Our Mission
Every executive deserves to know
who they can trust.
The relationships you build throughout your career matter.
Yet one of the most important - the relationship with an executive search consultant - has remained largely invisible.
We're changing that.
Our Mission
Better information leads to better career decisions.
Executive search can shape careers. At its best, it creates opportunities, trusted relationships and career partnerships that last far beyond a single search.
We believe candidates should matter equally in those relationships.
The Career Assembly brings executive experiences together to create greater visibility, recognize exceptional search relationships and give candidates a stronger collective voice. But executive search is only where we’re starting.
Our larger ambition is to build the career platform we believe executives have been missing — one designed around their needs, their decisions and their careers.
A trusted place for the insight, resources, expertise and community senior professionals need to navigate what comes next.
Our Values
What drives us
Candidates Matter
Candidates aren't simply part of the process. They’re an equal part of every executive search relationship. Their experience deserves a voice.
Transparency with Purpose
We believe better information leads to better decisions - for candidates, consultants and the executive search industry as a whole.
Trust Above All
Trust is earned through verification, thoughtful moderation and protecting the privacy of every contributor.
How we build trustMethodology
What We're Measuring
Executive search isn't just about filling roles.
It's about building relationships, creating opportunities and helping leaders navigate important moments in their careers.
That's why we evaluate candidate experiences across the areas that matter most - from communication and professionalism to long-term career partnership.
The Candidate Relationship Score (CRS)
No single interaction defines a great search consultant.
The Candidate Relationship Score (CRS) is designed to measure the overall quality of the relationship candidates experience throughout the executive search process. Rather than focusing solely on whether someone was placed, the CRS evaluates the behaviors that build trust over time.
Our framework is based on several dimensions that consistently shape the candidate experience.
Professional Integrity
Does the consultant conduct searches ethically, protect confidentiality, manage expectations honestly and follow through on commitments?
Respect
Does the firm treat candidates professionally and with genuine respect?
Communication
Are communication, expectations and feedback timely, honest and transparent?
Career Partnership
Does the consultant act as a trusted advisor beyond a single search?
Strategic Opportunity Matching
Does the consultant introduce opportunities that genuinely align with a candidate's experience, aspirations and long-term career goals?
Our Story
Meet the Founders
The Career Assembly was founded by two professionals who know executive search from different sides of the table.
Together, we bring decades of experience helping organizations find exceptional leaders and navigating executive careers from the candidate perspective.
We share a simple belief: better information leads to better experiences — and better outcomes for everyone.
Theresa Fuchs-Santiago
FORMER EXECUTIVE SEARCH CONSULTANT, EXECUTIVE COACH AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE CAREER ASSEMBLY.
Theresa has spent close to 25 years inside the world of executive careers - first finding and advising leaders, and today helping them navigate what comes next.
She helped build Martens & Heads! and later FIND Executive Consulting from the ground up, advising global organizations and senior executives across fashion, luxury, retail, beauty and consumer. That experience gave her an insider's view of executive search - how it really works, what distinguishes exceptional consultants, and the impact the right relationship can have on a career.
Today, as an Executive Career & Leadership Coach, Theresa works directly with senior leaders navigating searches, transitions and pivotal career decisions.
From that perspective, she kept seeing the same gap: companies have sophisticated resources for finding executive talent, while candidates have far fewer resources built specifically for them.
That insight helped inspire The Career Assembly - bringing together Theresa's experience in search, coaching and business building to create a trusted career platform designed around the executive candidate.
Katharina Malley
Luxury executive and co-founder of The Career Assembly.
Katharina has spent more than 20 years in senior commercial leadership across the global luxury industry - including Prada, Moncler, LVMH and Fast Retailing.
Along the way, she has worked closely with many of the world's leading executive search firms, both as the executive shaping and hiring for leadership teams, and as a candidate navigating her own transitions.
Having sat on both sides of the table, she knows firsthand the impact a search consultant can have on a career - with the variety of different experiences.
That experience also showed her how little is actually built for the candidate. Search processes are designed to serve the hiring company; the executive on the other side is often left to navigate multi-round interviews, sensitive negotiations and high-stakes transitions largely alone, without a trusted sounding board or a clear sense of what "good" looks like.
Katharina felt that gap directly, in her own career moves - and set out to change it.
She brings that dual perspective, as executive and as candidate, to everything The Career Assembly builds: a platform designed not around the hiring company's needs, but around the executive's.