RSR Partners Appoints Talal Debs as Head of Firm’s Risk Practice

RSR Partners, an executive search and leadership consulting firm, announced today the appointment of Talal Debs as a Managing Director and Head of the firm’s Risk Practice. With a strong combination of risk management, finance, and academic experience, he will focus on recruiting senior executives and directors to navigate new risk, regulatory, and compliance issues for clients. His areas of concentration will include insurance, investment banking, trading, and asset management, among others.

 

Announcing Debs’ appointment, Barrett Stephens, the firm’s Chief Executive Officer, stated, “We are excited to welcome Talal to our firm, where he will provide an important new capability to increase our ability to serve new and existing clients. His unique skill set will be pivotal in providing risk management expertise to companies worldwide. And Talal joins us at a time when we are seeing a dynamic rise in the need for talent to address this growingly-complex environment.” The firm’s Chairman Russell Reynolds added, “Talal will be a great help to our board director clients who are concerned about risk, as well.”

 

“Today’s marketplace, with its constant regulatory flux and the emergence of disruptive technologies, increasingly demands the ability to anticipate developments and capture value through forward-looking risk decision-making,” Debs said. “As a result, there has rarely been a more interesting time for CEOs and boards of directors to pose the question: ‘do we have the right risk talent in place for the coming business cycle?'”

 

Prior to joining RSR Partners, Mr. Debs worked at J.P. Morgan for 15 years, most recently as an Executive Director in risk management, focused on energy, project finance, and insurance. Mr. Debs also has extensive experience in academic research and teaching within the field of the philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics and relativity theory. He has served as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University, and on the teaching faculties of the London School of Economics and the American University of Beirut.

 

Mr. Debs earned his AB in Physics and History & Science from Harvard College, his MPhil in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge, and his PhD in the philosophical foundations of physics, also from Cambridge. He serves as a Trustee of Gordon College, a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics, and a Director of Indian Harbor Yacht Club.