Digital & Technology Leaders Practice

The digital agenda is a strategic imperative for all businesses. We are helping our clients answer the key question: what problems are you trying to solve and for whom? Whether developing innovative new services and products, reinventing business models for a digital world, managing cybersecurity threats, or leading technology migrations, our cross sector knowledge of what great digital and technology leaders look like helps secure individuals who work strategically and collaboratively across your organisation.

Innovation & Disruption

Chief Innovation Officers. With digital disruption firmly on the board agenda, an increasingly common role is the Chief Innovation Officer reporting to the CEO.

Transformation

CIOs, CTOs and Programme Directors. Our integrated search and interim practices supply leaders who specialise in significant transformation projects.

Digital

CDOs and their direct reports. Typically tasked with transforming a traditional business into a digital one, and for evangelising the use of digital.

Information

CIOs and their direct reports. No longer just the purveyor of technology and processes, the modern CIO is expected to drive innovation and enhance the end-to-end customer journey through digital technologies.

Technology

CTOs and their direct reports. Responsible for driving the technology agenda of the business.

Cybersecurity

CISOs and heads of cybersecurity. The single biggest threat to organisations is from cyber crime. As a result, CISOs have become critical to organisations to help manage, detect and deter threats from cyber criminals.

Savannah has one of the most respected Digital & Technology Leaders recruitment practices internationally. Our practice heads are some of the most well known headhunters within digital and technology circles, and as a result, we can persuade outstanding people to come and meet you.

200+ senior technology searches in the past five years
81% repeat business in digital and technology
Fortune 500, FTSE 100, 250, Public Sector and PE backed.

Cathy Holley is a Founding Partner of Savannah and one of the world’s leading CIO recruiters. This expertise, along with over 20 years’ experience, allows her to contribute invaluable leadership to Digital & Technology leader searches. In addition to recruiting some of the world’s top leaders, Cathy advises organisations across all sectors on building world-class IT functions which deliver real business advantage.

With 20 years experience in executive search, Victoria Maxwell Davies is one of three founding partners of Savannah and a key member of our Global Digital & Technology leader Practice. Her insider’s perspective and deep industry expertise, gained from a substantial background in technology, make her superbly qualified to recruit top candidates for the increasingly critical role of Chief Information Officer.

Kersty is an experienced interim management consultant placing CIOs and Technology leaders across multiple sectors. Kersty has spent 14 years building communities of established and rising Technology leaders from SMEs, FTSE and Blue Chip organisations from across UK and Europe.

A member of the Digital & Technology Leaders practice, Heather draws on over eleven years of deep subject matter expertise to lead and execute assignments with a strong focus on Chief Information Officer, Technology and Chief Digital appointments, globally across a breadth of sectors.

Emma is a member of the Digital & Technology leaders Practice at Savannah and has 12 years’ experience working in executive search, her functional expertise is concentrated on CIO, CTO and operations and technology director appointments across a range of sectors including financial services, consumer, industry and retail.

James is a member of the Global Digital & Technology leaders practice. He has been working in search, since graduating in 2013, both in London and overseas. He has been involved in numerous international and domestic searches across a number of sectors and has a special interest in cyber security.

Our consultants have on average more than 15 years of search experience within each of their specialised areas, bringing unparalleled levels of expertise, credibility and trust among clients and candidates alike.

Your personal, specialist team, supports and searches globally wherever you have a need. Partners always conduct the work at Savannah rather than just overseeing it.

An executive search firm that actually understands what a CIO and other senior IT roles do – saving a lot of time on briefing and great candidate selection. Brave enough to challenge our thinking to get a better result.

Simon Ramskill, CIO

They immediately understood RSA’s digital challenges and really “got” what was required in the Chief Digital Officer role. It wasn’t an easy search, but they were tenacious, diligent and effective, finding me great candidates and managing the assignment to a successful finish.

Darren Price, Group CIO

We have recently had great results with Savannah. They spend the time and effort up front to truly understand the client and the specific nature of the role to be filled, they pressure-test the job profile, and are true partners in shaping the role. This allows them to then very rapidly hone in on high-quality candidates and to complete executive searches successfully in aggressive timelines.

Alex Von Schirmeister, Chief Innovation Officer

Over the last 12 months, Savannah has been inundated with requests from boards for help in providing CISO expertise. To better understand this growing market, Savannah surveyed 36 top CIOs about what cybersecurity looks like in their organisation and how effective they see it to be in protecting against cyber threats.

The Savannah team were fantastic! They clearly understood the brief, kept us well informed throughout the search and recommended a shortlist of very strong candidates who had the right cultural fit for New Look. The whole Savannah Group team truly lived the New Look values working collaboratively with confidence and pace to find us the right person for the role.

Gary Balmer, CIO

ARM have been working with Cathy Holley and her team for a number of senior hires. Part from providing us with outstanding talent we have been able to make the right hiring decision based on their strong knowledge of the market couple with their ability to look beyond the skills and experience required for the role and considering the capabilities, including working preferences and cultural fit.

Yvonne Erlandsson, Head of Global Talent Aquisition

Savannah led our successful search for a new Chief Information Officer. The team took time to properly help us establish our requirements and refine the search. Its insight to the technology and digital sectors, and a genuine focus on promotingdiversity , delivered a strong shortlist of candidates. Our new Chief Information Officer joined us within just four months of commencing the search and unusually for technology roles, we now have a female Chief Information Officer.

Ross Paterson, Financial Director

Thinking Beyond means focusing on how talent achieves your strategic objectives.
That’s the idea, and the mission, behind everything we do.

Many organisations are keen to bring fresh perspectives and views that can only come from a diverse range of leaders. The digital and technology partners at Savannah have a deserved reputation for excelling in accessing a diverse breadth of technology leaders.

Once we understand what your ideal candidate looks like, we use our extensive global research capabilities to explore the full talent spectrum, including candidate pools that aren’t necessarily obvious places to look. By looking at everyone we ensure we don’t just hire into a mold but get the right blend of expertise and competencies that your role demands.

A large, global children’s charity with federated country units was looking to digitise its operations and to encourage the local technology and business teams to collaborate. The group CFO asked Savannah to find a world-class digitally savvy CIO with strong international experience to create a vision for the global teams.

We are passionate about helping the CIO function to evolve and have partnered with CIO Development to set up a mentoring scheme to accelerate the professional development of next generation technology leaders.

The scheme now boasts more than 80 heavyweight CIO, CTO and CDO mentors from leading global companies across all sectors, mentoring over 90 aspiring successors and preparing them to take on the most senior technology role in their organisations. What’s more, 25% of our mentees are now in CIO, CTO or CDO roles.

More details about how the scheme works and how to apply can be found on the link below.

We regularly hold events for the senior Digital and Technology Leader community on a range of topics as well as networking lunches. If you are a senior digital and technology leader and would like to be invited to these events in the future please get in touch.

Major global search firms run thousands of searches a year, and as a result aren’t always able to approach who they want due to extensive client off-limit restrictions. Savannah combines the quality, agility and dedication of a boutique firm with the specialism and global capability of a larger search firm.

We focus exclusively on the most senior roles within our specialist areas, providing deep insights into your competitive landscape, and only approach who we consider to be in the top ten percent of global talent.

We are one of the only firms to have a truly integrated search and interim offering, able to provide short term tactical and long term strategic hiring solutions. This provides clients access to the human capital resources they need right now, whatever maturity stage your business is in.

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