Sara Thomas

Founder

Sara founded Aspen in 1987, leading the company to its position as one of the primary global Board and Investor Advisory,  Leadership Coaching, and Executive Search firms operating within Enterprise SaaS, Software, AI, Applications, CyberSecurity, Technology, IIoT and Digital Innovation.

Sara’s specialist focus is to support the global build out of unicorns and decacorns, working alongside Founders, CEOs and investors as they scale and transition from private to public, through IPO and beyond. She also works closely with established market leaders post-IPO to continue scaling up global organizations that consistently outstrip the competition.

Sara’s core purpose is to support both established and first-time CEOs to operate at their highest level in order to optimize their company growth journeys, creating an environment where their leaders and broader teams flourish and succeed through the multiplier effect.

Through her long-term partnerships with US, European, and Israeli first movers and disruptors across Enterprise Tech and SaaS, Sara provides specialist expertise on a wide range of topics: CEO and leadership development, global scale-up, penetration of North American markets, optimizing build out of Board and Executive Team in readiness for IPO, cultural diversity, building to culture, organizational design, and build out and development of high-performing, cohesive Leadership Teams.

Sara is a trusted advisor, strategic thinking partner, and certified coach, with an extensive career in Executive Search, building cohesive Boards and global Leadership Teams. Her work is focused on CEO and Leadership Team Development, build out of cohesive Executive Teams, value add Boards and strategic advisors that maximize competitive advantage. Her last 12 years have been heavily focused in the US markets, and alongside this she has introduced some of the world’s top thought leaders from across the US tech industry powerhouse to European and Israeli Boards, enabling CEOs, Chair and investors to shape Boards that bring critical value, diverse perspectives, and expert insight to the scale-up journey.

Her client experience spans Nasdaq-listed $Multi-Bn market leaders through to VC-backed pre-IPO companies, bootstrapped startups, and PE-backed innovators, and after decades supporting predominately male leadership teams, she is delighted to be now also supporting the new era of female leaders across the industry. Her influence and network extend widely in the US, Europe and APAC; Sara is also an advisor to a leading VC and an investor in multiple tech startups.

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