Directors' College 2017
John Thompson
John Thompson serves as Vice Chairman, Global CEO and Board Practice, at Heidrick & Struggles. He is recognized as one of the most respected CEO and Board advisors in the nation having completed over 200 CEO searches in the last 33 years. His clients have included Apple, CSC, Dell, Disney, DirecTV, Gates, Google, IBM, Intuit, Salesforce, SAP and Univision.
In addition, he serves as an advisor to CEOs on organization transformation projects, succession planning, executive assessments, and organizational restructuring.
John has been active in working with both public and private boards in recruiting new directors as well as serving as an advisor on major board succession projects. Having recruited more than 300 directors, his directorship clients include Adobe, Alcoa, Autodesk, Blackstone, Best Buy, The Carlyle Group, CD&R, Corning, Dell, DirecTV, Flextronics, GE, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Inc., Intel, Nielsen, NIKE, Salesforce, SanDisk, Santander, Seagate, ServiceMaster, and Western Digital.
In 2010, John was the first recipient of Heidrick’s Global “Lifetime Achievement Award.” John joined Heidrick & Struggles in 1989 as a Partner and previously was a Partner with a regional executive search firm. He was formerly the Corporate Director of Organization Development for Atari and previously employed with The Williams Companies as Corporate Director of Organization Development.
He serves on the Advisory Board of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
John received a BA in economics and an MBA from Virginia Tech.
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