Built for the world's most ambitious leaders and families.

10+Years placing Chiefs of Staff, Executive Assistants, and Office of the CXO teams

Off-marketEvery candidate headhunted directly and confidentially

USCoverage across key hubs

Traditional values, modern approach.

Blackbook Associates was founded on a simple observation: the people who sit closest to the world's most demanding principals are the most important hires a firm or family will ever make - and the most overlooked.

Most search firms treat these roles as an afterthought. The result is a generalist approach that fundamentally misses what makes them different: the proximity to power, the need for absolute discretion, and the reality that the wrong hire at this level costs far more than the fee.

We built Blackbook Associates around a single focus - placing the people who sit closest to those leading the firms and households operating at the top of their fields. Chiefs of Staff, Executive Assistants, and Personal Assistants, alongside building out Office of the CXO functions for the most senior leaders across the United States.

Traditional in our standards. Modern in how we find, assess, and deliver.

We're building the search firm we'd want to work with - one that understands the worlds it operates in. The dynamics are unique, the relationships are closer, and the margin for error is zero. Our mission is simple: to become the first call when you need to hire, and to deliver every time.

Every mandate is headhunted directly. We map the market, agree off-limits, and approach candidates confidentially through our private community of Chiefs of Staff, Executive Assistants, Personal Assistants, and right-hands supporting the world's most demanding principals - across firms and family offices alike. It is how we reach the talent that never appears on a shortlist.

James Ketteringham

Founder

“

The gap in this market has never been a shortage of recruiters. It's a shortage of sophistication.

Too few understand the difference between placing an EA into a bulge-bracket bank versus a single-family office, or between building an Office of the CXO from scratch for a scaling platform and placing a Lead Executive Assistant for a Fortune 100 CEO. These aren't variations of the same search. They're fundamentally different mandates.

That's what sets us apart. Whether it's a Chief of Staff brought in to streamline operations across a global asset manager, an Executive Assistant placed with the founder of a high-growth technology business, or building an entire Office of the CXO for an influential principal - every search at this level sits inside a bigger question: what they're building, who they're working alongside, where they're heading.

Our depth across the worlds we operate in - and our executive-first approach to every search - is why the firms and families we work with keep coming back.”