David S. Johnson

Executive Search Partner

David Johnson is the president of DS Johnson & Associates, a boutique
executive recruiting firm headquartered in Florida. Johnson founded the firm in 2000 with a singular focus to provide private equity firms with a recruiting process aligned with the unique requirements of middle-market portfolio companies. Johnson has an ongoing, hands-on relationship with Hunt Private Equity Group to recruit and assess management talent and directors for portfolio companies on an as-needed and timely basis.

He began his career with major consumer products companies. He was with Avon for 12 years where he pioneered the use of testing and in-depth interviewing techniques to select and train the nationwide Avon sales management team.

In 1985, he entered the executive search field with McManners Associates. His clients were Fortune 100 companies such as General Instrument, Rockwell and UTC. In 1990, he became part of the start-up of Imcor, an interim management recruiting company.

In the early 1990s with Imcor, his work focused on turnaround and crisis
management for clients such as GE Capital and several New York area private equity firms. In the late 1990s, he continued working with private equity and venture capital firms focused on evaluating and recruiting executives for early stage growth companies as well as basic industrial companies. He worked with HR consulting companies to develop metrics for predicting success of executives in highly leveraged, growth companies. This work is the basis of the assessment tools he uses today.

Johnson received a BS from Washington and Lee University.

July 2008

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