AESC Honors Award Recipient, Alan Kaplan, for his Service in the Executive Search and Leadership Consulting Profession

New York, May 11, 2022 – Today at their Adapt: 2022 conference for leaders in the executive search profession and their clients, the global Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC) honored recipients with awards in Lifetime Achievement, Excellence and Future of the Profession.

AESC Award of Excellence

Awarded since 2000, the AESC Award of Excellence honors individuals at the height of their careers who have made significant, outstanding contributions to the executive search and leadership consulting profession. This year’s AESC Award of Excellence is presented to Alan Kaplan, Founder and CEO, Kaplan Partners.

After an initial career in corporate banking, Alan joined the talent assessment and executive search profession, where he has spent more than 30 years of his career . Alan is a national expert in leadership succession, corporate governance and talent management across the financial services, private equity and middle-market sectors. He has successfully led hundreds of CEO-succession projects and financial officer assignments, as well as hundreds of C-level consulting, assessment and executive search assignments.

Alan built his Philadelphia-headquartered firm from the ground up, close to 30 years ago, based on three founding principles: Professionalism, Responsiveness and Integrity. Colleagues and peers share that he honors these principles in his work each day and by following one of his core sayings, “always do the right thing, even when no one will know.” Today, recognized nationally within the financial services industry, Alan and his team take great pride in never wavering from the firm’s values and founding principles, which is reflected in the firm’s 97 percent stick rate more than three years after executive placement.

Alan is a DEI champion within the Financial Services industry. Understanding how the financial industry has had a leadership imbalance for a long time, he works with his clients on strategies to advance women and people of color up the ladder and eventually into the board room. As a result, Kaplan Partners’ lifetime placement rate of diverse board members is 69 percent (both women and people of color). Since 2020, that percentage has advanced to 80 percent, with half of those new board directors being people of color. A strong proponent of the value of board service and of giving back, Alan has served on numerous boards throughout his career from the National Association of Corporate Directors, Philadelphia Chapter to the Corporate Executive Board, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Global Board of Directors of AESC.