Placing influential, collaborative board directors that fit both your organization and your mission is equal parts art and strategy – something our team has balanced successfully for decades. Our firm has a successful track record of recruiting board members specifically to private, family-owned, and start-up organizations.
We execute a proven process that includes applying our industry knowledge, proprietary data, search expertise, and executive experience to deliver a qualified slate of board director candidates.
Finding the right leader for your organization requires knowledge, networks, discipline, tenacity – and time. That’s why we’re here – putting decades of experience to work so you can focus on business, while we focus on finding your next executive.
Coaching empowers executives to reach their full potential faster, benefiting your organization. We partner certified coaches with executives and use a strengths-based approach to guide leaders through a process that maximizes their potential to drive success.
Kincannon & Reed incorporates validated interview techniques and evaluation tools to accurately assess candidates. We have the capability to measure personality traits, motivations and evaluate specific competencies and behaviors. The right assessments provide a balanced approach to understanding potential as much as experience.
One board seat can shift the trajectory of a company — or quietly hold it back for a decade. That’s why we don’t start with a list of names. We start by pinning down exactly what your board needs to face what’s coming, then go find it. Our network runs deep across food and agriculture, which means we reach the directors who are already making an impact elsewhere and would never answer a cold call. And we don’t stop at impressive résumés: we press on the things that decide whether a director earns their seat — real expertise, the nerve to challenge the room, and the judgment to make the whole board better. Get this right, and everything downstream gets easier.
Board director search is the retained recruitment of independent and non-executive directors for a company’s board — distinct from hiring operating executives. Kincannon & Reed recruits board directors across the food and agriculture value chain, matching each seat to the expertise, independence, and judgment a board needs for navigating what’s ahead.
A board search optimizes for governance, not daily operations. You’re adding a voice that shapes strategy, challenges management, and represents shareholder and stakeholder interests — so K&R assesses candidates on board-relevant qualities: real sector expertise, the independence to challenge the room, and the judgment to make the whole board stronger.
Private, family-owned, investor-backed, and startup companies, plus cooperatives, associations, and nonprofits — all across food and agriculture. The firm has recruited board members for closely held and founder-led organizations where fit with the mission matters as much as the résumé.
Beyond an impressive background: relevant, current expertise; the independence and nerve to challenge management and fellow directors; sound judgment under pressure; and genuine fit with the organization’s mission and culture. The goal is a director who earns their seat, not one who fills it.
It’s a proven, retained process: define exactly what the board needs to face what’s coming, then apply the firm’s food-and-agriculture network and proprietary data to reach directors who don’t answer cold calls, rigorously assess them against that need, and deliver a qualified slate of candidates.
Yes. Each search is defined around the gap on your board — an audit-committee-ready financial expert, a digital or AgTech voice, sustainability and regulatory depth, or M&A and capital-markets experience — and candidates are evaluated against that specific requirement.
That’s the point of retained search. K&R works to reach the full field of qualified directors — including independent, first-time, and under-the-radar candidates already making an impact elsewhere — rather than recycling the same short list of familiar names.
The firm specializes exclusively in food and agriculture, which is what gives its board searches their depth. That focus spans the whole value chain — from crop inputs and AgTech to processing, CPG, retail, and the investors and associations around them.
