Stephen Mader
Vice Chairman
Managing Director
Board Services Practice
Korn/Ferry International

Based in Boston, Mr. Mader leads Korn/Ferry International’s Board Services Practice and is a core member of the firm’s CEO Practice. As a former CEO himself, as well as a 20-year veteran of more than 400 key search assignments, Mr. Mader is a widely recognized expert on leadership dynamics and corporate governance. He is a regular media contributor on these subjects to CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fortune, and many others. Business Week Magazine has named him one of the world’s 50 most influential recruiters.

In addition to his leadership responsibilities, Mr. Mader personally conducts engagements for board directors and chief executive officers. He is well known as a thought leader and an innovator in the executive search industry, and a creative developer of best practices. Prior to joining Korn/Ferry, Mr. Mader had been recruited to a small firm to install and leverage state-of-the-art execution strategies in order to build a dominant player.

As CEO of that firm, his leadership facilitated a twenty-fold expansion in just five years that catapulted the firm into the top 10 globally. With that validation of his philosophies, Mr. Mader turned to the next frontier in the search and selection of game-changing leaders – the boardroom. For the past several years, Mr. Mader has poured all his acquired acumen into the challenges of developing more effective boards and consequently, more effective successions of leadership in the CEO role.

Today, Mr. Mader’s client relationships count many of our top business leaders, and are characterized by the kind of counsel and trust that can only be earned through depth of experience and track record. Before his two decades of leadership in the talent business, he spent 18 years as a marketing executive in the world of manufacturing robotics. He was world wide vice president sales & marketing for a market leader in automation, and president of a manufacturing joint venture in China.

Mr. Mader earned a master’s in business administration from the Northeastern University Executive Program and received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.