Advisory Board
Stephen A. Miles
Managing Partner & Vice Chairman
Stephen Miles is a Vice Chairman and the Managing Partner, Leadership Advisory within Heidrick & Struggles' Leadership Consulting Practice, overseeing the firm's worldwide executive assessment/succession planning activities. He is also a key member of Heidrick & Struggles' CEO and Board Practice and is a member of the firm's management committee.
With more than 15 years of experience in assessment, top-level succession planning, organizational effectiveness and strategy consulting, Stephen specializes in CEO succession and has partnered with numerous Boards of global Fortune 500 companies to ensure that a successful leadership selection and transition occurs. Additionally, he is a recognized expert on the role of the Chief Operating Officer, and has consulted to numerous companies on the establishment and effectiveness of the position and supporting the transition from COO to effective CEO.
Stephen is a coach to more than 10 CEO/COOs around the world at any given time. He has built the Practice's coaching expertise by focusing on high-performance leadership competencies with a heavy emphasis on the business and cultural context. Stephen works extensively internationally and his clients cut across all industry sectors.
Prior to joining Heidrick & Struggles, Stephen held various positions at Andersen Consulting.
Education
Stephen holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and a Master's of Business Administration (summa cum laude), both from Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. He also holds a Master's Degree in Psychology (summa cum laude) from the University of Victoria.
Additional Information
Stephen is the author and co-editor of the best-selling book Leaders Talk Leadership. He also co-authored Riding Shotgun: The Role of the Chief Operating Officer, in addition to the cover article in the May 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review on the same topic. Stephen co-authored the feature article in the April 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review titled "The Leadership Team: Complementary Strengths or Conflicting Agendas?"
His third book, The Career Game: Applying Lessons from Game Theory to the Management of Your Career is due out later this year (Stanford University Press) and he has just completed a chapter on "Assessing the Leader" for Linkage Inc.'s Best Practices in Leadership Development Handbook 2nd Edition; Wiley 2009.
Ella Mar
Ella has more than 15 years of experience in executive positions in the high-technology sector with companies that include Nortel, Entrust, CrossKeys and Espial. Her experience has ranged from leading a 500+ person engineering organization to leading marketing, product management, customer service, human resources and finance. Recognized as a strong team player, Ella brings high energy and focus to all facets of her work and involvement.
In her most recent role as Senior Vice President of Operations at Espial, Ella headed up the Engineering, Product Verification, Professional Services and Customer Care organizations. She also led the coordination of deliverables across the different functional organizations within Espial, where her strong planning and decision making skills drove successful execution.
In her previous role as Vice-President of Engineering at CrossKeys, Ella was responsible for launching the company into carrier-scale product maturity. She was also part of the executive team at both CrossKeys and Espial that took the companies to initial public offerings.
Ella consults to small- and mid-size companies in the technology sector. She specializes in translating strategies into the realm of clear, manageable action plans and helping companies to execute on these successfully.
Ella holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computing Science from the University of Alberta. She has completed the University of Boston School of Management’s Leadership Development program and the University of Ottawa EMBA Executive Leadership program. She has sat on the NCIT board, SmartSites board and numerous strategy teams.
