Lesley Boyd
Three decades inside the search process produces a particular kind of knowledge: what makes a candidacy credible, how committees think, and what the first year in a new role requires. Lesley Boyd built that knowledge over thirty years in higher education executive search, including senior leadership at Storbeck Search, one of the field's most respected boutique firms.
Two truths became clear over the course of hundreds of searches and thousands of conversations. The first: leaders benefit from a strategic partner earlier, while they are still figuring out the move, not after they have already made it. The second: newly appointed leaders are almost always left to navigate their leadership transitions alone, regardless of how carefully the search was managed.
Cultivar is the direct result of those two observations.
The name is intentional. A cultivar is a plant variety selected and developed for its particular strengths, and brought to its potential through deliberate cultivation, not chance. The same is true of the leaders Cultivar works with.