Executive search for mission-driven institutions. The same lens that informs ecosystem analysis informs candidate identification: future readiness, lived experience credentialed as expertise and the governance literacy to hold complex coalitions together.
Most search firms recruit against the role description an institution has been hiring for. SoPact recruits against the strategic context the institution will actually face. Climate disruption, automation, hyper-urbanization, wealth inequality, pandemic vulnerability. The candidates we surface are evaluated for whether they can lead through the compounding shocks that will define the next decade.
Lived experience is not a footnote in our search architecture. It is a credential. Candidates who have navigated the systems they will be asked to transform bring a kind of analytical fluency no résumé alone captures. We source through networks built across decades, including communities most search firms cannot reach.
The institutions we serve are accountable to community partners, board members, funders, regulators and frontline staff at once. The leaders we place have the governance literacy to keep all of those constituencies in conversation. That literacy is structurally assessed in our process, not assumed from the candidate's title history.
People & Operations Lead
Senior Strategist & People Officer at Azimu Group
Rhonda anchors the operational side of every SoPact engagement with more than 25 years of organizational strategy and human capital leadership. Her career spans organizational change, talent development, employee relations and compliance. The operating systems that determine whether a placed leader can actually lead.
For SoPact engagements, Rhonda owns position architecture, governance preparation and the first-year onboarding partnership that determines whether a placement holds.
B.A., Communications, University of Texas at Arlington · M.A., Dispute Resolution, Southern Methodist University.
Strategic Lens & Future Readiness
CEO & Founder of Azimu Group
Dr. Lemons brings the firm's future-readiness lens to executive recruitment. Her peer-reviewed scholarship on resilience debt and spatial reconciliation supplies the analytical framework SoPact uses to evaluate whether a candidate can lead through the five compounding disruptors that will define the next decade of institutional work.
For SoPact engagements, Dr. Lemons calibrates the search against the strategic context the institution will actually face. Twenty years of governance practice and over $165 million in public investment management inform every search she touches.
Ph.D. · Dual M.A., Indiana University · B.A., University of Wisconsin-Whitewater · Social Impact Strategy, University of Pennsylvania · Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy.
Inclusion & Workplace Architecture
Strategist, DEI & Workplace Inclusion at Azimu Group
Michelle brings 30+ years of leadership experience and the inclusion-as-operational-discipline frame to executive recruitment. As Founder and President of HR-Inclusion, she has spent her career inside organizations translating the language of equity into hiring practices, leadership pipelines and accountability structures that determine who thrives at work.
For SoPact engagements, Michelle leads the inclusion architecture of every search: candidate sourcing through networks most search firms cannot reach, structured assessment that surfaces governance literacy and the workplace transition planning that determines whether a placement holds. Author of Is DEI Dead? Creating Inclusive Organizations.
Communication and Business degrees · Cornell Diversity and Inclusion certification · PHR · Lean Six Sigma · U.S. Air Force Levitow Leadership Award.
Define the role honestly. We start by interrogating the job description: what the institution actually needs versus what it has been recruiting for. Strategic context, governance complexity and the disruptors the new leader will face are mapped before sourcing begins.
Position architecture documentNetworks built across decades, including relationships in communities and sectors most search firms do not know how to reach. We surface candidates whose lived expertise is credentialed alongside their formal qualifications.
Sourced candidate pool with rationaleMulti-touchpoint structured interviews with shortlisted candidates and current institutional leadership. We are looking for fit on three dimensions at once: future readiness, lived expertise and governance literacy.
Interview synthesis and shortlistA structured assessment that tests whether a final candidate can hold the complex coalitions this institution is part of. Board members, community partners, funders, regulators and frontline staff each present different governance demands. The assessment surfaces how each candidate metabolizes that complexity.
Final candidate slate with structured assessmentThe placement is not the finish line. SoPact stays through the first-year transition, structuring board calibration, community introduction and the operational handoffs that determine whether a placed leader is set up to succeed or quietly set up to fail.
First-year onboarding plan and quarterly check-insTell us about the role, the institution and the moment. We will tell you whether SoPact is the right fit, what the engagement would look like and where the work begins.
old-fashioned phone calls work too.
