Core capabilities
Key appointments we deliver include:
- Chief Executive Officer / General Manager
- Chief Marketing Officer
- Chief Commercial Officer
- VP Digital & Commerce
- Supply Chain & Operations Director
- Transformation Director
The Essenta difference
Why Essenta?
With a broad B2C perspective, cross-sector talent access and organizational Advisory, we help brands navigate rapid industry shifts.
Deep sector expertise
Dedicated CPG Executive Search coverage spanning general management, marketing, digital, commerce, sales, and operations.
Global talent networks
Connecting CPG and FMCG brands with proven leaders across global markets, including talent from adjacent consumer sectors.
Proprietary Discovery Process
Looking beyond direct competitors to evaluate capabilities, organizational culture, and modern route-to-market expertise.
Context-led Assessment
Supporting Executive Search alongside organizational design, advising on capability placement and talent attraction strategies.
Case studies
Proven lasting impact
See how CPG and FMCG brands have appointed leaders who work across traditional functional boundaries.
Related experts
The team behind our CPG & FMCG solutions
Ewan Peaston
Consultant, Consumer
B2C
London
Cara Sawyer
Senior Associate, Consumer
B2C
London
Laurence Frantzis
Senior Partner, Interim, Leadership Advisory and Central Operations
Central Operations
Interim
Leadership Advisory
London
Mike Thomas
Principal, Interim
B2C
London
Natasha Lewis
Consultant, Consumer
B2C
New York
Sebastien Cavanagh
Senior Partner, Consumer
B2C
London
Isobel Stevenson
Consultant, Consumer
B2C
London
Connect with Ewan 
Email Ewan 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
A Senior Associate within Essenta’s B2C practice, supporting PE-backed, and publicly listed businesses across the US and Europe. Cara’s consumer experience is broad, with a notable focus on CPG – including health and beauty, food and beverage, alongside sports, lifestyle, fashion, and apparel.
Prior to joining Essenta, Cara worked in an independent recruitment business. This was where she developed a keen, detail-oriented approach and ultimately learned to work at pace across multiple searches.
Personal perspective
I believe great leadership is about bringing clarity to complexity, building trust, and creating an environment where people can do their best work. A strong strategy and good results matter, but so does how you bring people with you along the way.
I bring the same approach to Executive Search: taking the time to understand people, what motivates them, and what they could bring to an organization. The goal is to connect exceptional people with businesses where they can make a meaningful impact.
Laurence Frantzis
Senior Partner, Interim, Leadership Advisory and Central Operations
Professional overview
Some businesses need experienced leadership quickly, to steer them through a critical period or deliver a specific outcome. Laurence helps them find it. He leads Essenta’s Interim and Leadership Advisory practices, partnering with private equity-backed businesses and PLCs across the UK, Europe and the US. He advises investors, boards and leadership teams on critical appointments and complex leadership challenges, from transformation, turnaround and value creation to growth and significant organizational change.
Before joining Essenta, Laurence held senior positions at leading Executive Search and Talent Advisory firms, specializing in Executive Interim Management and senior leadership appointments. In a previous role, he played a key part in integrating three complementary service lines, helping shape a more cohesive market proposition across Executive Search, Interim Management and Leadership Advisory. He built significant expertise in manufacturing, FMCG, consumer and healthcare, partnering with PE-backed, privately owned, and listed businesses on senior leadership and transformation mandates.
His work has also been recognized by the Institute of Interim Management, which named him Interim Service Provider Consultant of the Year in 2021.
Personal perspective
Experience on paper only gets you so far. What matters is whether someone has the judgement, pace and credibility to operate in the specific environment they’re stepping into. My role is to understand both the business challenge and the individual, and make sure the two genuinely align.
Professional overview
Mike is a Principal in Essenta’s Interim Practice, advising private equity-backed, listed and privately owned businesses on senior Interim leadership appointments across the UK, Europe and the US.
His clients are dealing with leadership gaps, transformation, growth, operational improvement and other business-critical situations, where experienced leaders need to make a difference straight away. Mike starts with the business context, the leadership challenge and the outcome required. He combines market insight with pace and judgement to find experienced leaders who can deliver.
Mike has more than 20 years’ experience in recruitment and Executive Search, advising clients on board and functional leadership appointments across international consumer, CPG, industrial and manufacturing markets.
His clients have ranged from early-stage and private equity-backed businesses to major listed and multinational organizations. Before joining Essenta, he held senior leadership and partnership positions in Executive Search and recruitment, and co-founded and ran his own business.
Personal perspective
Integrity sits at the core of how I work. That means being straightforward in my advice, building relationships for the long term and being prepared to give an honest view, even when it isn’t the easiest message to deliver.
In Interim, pace and precision matter. I take a clinical approach to understanding the situation, defining what success looks like and identifying the leadership experience needed to deliver it. The objective is simple: move quickly, apply sound judgement and appoint someone who can make an immediate impact.
Professional overview
Natasha brings Essenta’s international network to the US market. A Consultant in the B2C practice, she is based in New York, where she focuses on senior leadership appointments across CPG, luxury, beauty, retail and technology-enabled businesses.
She works across the full search process, from gathering market intelligence and identifying talent to assessing candidates, managing client relationships and supporting decisions. Natasha also weaves Leadership Assessment and Advisory into her searches, giving clients a fuller view of the talent landscape and the capabilities their business needs to succeed.
Her understanding of where talent is heading in her industries helps her turn business context into a clear leadership profile, a tailored search strategy and a differentiated shortlist.
Natasha studied Economics at University College London and joined Essenta in 2021, she has built her Executive Search expertise in London before having relocated to New York in 2026.
Personal perspective
A job description only tells you part of the story. The more closely you understand an industry and a company’s ambitions, challenges and culture, the better you can spot the leadership it needs. I bring that thinking to every conversation, helping clients think more broadly about the market and giving candidates a clear, honest view of the opportunity. I particularly enjoy the moments when talent gets to shape a role and make a real difference to the business.
Professional overview
Seb has spent more than 25 years helping consumer organizations build their boards and management teams. A member of Essenta’s Senior Leadership team, he co-heads its Consumer divisions and is responsible for building the firm’s reputation across consumer industries in North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific.
He is also closely involved in developing Essenta’s broader offering, including Assessment, Advisory, Interim and referencing. Seb’s time is split equally between publicly listed and private capital-backed businesses, which gives him a clear sense of what each requires, separately or together.
Having worked globally for most of his career, Seb has supported organizations and investors with both domestic and international growth ambitions. His clients range from public companies to private equity-backed businesses building towards secondary, tertiary and IPO capital events.
Personal perspective
A strong leader creates followership. A healthy balance of EQ and IQ builds the trust and loyalty at the heart of high-performing teams, and finding and qualifying those teams is what motivates me. That’s why executive referencing is now so focused on those qualities, particularly when growth and transformation sit at the heart of a business’s strategy.
Professional overview
Thirteen years in search, across the UK, US and APAC, have taught Isobel to recognize a business at its most critical turning point. She partners with ambitious companies as they grow or transform, working as a key member within Essenta’s B2C team. Isobel runs the delivery of searches for listed, investor-backed and privately held organizations across a broad range of consumer industries and services.
Isobel joined Essenta in 2026. She began her career in London, in the Financial Officers practices at Eton Bridge and Blackwood, then spent four years working overseas before returning to the UK.
Personal perspective
No leader is one trait wide, so no assessment should be either. I aim to bring together the tangible, quantifiable side of a leader’s skills and the more qualitative, behavioural insights, so our clients get a true picture of the impact that person could have in their organization.
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.