Core capabilities
Key appointments we deliver include:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Chief Investment Officer
- Chief Sales Officer/Chief Commercial Officer
- Chief Operating Officer
- Chief Technology Officer
- Chief Financial Officer
- Managing Director – country and regional leadership
- Head of Investment, Development, Asset Management & Capital Markets
- Development Director / Infrastructure Programme Director
- Head of Logistics, Supply Chain & Network Optimization
The Essenta difference
Why Essenta?
Essenta brings an end-to-end perspective on physical assets, evaluating complete capability to secure transformational leaders who deliver sustainable performance.
Deep sector expertise
Specialized search across infrastructure, property, and capital markets for private equity, listed, and privately held firms.
Global talent networks
Connecting clients with proven leadership across the UK, Europe, and the US to support global growth agendas.
Proprietary Discovery Process
Implementing data-led evaluation to map, assess, and optimize leadership across complex physical networks, logistics, and multi-site platforms.
Context-led Assessment
Evaluating complete leadership capability across acquisition, development, and asset management to match your specific lifecycle stage and exit goals.
James Howells
CEO and Founding Partner
London
David Purcell
Senior Partner, B2B
B2B
London
Alex Maropoulos
Principal, B2B
B2B
London
Connect with James 
Email James Professional overview
James is the founder and CEO of Essenta.
He built the firm on a clear conviction: exceptional leadership creates lasting value, and the best leadership decisions combine commercial rigour with a deep understanding of people.
With more than 30 years in Executive Search and Leadership Advisory, he works closely with private equity investors, boards and senior leadership teams to help ambitious organizations hire, lead and grow with confidence. He advises on critical leadership appointments, executive assessment and the development of high-performing teams, bringing candour, commercial judgment and a highly personal approach to every relationship.
Since founding the firm in 2016, James has set Essenta’s global strategy and continues to drive the development of its integrated leadership proposition, while staying closely involved with key clients and senior-level mandates.
Personal perspective
The strongest Advisory relationships are built on trust, candour and genuine personal commitment. Clients should feel that their adviser understands not only the appointment or the immediate challenge, but the organization’s ambitions, context and culture.
Leadership decisions have consequences that reach far beyond the person being appointed. I want to help clients make them with clarity and confidence, combining rigorous assessment and commercial judgment with a real understanding of people and what helps them succeed. That has been the goal of Essenta since day one, and I’m proud of how far we’ve come in delivering it.
Professional overview
David Purcell is a Senior Partner at Essenta, where he leads the firm’s B2B practice. He advises private equity investors and their portfolio companies on senior leadership appointments across business and professional services, particularly when a business is growing, transforming, expanding internationally or changing hands.
Working across Essenta’s London and New York teams, David works closely with investors, boards and management teams to pin down the leadership needed to deliver their ambitions, from CEO and C-suite appointments to wider senior teams. His work spans multiple geographies and ownership structures, with a particular focus on private equity-backed businesses.
David has built his career in Executive Search, specializing in B2B services and senior leadership within private equity-backed and listed businesses. He has advised investors, boards and management teams on appointments across a range of business services sectors and geographies. Along the way, he has built a deep network of senior executives and a clear understanding of what leadership looks like at different stages of growth and transformation.
Personal perspective
A great CV is only the starting point. The real question is whether someone has the experience, mindset and leadership style to deliver what the business needs next. I enjoy working closely with clients to get under the skin of their situation, then bringing a clear, well-informed view of the market and the people who can make a difference.
Professional overview
Business leaders and investors across real assets and infrastructure turn to Alex to appoint the leaders who will deliver their strategic ambitions. He works across the US and the EMEA, supporting clients through growth, transformation, and market change.
His specialism is senior appointments across real estate and digital infrastructure, with particular depth in industrial and logistics, and multi-site and residential platforms. He supports domestic and multinational businesses across investment, development, asset management, and operations.
Combining deep market knowledge with a pragmatic approach, Alex helps clients look beyond experience on paper to the leadership capabilities and context an individual needs, to succeed in a role.
Before joining Essenta, Alex was a Principal at ZRG, working across its industrials and infrastructure practices with multi-site B2B platforms worldwide. Previously, as a Principal at Granger Reis, he led the industrial logistics real estate practice, advising REITs, developers, and owner operators across EMEA, with a focus on the Benelux, Nordics, CEE, and Southern Europe.
Personal perspective
The right leader is not simply the person with the strongest track record, but the one whose experience and leadership capabilities align with what the business needs next. That’s why I focus on understanding where a client is heading and the context a leader will step into, so every appointment is made with the road ahead in mind. Get that match right, and the difference it makes to the business is felt for years to come.
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.