Trusted in Leadership Decisions.

Alongside You When It Matters.

The Right Leaders. The Right Roles.

The Right TIme.

We represent your organization as if

we were one of you.

trusted

Who We Are

We work with organizations of all sizes locally, nationally, and globally. Our practical, actionable, strategic approach helps our partner organizations achieve durable solutions and sustainable growth.

Moving Our Partners Foward

We aim to be the partner to which other firms aspire.

Cooper Coleman was founded in 2020 by a team of nonprofit and executive search professionals who have helped move dozens of charitable organizations forward, elevating their missions, scaling their impact, and developing their people. We bring decades of experience in the corporate and nonprofit sector retained search and as in-house executive leaders to support your team.

Current Searches

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OUR STORY

Cooper Coleman is a retained executive search firm partnering with mission-driven organizations across the nonprofit and social impact sector, including arts and cultural institutions, museums, zoos and aquariums, educational and research institutions, associations, and social service organizations.

We support organizations whose work shapes communities, advances knowledge, preserves culture, and serves the public good. Our team brings decades of firsthand nonprofit leadership and executive search experience. This allows us to approach each search with context, credibility, and care.

We approach executive search as stewardship. We thoughtfully represent your organization and mission, and we take seriously the responsibility of engaging leaders on your behalf.

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Moving Our Partners Foward

We aim to be the partner to which other firms aspire.

Current Searches

OUR MISSION

We Represent Our Social Sector Clients WIth Integrity + Authenticity

By leading executive searches grounded in care, judgement, and accountability. Our work is focused on placing the right people in the right roles at the right time, aligning leadership experience and values with the responsibility of the role and the mission it serves.

We begin every search with deep listening. Through inquiry and partnership, we develop a clear understanding of your organization’s purpose, culture, and leadership needs.

Each day, we choose to make an uncompromising commitment to:

Redefine the social sector's expectation of search and consulting firms
Add value that few others can match, but every organization deserves
Embrace inclusion, diversity, equity, and access, and
Prioritize mission, impact, and dignity over profit.

How We Lead a Search

Cooper Coleman's four-phase talent selection process is engaged with and inclusive of partners and candidates alike throughout the duration of a search. We maintain consistent dialogue, and we challenge assumptions to best match organizations and professionals with one another.

1 Prep + Launch

We begin by assessing your needs through stakeholder interviews, defining position specifications, and reviewing your organization's mission and historical documents. A comprehensive, well-articulated position description is developed for approval. We then announce the position and engage with both active and passive candidates through strategic outreach.

2 Qualify + Evaluate

We meticulously screen and interview candidates, incorporating detailed research to ensure a refined selection that meets the position's specifications. We then present these top candidates to you, identifying those best suited for further in-person interviews. This approach guarantees a tailored and thoroughly vetted group of candidates advancing in the selection process.

3 Interview + Offer

We facilitate intermediate, semi-final, and final interviews between you and the candidates, leading to the selection of the chosen candidate. Comprehensive reference and credential verifications are conducted, along with optional background checks at your request. Finally, we present the offer to the chosen candidate and manage the final negotiations, ensuring a smooth conclusion to the selection process.

4 Conclusion + Post-Placement Engagment

After finalizing the selection, we personally notify and thank remaining candidates, offering personalized feedback to semi-finalists and finalists. We conduct a detailed phone review to assess performance and gather insights on the search process. Post-placement, we ensure a smooth transition and continued satisfaction through check-ins at one, three, and six months with both the successful candidate and the hiring manager.

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity + Access Are Imperatives That Drive Our Every Move.

Cooper Coleman is an LGBTQ+ owned business that embraces demographic, experiential, sexual, disability, and cultural inclusion. We believe everyone is better when leadership reflects the diversity of its people and when an organization reflects the diversity of those it serves.

Our partnerships with every client embrace and prioritize the value of achieving a diverse candidate pool inclusive of all identities. We believe the most qualified candidates are selected from the most diverse representation of talent. Qualified candidates from all backgrounds and identities are included in our candidate sourcing practices, among which are process and compensation transparency. We are resourceful in our deployment and advertisement of job opportunities across diverse professional and social networks—online and offline—to reach every possible qualified and interested candidate.

Our team is individually and collectively committed to inclusion, anti-racism, and equality. Each of us is working to improve our understanding of others' lived experiences, expand our networks' diversity, and contribute to an equitable society.

As a reflection of our firm’s commitment to equity and equal pay for all, it is Cooper Coleman’s requirement that salary ranges or salary starting points be published for every search we conduct. The practice of not posting salaries perpetuates the gender and racial wage gap and discriminates against women, people of color, and other historically excluded populations by causing individuals to negotiate from a disadvantaged starting point.

Meet Our team