Executive Search Excellence in the United States: Meet Our New New York Partner, ACG Resources

Len, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and life outside work with family and friends?

I’ve been in the recruiting and staffing industry since the 1970s, spending more than three decades in a family recruiting business before founding ACG Resources in 2002. Over nearly five decades, I’ve led executive search, recruitment, and consulting assignments for banks, financial institutions, fintechs, and growth companies both locally and internationally.

One of my greatest sources of pride is that ACG Resources has, in turn, become a true family business of its own. Working alongside my children, Heather, Matt, and Greg has been incredibly rewarding - it lets us combine decades of experience with fresh ideas and new technology while keeping the personalized service our clients have always valued.

Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my family, especially my grandchildren, traveling when I can, and staying connected with the many clients and candidates who have become lifelong friends over the years. I’m also the author of Resilience: My Family Business Journey and Unfulfilled Expectations, a 268-page book published by Boulevard Books that tells the story of my own family business experience and what it takes to move forward when things don’t go as planned.

What is your favorite thing about the recruitment and executive search industry?

I think I speak for our entire team when I say the most rewarding part of this business is the relationships we build and the chance to genuinely improve people’s lives. A career is much more than a paycheck - it’s where most people spend more waking hours than they do at home during the week. When we can help someone find a role where they feel valued, challenged, and excited to come to work each day, that’s incredibly fulfilling. We also have the privilege of helping our clients build stronger organizations by introducing them to exceptional people who make a lasting impact.

Beyond that, the decisions we help shape are genuinely consequential. When I work with a bank, financial services firm, or fintech on a senior hire, I know that choice will affect regulators, boards, investors, employees, and communities. Two moments stand out for me: the call to the candidate when the offer is finalized - many people don’t fully realize at the start how much the role will change their careers and lives - and the conversation months later, when we see the real impact the right leader has had on risk culture, growth, and staff confidence. That’s when the value of a well-run search really comes into focus.

This industry is also constantly evolving. Markets change, industries transform, and every search presents a new challenge - one day we’re partnering with an international bank expanding into the U.S., and the next we’re helping a growing insurance brokerage find key leaders. That variety keeps us learning, adapting, and growing every day.

“A career is much more than a paycheck - it’s where most people spend more waking hours than they do at home during the week.”

Could you share with us a little bit about your beginnings in this industry?

My beginnings were in a family recruiting business, where I learned the fundamentals of client service, matching talent to organizational needs, and building long-term relationships. Those early years taught me that trust, consistency, and perseverance matter as much as any single placement.

After more than three decades in that environment, I decided it was time to build a firm that reflected my own vision for how executive search and staffing should be done. In 2002, I founded Adams Consulting Group (ACG Resources) with the goal of creating a partner-led boutique that could stay close to clients while still supporting them on national and international assignments.

What are the biggest learnings from your career?

A few themes stand out for me:

We know that ACG Resources is a family business; what led to the company’s founding? Can you share some of the biggest learnings over your years in recruitment?

ACG Resources’s story starts with family business, twice over. I began my career inside a family-owned recruiting business, learning the trade from the ground up. After more than three decades there, I set out on my own and founded ACG Resources (Adams Consulting Group) in 2002, with a clear goal: build a boutique that could deliver the personal service of a family firm alongside the experience and reach of a global search firm.

Since then, ACG has become a family business again in its own right. My children, Heather, Matt, and Greg, are now part of the leadership team, bringing fresh ideas and new technology to a practice built on decades of relationships.

One of the biggest learnings of my career came in 2020, when ACG absorbed The ARD Group, a respected insurance recruiting firm, following the sudden loss of one of its founders. Integrating another firm’s clients, candidates, and people under difficult circumstances taught us just how much a firm’s reputation and relationships outlive any single person, and how important it is to build a business sturdy enough to carry those relationships forward. That experience, alongside my own family’s story, is really the foundation of my book, Resilience: My Family Business Journey and Unfulfilled Expectations - succession, expectation, and reality don’t always line up, but the businesses that last are the ones built to adapt.

What is your company’s USP for clients and candidates?

At ACG Resources, we believe our greatest differentiator is that we don’t try to be everything to everyone. We focus on specialized markets where we can provide real value through deep industry knowledge, long-standing relationships, and a consultative approach.

Our clients view us as an extension of their team rather than an outside recruiter. We take the time to understand not only the technical requirements of a role, but also the culture, leadership style, and long-term objectives of the organization. That allows us to present candidates who are not only qualified on paper but positioned to succeed for years to come.
For candidates, we strive to be trusted career advisors rather than simply recruiters. Sometimes the right advice is pursuing a new opportunity, and sometimes it’s staying exactly where they are. Our goal is always to build relationships based on honesty, transparency, and trust.

As a family-owned firm, we’re able to provide a level of responsiveness, flexibility, and personal attention that’s often difficult to find in larger organizations - combined with decades of recruiting experience and deep expertise across banking, financial services, fintech, insurance, real estate, and professional services.

What is a typical profile that you recruit?

We primarily recruit C-suite and senior leaders, as well as experienced individual contributors with highly specialized technical expertise, across banking, financial services, fintech, insurance, real estate, the food industry, importers/exporters and manufacturers, and AI- and cyber-related sectors, plus professional services more broadly. Typical roles include CEOs, COOs, CROs, CCOs, Heads of Audit, and senior leaders across Sales/Marketing, Operations, Lending, Payments, and BSA/AML.

Because many of our clients operate in complex, highly regulated industries, we spend a great deal of time understanding not just the position itself, but the business, the market, and the type of individual who will thrive within the organization. We also have extensive experience partnering with international companies expanding into the United States, helping them identify professionals who have the right expertise and also know how to navigate different corporate cultures and business environments.

Who is a typical client for you?

Our clients range from growing privately held businesses to large national and international organizations - from community and regional banks to domestic and international financial institutions, insurance brokerages, real estate organizations, start-ups, food companies, and professional services firms, as well as emerging growth companies on an industry-agnostic basis.

What they have in common is that they cannot afford mis-hires in critical leadership roles and want a partner who understands both their industry and their market. We also particularly enjoy partnering with international companies that are establishing or expanding their presence in the United States and need a trusted recruiting partner who understands the U.S. market and the importance of cultural alignment.

What’s one thing you’d recommend to companies that want to not just recruit great talent, but retain it?

“Make sure people feel seen.”

Every employee wants to know their contributions matter - that they’re valued, respected, and that someone is invested in their success. Compensation and benefits are important, but they rarely replace feeling appreciated and having a sense of purpose.
Recruiting great leaders is only half the work; creating the conditions for those leaders to succeed and stay is the other half.

Clear mandates, genuine support for tough decisions, and real alignment between stated values and actual behavior make a significant difference. Organizations that invest in governance, succession planning, and open communication, and that give employees real opportunities to grow, tend to retain senior talent far better than those that treat leadership or culture as a box to tick. That’s true in family businesses, public institutions, and fast-moving fintechs alike, something I’ve lived personally and explore in Resilience.

What’s the #1 piece of advice you’d give a foreign company entering the American market, and what’s the most common mistake you see them make?

The first few hires in the US will define your entire operation, so treat them as strategy, not staffing. Many foreign companies send someone trusted from head office and surround them with junior local hires to keep costs down while the operation “proves itself” - that almost always backfires. What works is hiring senior local people early who know the market, know the customers, and can translate between the US operation and headquarters. That translation role is the one nobody budgets for and everybody ends up needing.

The most common mistake is assuming the home-country playbook transfers. Foreign companies bring their own compensation structures, titles, and assumptions about loyalty to the US, then can’t figure out why they can’t hire or keep anyone. The American market is faster, more transparent, and more transactional than almost anywhere else - candidates comparison-shop constantly and know exactly what they’re worth. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to price for it.

What are the biggest challenges and learnings from working interculturally?

The biggest learning is that “yes” doesn’t mean the same thing everywhere. We work with institutions across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, and every culture has its own way of saying no without saying no - part of our job is translating intent, not just language. When a head office says a candidate is “interesting,” we’ve learned to find out what that actually means before telling the candidate anything.

The other challenge is speed mismatch: American candidates expect a process that moves in weeks, while some head offices decide in quarters. We’ve lost great candidates to that gap, so a big part of our value now is managing it - keeping candidates warm, pushing clients honestly on timelines, and being straight with both sides about where things stand.

What is something that a foreign company would never guess about the professional market in the USA?

How little tenure matters, in either direction. In many countries, job-hopping every two or three years raises eyebrows; in the US, that same resume often reads as ambition. Your best people are being recruited constantly, and loyalty as a retention strategy doesn’t really exist here; what keeps people is trajectory: can they see their next step, and get it with you faster than elsewhere?

The other surprise is how informal and relationship-driven hiring is despite all the process around it. There’s no national credential or standardized path the way there is in many markets - reputation, references, and networks carry enormous weight. Two candidates with identical resumes can have very different market value based on who vouches for them. Companies that hire purely off paper qualifications consistently miss the best people.

Why did you decide to join the Talentor network?

Our clients pulled us into it, honestly. For more than 45 years we’ve served foreign banks and international institutions operating in New York, and increasingly those clients have needs that don’t stop at the US border. When a European bank we’ve staffed in Manhattan needs help in its home market, or an Asian institution wants a consistent search partner across regions, we want to say yes with confidence rather than hand them off to a stranger.

Talentor gives us vetted, local partners in the markets where our clients actually operate - a natural extension of what we’ve always done: being the bridge between international institutions and American talent, now in both directions.

What kind of cross-border mandates do you see ACG Resources handling through the network?

Two directions.

• Inbound: helping international banks, financial institutions, and fintechs build their US operations - our core business. We know what a foreign branch needs in its first 24 months here: compliance leadership, risk, operations, and the regulatory-facing roles that make or break a US license. Our relationships with New York’s international chambers of commerce - British American Business, the French-American Chamber, European American Chamber- already put us at that intersection.
• Outbound: helping our US and international clients expand into markets where Talentor partners have local depth we don’t. If a client we’ve served in New York for twenty years opens in Warsaw or Singapore, we’d rather quarterback that search with a trusted local partner than watch them gamble on an unknown firm.

What do you think is great about being part of an international network / the Talentor network?

Reach without dilution. We’re a family business, and we’ve deliberately stayed specialized rather than trying to be everything to everyone. A network lets us keep that focus while still serving clients globally - we stay the experts in our market, our partners stay the experts in theirs, and the client gets local depth everywhere instead of one firm stretched thin. There’s also real value in comparing notes with peers running firms like ours in completely different markets - recruiting problems rhyme across borders more than you’d expect, and some of the best ideas come from seeing how a partner in Austria or Brazil solved the same problem differently.