Case Study
How the Nuffield Trust Went Looking for Two Trustees –...
Kai Adams is a UK executive search consultant and headhunter specialising in senior executive and board appointments across charities, voluntary and non-profit organisations, civil society, government and public services.
As Managing Partner at Green Park, Kai works with Chairs, Boards, and Chief Executives to recruit CEOs, C-suite, and Executive Directors as well as Chairs, Trustees, and Non-Executive Directors. His work spans charities and foundations, central government, arm’s-length bodies and regulators, health and social care, housing, education, arts and culture, impact economy, and membership organisations.
Kai has worked in executive search for more than 20 years. He joined Green Park in 2011, founded its Charities & Social Enterprise practice in 2012, and became Managing Partner in 2020. He has particular expertise in CEO succession, Chair and Board renewal, newly created leadership roles, organisational transformation and turnaround, and searches designed to bring talent across sector boundaries or beyond familiar networks.
Holding an MSc in Occupational Psychology, Kai combines executive search with a strong interest in leadership assessment, judgement, and organisational context. He looks beyond whether someone has done a similar job before to understand how they lead, how they make decisions, and whether they can succeed in the environment they are joining.
Kai has worked with ACEVO on its practical guide to recruiting Chairs, Trustees and Chief Executives, sat on the Steering Group for the Bayes Business School Centre for Charity Effectiveness research into the Future Charity Chair, and is on the Nominations Committee for the Charity Finance Group (CFG). He writes and speaks regularly about executive recruitment, governance, succession, board appointments, leadership assessment, and intentionally inclusive search.
His style is straightforward and pragmatic. He will challenge assumptions, test what is genuinely essential in a brief, and help clients distinguish between the experience they need and the experience that simply feels familiar.
Kai is particularly interested in organisations going through change and in building leadership teams and Boards that combine the right experience, judgement, and perspective.
20years
of diverse talent mapping
55+
countries
56%
Female Trustee Placements
34%
Ethnic Minority Trustee Placements