Private Markets & Advisory

Our private markets practice spans the full spectrum of alternative asset management and advisory. We place across private equity firms from lower middle-market to mega-cap, venture capital and growth equity, hedge funds and systematic trading firms, credit and real estate investors, and boutique M&A and strategic advisory firms.

The common thread is not size or strategy. It is that the firm takes the quality of its operational talent seriously and understands that an exceptional EA or Chief of Staff is not overhead but a genuine competitive advantage.

We have particular depth in firms where the demands on support professionals are highest: concentrated portfolios where the GP is deeply involved in operations, platform-building strategies that require coordination across multiple portfolio companies, and firms where the founder or managing partner is the primary relationship holder for a large, sophisticated investor base.

An Executive Assistant at a private equity firm is not doing the same job as an EA at a corporate. The vocabulary is different, the pace is different, the confidentiality requirements are different, and the expectations are categorically higher. They need to understand deal flow, fund cycles, capital calls, and the rhythm of investment committee meetings. They need to manage relationships with investors who expect a level of service that most professionals have never encountered.

A Chief of Staff in a hedge fund operates in an environment where information sensitivity is extreme, where decisions happen fast, and where the principal's time is the most constrained resource in the building. Understanding that context, and finding people who have thrived in it, requires a search firm that has spent years inside these firms.

We have. Over a decade of placing operational and leverage talent exclusively in these environments means we understand what good looks like in context, and we know where to find it.

Executive Assistants to Managing Partners, GPs, Portfolio Managers, and CIOs. Chiefs of Staff who own the operational cadence of the firm and act as a force multiplier for the principal. COOs who manage everything outside the investment function: fund operations, compliance, technology, investor servicing, and firm infrastructure.

We also place across the broader Office of the CEO: analysts who prepare investment briefings and board materials, communications professionals who manage LP relations and firm positioning, and senior support professionals who coordinate across complex, multi-entity structures.

Whether you are a two-person GP team that needs one exceptional EA or a large platform building out an entire Office of the CEO, we have the network and the process to deliver.

Every search begins with a detailed understanding of the firm and the principal. In private markets, the culture and operating style of the firm shapes the brief more than the job title ever could. A Chief of Staff at a founder-led growth equity firm looks nothing like a Chief of Staff at an established multi-strategy platform. We diagnose before we search.

We work on a retained basis exclusively. The candidates who perform best in these environments are rarely available through conventional channels. They are embedded in demanding roles at competing firms and not actively looking. Reaching them requires relationships built over years in a specific market.

Every shortlisted candidate goes through Blackbook Assess, our proprietary scenario-based evaluation calibrated to the specific demands of private markets. We test judgment in situations that mirror the real operating environment: competing priorities during a live deal, investor communication under time pressure, stakeholder management across complex organizational structures.

Our private markets mandates are concentrated in the cities where capital is managed: New York, London, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Boston, Dallas, Houston, and Washington DC. We also place internationally, with increasing activity in Dubai, where a growing number of US and UK-headquartered firms have established leadership teams.