio companies to established public brands.
Emily’s driven by finding creative answers to complex talent challenges, giving clients and candidates an exceptional experience, and building Essenta’s reputation as the firm of choice – both to work with and to work for.
Emily joined Essenta from Herbert Mines Associates and before that, she was at Egon Zehnder, first in London and then supporting the Dallas office, mostly on retail, apparel and luxury Executive Search. Throughout her career, she has enjoyed working with both established and disruptive businesses on their senior leadership needs.
Her early career was in financial services, focused on retail and consumer, and in retail itself as a merchant.
Personal perspective
Each search is a chance to make a real difference, both to a business and to the people in it. The right leader can transform an organization and the lives of its people, and I approach every mandate with that sense of possibility. Add a naturally competitive streak, and the work is both rewarding and genuinely enjoyable.
I’ve long believed that culture is a critical driver of performance. When placing senior leaders, I give cultural fit equal weight with technical capability instead of focusing on skills alone, and in my experience that typically means longer tenures and greater success in the role.
Professional overview
Ewan advises consumer brands on senior leadership appointments as part of Essenta’s B2C team, working across consumer packaged goods, health and beauty, fashion and apparel, and sports and lifestyle, in particular.
His work goes well beyond Executive Search. Ewan also leads market insight, talent mapping, and succession planning projects. Having partnered with clients across a wide range of functional disciplines, he sees how consumer businesses build and structure their leadership teams, end to end.
Before joining Essenta, Ewan spent three years at Fortune Hill Executive Search, specializing in commercial and marketing within the European consumer market. He started out as a researcher, moved into account management and ultimately led the delivery teams, so he knows the work from the ground up.
Personal perspective
The best leadership appointments come from understanding not just what a candidate has achieved, but how they achieved it: how they’ve built teams, navigated change and made difficult decisions under pressure. Consumer businesses move fast, and the leaders who succeed in them are rarely the ones who look best on paper alone. Our job is to get past that and find the person who will genuinely thrive in the context our clients are asking them to lead in.
Professional overview
As an Associate Partner at Essenta who places senior executives into C-Suite and board roles across B2B services and industrials, Geoff is as interested in the why, as the who. He works with a wide range of financial sponsors, from founders and family offices to global PE firms and corporations, developing talent-centric deal Advisory and due diligence solutions.
A New Yorker by birth, Geoff has lived in Japan and the UK. He studied Philosophy and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, and spent the first two years of his career on political campaigns before moving into Executive Search, where he has built over 15 years’ experience delivering talent solutions for businesses centred on private capital, and business services.
Personal perspective
I think of myself as more of a matchmaker than a recruiter. Qualifications matter, but it ultimately comes down to fit. In any search, you’re asking a successful executive to take a risk and make a change, and it’s easy to forget that people (not CVs) show up to work each day.
Every hiring process is a two-way street, and the best placements are completely aligned with their new companies. To run search well, you can’t just know the candidates, the market, and the business. You have to understand the full context behind “why this role?” and “why now?”
Professional overview
Ownership change, transformation, and M&A test a leadership team in interesting ways. As a Principal in Essenta’s B2B Practice, Alex helps businesses at those moments find the senior leaders they need. He advises on appointments in operationally complex, people-intensive companies, with a focus on private-equity backed and high growth organizations.
Having been with Essenta for over six years, Alex has built a strong network across the Business Services sectors, where he works closely with investors and management teams, taking the time to understand what is really shaping each business, before identifying the leaders who can help it grow and develop.
Personal perspective
For me, the best leadership appointments start with a simple question: what does this business need at this point in its journey? Experience counts, but the harder test is fit – with the situation, the culture, and where the business wants to go.
Professional overview
Jiarong helps consumer businesses find the leaders who can take them across borders. She advises on senior leadership appointments in international markets, with a particular focus on fashion, beauty, sports, lifestyle, and consumer goods. Her clients include global brands, private equity-backed businesses and founder-led companies across Europe and Asia, all growing, transforming, or expanding internationally.
Cross-border search is Jiarong’s specialism. She helps international businesses build leadership capability in Asia, and partners with Asian companies as they expand into Europe and other global markets. Her work spans CEO, president and general management appointments, as well as senior commercial, brand, retail and people leadership roles.
Jiarong works closely with clients to understand not only the experience a role requires, but the business ambition, leadership dynamics and cultural context behind it. This helps her identify and engage leaders who can handle complexity, work effectively across cultures and make a real impact as businesses evolve.
Jiarong has more than a decade of experience in Executive Search, where she advised clients across private equity, financial services and a range of other industries.
Her route into search has been a less direct one. A mathematics graduate, she began her career in banking, then moved into executive education as a programme manager at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. There, her interest in business, leadership and the people behind organizations grew, and it eventually led her into Executive Search.
Personal perspective
Our work takes more than industry knowledge and a feel for how markets are moving. It takes humanity too: empathy, integrity, openness and a genuine curiosity about people. That matters even more across cultures. Great leadership starts with understanding people deeply, what drives them and what makes them different. Give people with different perspectives and backgrounds the space to be at their best, and that’s often where something extraordinary happens.
Professional overview
Scaling, transforming, going digital: Katriona works with consumer businesses at the moments when leadership matters most. As a Partner at Essenta, she works with boards, investors and management teams across private equity-backed, growth equity and publicly listed businesses, finding exceptional leaders for ambitious organizations in complex, high-growth and transformational environments.
Her work spans consumer, consumer technology and consumer services, with a keen focus on leadership teams driving scale, digital growth and value creation. She advises on executive and non-executive appointments, bringing deep sector knowledge and a rigorous understanding of what sustains performance. Katriona’s approach is pragmatic. She takes time to understand the business, its context and the leadership it needs for its next phase.
Before joining Essenta, Katriona spent 17 years in specialist, boutique environments, building deep expertise in Executive Search and the consumer sector. Most recently she spent three years at Founders Keepers, the Executive Search arm of Founders Forum, advising investor-backed businesses on board appointments. Before that, she spent 14 years at The Talent Business, where she led the European Executive Search business, working with consumer and creative-led organizations on senior leadership appointments.
She began her career in client services at Havas and McCann Erickson, which gave her an early grounding in consumer brands and the commercial and creative dynamics that shape them. That mix of sector knowledge and search experience has underpinned her work with boards, investors and management teams ever since.
Personal perspective
The best leadership appointments come from understanding what a business will need in the future, as well as what it needs today. I take the time to sink my teeth into an organization’s context, ambitions and culture, and I’m candid with both clients and candidates about what it will take to succeed. The aim is always a thoughtful, well-informed appointment that works for the business and the individual over the long term.
Let’s build your next leadership team
Tell us what the business needs to achieve. We will give you an honest read on the leadership challenge in front of you, and how you should approach it.