Diversified Search Debuts new Lunches with Leaders Series

Citing a desire “to connect national thought leaders to the executives, decision-makers, and influencers we serve,” Diversified Search President and CEO Dale E. Jones today announced the debut of the firm’s new “Lunches With Leaders” speaker series, an ambitious two-year program where prominent leaders from the worlds of business, higher education, philanthropy, healthcare, publishing, politics, and others will headline invitation-only luncheons around the country to share their views and insights on the American and global marketplaces.

 

“As a firm dedicated to finding the best and brightest talent to lead increasingly complex organizations, we are delighted to introduce this series, which will feature some of the nation’s leading thinkers sharing their views on the trends and policies affecting our lives and commerce,” Jones said.

 

The series will kick off at Philadelphia’s august Union League on March 22, when Forbes magazine editor Randall Lane will share his insights and predictions on the business outlook for the nation over the next few years. As editor of Forbes, Lane oversees the magazine’s signature features and events, including the Forbes 400 list of the nation’s wealthiest individuals, and the annual Forbes 30 Under 30 honors. An award-winning business journalist and wine critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Lane is also the author of the critically acclaimed 2010 memoir The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane, which Businessweek called “a delicious, salacious recounting of Wall Street’s bloated decade.”

 

The second luncheon in the series, to be held in June in New York City, will feature as its speaker Dr. Rajiv Shah, the dynamic new president of The Rockefeller Foundation. One of the nation’s largest and most prestigious philanthropies, the foundation distributes more than $200 million in grants annually.

 

The “Lunches With Leaders” series will subsequently offer luncheons in Miami in September, and in Atlanta in December. Each will be hosted by one of Diversified Search’s national offices. Plans call for a 2018 series that will once again kick off in Philadelphia before producing events in Diversified’s national-office cities of Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. The lunches, underwritten by Diversified Search, are by invitation only. Speakers for the two remaining events in the 2017 series will be announced in the spring.

 

The initiative is the result of a “pilot run” of the concept held last December, when at the firm’s request former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart E. Jones spoke to a gathering of 90 leaders of the Philadelphia business and civic communities at the Union League. His candid and topical remarks on the subject of “The Middle East: The Path Forward,” held only a few weeks after the unpredictable presidential election, offered a candid and provocative insider’s assessment of one of the world’s most vexing conflicts.

 

“The overwhelming positive reaction we received from those who attended the Ambassador Jones luncheon proved to us that we were on to something,” said Diversified Search Chairman Judith M. von Seldeneck. “Several business executives who had not been able to attend called me to say that they’d heard that the event had been highly impactful, and that they wished they could have attended. 

 

“From our many years in the search industry we are connected to so many of the nation’s preeminent minds, from all over the corporate and nonprofit sectors, that we wanted to establish a method for bringing these great minds directly to the leadership communities we serve around the country, in an intimate and informal setting,” von Seldeneck continued. “We feel this exciting new speaker series accomplishes that goal.”