WESTFIELD – Westfield State University’s Presidential Search Advisory Committee has selected Diversified Search as the firm it will be recommending to the full Board of Trustees to assist in choosing the school’s next president.
Based out of Philadelphia with eight offices around the U.S., Diversified Search was chosen from a crop of four search firms from around the U.S. at a meeting of the Presidential Search Advisory Committee yesterday, edging out Korn/Ferry International of Boston by a final vote of 7-4.
Kim Morrisson of Diversified spoke with the 11-member committee via the video conferencing tool Skype, outlining her company’s strategy.
“We have a team that focuses on higher education and non-profit work with about 17 people in it,” said Morrisson, adding that a member of that team would fly in to Westfield to be present at all of the committee’s meetings and throughout the interview process.
“When we build a candidate pool, we try to use a ‘best in class’ approach,” she said. “We look at different possibilities of experience to bring forward and hope that we can provide a pool with a range of perspectives and choices.”
Morrisson said that Diversified Search is a woman-owned firm and focuses on “providing opportunities for candidates who might not otherwise have such opportunities.”
“Diversity is very much a part of our DNA and we look at it from not just gender, ethnic and racial perspectives, but also from the perspective of experience, discipline and interest,” she said.
Morrisson added that every search the firm conducts is unique, dependent on the culture of the institution.
“We try to learn as much about (the culture of a school) at the beginning of the search, so we can construct a prospectus that we can take into the market with us that provides an effective, compelling narrative for interested candidates,” she elaborated.
Asked by Committee Member and Westfield State Foundation Board Chair Robin Jensen about how many searches Diversified is currently conducting, Morrisson answered she is personally finishing a public university search in Washington state and clarified she would not be taking on any competing searches, though Diversified would take on other searches in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Though not a Search Committee member, Trustee Dr. Robert Martin was on hand for the interviews and asked Morrisson about the firm’s search timeline, to which she replied the firm is hoping to have a new President in place by the fall of 2015.
“In the end, what you want is a list of 10, 12, 15 candidates from which you can choose,” she said.
After Diversified was selected as the PSAC’s recommendation for the full Board of Trustees, university spokesperson Molly Watson said that the school’s budget for the search process is around $125,000 but could not confirm the exact cost of hiring Diversified.
