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Board & Executive Leadership
Board, C-suite, managing directors and critical functional leadership.
The people shaping how the world learns and works.
Leadership hiring and talent advisory for education, learning and workforce technology businesses — from ambitious founders and venture-backed scale-ups to global, PE-backed platforms.
The learning ecosystem
Operating across
North America • EMEA
One connected leadership ecosystem.
Executive Search/Strategic Hiring/Talent Advisory/Market Intelligence/
The Potentia difference
Specialist enough to know the market. Connected enough to change it.
Connected to a specialist ecosystem of 10,000+ executives and industry leaders across North America and EMEA — combining focused sector knowledge with rigorous search and market intelligence.
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Executives and industry
leaders in the network
02
Continental hubs
North America ↔ EMEA
05
Connected areas of leadership & talent
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Connected markets
03
Ways we work
02
Continents
01
Ecosystem
Our markets
One ecosystem.
Four connected markets.
We work where technology, learning and workforce transformation converge — and where the same leaders move between markets.
What we do
Search with context.
Advice with consequence.
From a venture-backed company making its first senior commercial hire to a global platform scaling an entire function, every mandate starts with the market — not a database.
Explore our capabilities01
Executive Search
Board, C-suite and business-critical leadership appointments across two continents.
02
Strategic Hiring
Critical permanent and interim appointments, specialist hiring and team build-outs for growth, change and transition.
03
Talent Advisory
Market mapping, talent intelligence, benchmarking, succession insight and organisational planning.
Functional expertise
Underpinning those three services, five connected disciplines spanning the leadership and specialist capability required to build, scale and transform technology businesses.
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Go-to-Market
Commercial and customer teams that turn market opportunity into sustainable growth.
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Product, Engineering & AI
The people shaping products, platforms and responsible AI-enabled innovation.
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Finance & Transformation
Financial and transformation capability aligned to scale, control and value creation.
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People & HR
People leadership and organisational capability for businesses navigating change.
Private equity, VC & founders
Talent aligned to the growth thesis.
We partner with founders, venture investors, private equity teams and portfolio leadership — from the first pivotal functional hire through international scale, value creation and exit readiness.
Discuss a growth or portfolio need
Leadership across the investment cycle
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Founder & portfolio leadership
First functional leaders, C-suite and board appointments for growth, succession and critical inflection points.
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Pre-search intelligence
Market mapping, compensation insight and competitor analysis before a mandate begins.
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Value creation
Transformation, commercial, product and strategic finance operators aligned to the value-creation plan.
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Build, scale and exit readiness
Leadership and specialist hiring across the functions required to professionalise and accelerate growth.
Partnership in practice
Selected case studies.
Selected examples of how focused search and market intelligence support critical leadership decisions. Client confidentiality respected throughout.
Case study 01 · PE-backed education technology
Leadership for international growth.
North America ↔ EMEA
A multi-mandate partnership with a global education technology platform, beginning with a Chief Growth Officer appointment and extending across product, people, strategic finance and transformation.
Leadership · Finance · Transformation
Case study 02 · Global learning platform
A pivotal EMEA appointment.
EMEA
Partnered with a global learning technology company on an EMEA Managing Director search, combining targeted market access with considered leadership assessment through to a successful appointment.
Executive Search · Market Intelligence
“Kristian combines strong market knowledge with the judgement and persistence needed on critical leadership hires.”
Oleg Figlin
CEO · Faria Education Group
“He understands the North American EdTech market and gets quickly to the people who can make an impact.”
Mark Alsdorf
VP Sales · MagicSchool AI
Meet the founder
Kristian Lee
Founder & Managing Partner.
Fifteen years of specialist search and leadership hiring across education, learning and workforce technology — working with founders, boards and investors on the appointments that shape the next stage of growth.
Every mandate starts with the market. Understanding where the best leaders sit today — and why they would move — is what makes a search decisive rather than hopeful.
Latest thinking
Insight for leaders
shaping the market.
Original perspectives for CEOs, board members and investors navigating leadership, growth and value creation.
Insight signup
Perspectives for CEOs, boards and investors.
Occasional market intelligence on leadership, hiring and value creation across education, learning and workforce technology. No newsletters for the sake of it.