Claudio Fernández-Aráoz is a senior advisor at Egon Zehnder and was a member of the firm’s global executive committee for more than 10 years. He founded the Executive Assessment & Development Practice and served as global leader of its professional development, people processes, and intellectual capital development.
I love meeting extraordinary people, learning from them, and touching leaders’ lives in a meaningful way. If top leaders in large organizations were to master the discipline of making great people decisions, our world would be a much better place.
Claudio is also an Executive Fellow for Executive Education at Harvard Business School, where he frequently lectures on leadership. Bloomberg has called him one of the most influential executive-search consultants in the world and Thinkers50 dubbed him a leading thinker on talent. He frequently gives keynote addresses at business gatherings in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, and many progressive governments and CEOs of major global companies have sought Claudio’s personal advice. His latest book, It’s Not the How or the What but the Who, won the Axiom Gold Award for best HR book in English.
He is also the author of Great People Decisions and has published several widely cited articles on leadership and talent for the Harvard Business Review, including, “Hiring Without Firing,” “The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad,” “How to Hang on to Your High Potentials,” “Leadership Lessons From Great Family Businesses,” the June 2014 cover story, “21st Century Talent Spotting,” and the November/December 2017 cover story, “From Potential to Success: The Missing Link in Leadership Development.” Before joining Egon Zehnder, Claudio worked at McKinsey & Company in Europe.
Claudio earned a Master of Science in industrial engineering from the Argentine Catholic University with the highest GPA in the school’s history and an MBA from Stanford University, where he also graduated with honors as an Arjay Miller Scholar. Claudio is passionate about teaching, writing, reading, and learning. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, swimming, and spending time with his wife and three children.
