Sara Thomas

Founder and Chair

Sara founded Aspen in 1987 and rapidly established the company as a global leader in Executive Search, CEO and ELT Leadership Development, and Board and Investor Advisory, operating across global Enterprise tech markets. Aspen’s partnerships enable clients to achieve the multiplier effect and drive sustainable high performance.

Aspen has built deep and enduring partnerships with Founders, CEOs and investors, focusing on first movers and disruptors. Clients have spanned VC-backed scale-up companies through to established Nasdaq / NYSE-listed and PE-backed $Multi-Bn market leaders. Example clients over the years have included long-term trusted partnerships with companies including Celonis, Shift Technology, CyberArk, Qlik, Salesforce, Siebel and Oracle, alongside multiple EMEA borne and American unicorns, decacorns and public companies.

Sara’s focus has been to think with global technology CEOs and their Leadership Teams to optimize their own leadership and every aspect of their business to build sustainable success, equipped to navigate constant change and innovation in an AI-driven world, and high resilience in the face of ever-shifting global macro-economics. Aspen clients operate in markets where the competitive landscape is continuously evolving, and where outstanding leadership is essential for companies to thrive as they move with speed and stay ahead of the curve.

From a search perspective, the Aspen team has been consistently recognized for its unique and multi-faceted partnerships with clients built on deep trust. We have supported build out of cohesive Executive and Global, Regional and Country Leadership Teams who operate as one, and of value-add Boards and expert Advisors bringing real world insight and experience to clients’ growth journeys. CEOs we partnered with maintain a consistent focus on optimizing the culture of their businesses and creating the multiplier effect at speed.

We are long-term, expert advisors and partners with investors, boards, founders, CEOs and their leadership teams for some of the smallest category creators who have scaled to become some of the world’s largest and fastest growing tech innovators. With clients born out of the US and EMEA, we have supported them across all markets globally.

Leveraging a career heavily focused in the US tech market, today Sara’s pro bono work aligns to the vision of Boardwave, a purpose-driven social enterprise supporting tech companies borne out of Europe to optimize their opportunities to scale and fulfil their global potential. Her pro bono support for Boardwave centers on CEO development across Europe, reflecting her philosophy of giving back to the world of tech.

Our relationship with Aspen has added value to many aspects of our global scale-up journey, a 360-degree partnership spanning Coaching and Advisory work, leadership programs that maximized Executive Team cohesion and alignment on vision and strategy, Executive Search, and more. Their impact goes far beyond building cohesive global leadership teams, or developing individual leaders; it’s about building success together.

BASTIAN NOMINACHER, Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Celonis