About

About Jeff Christian

As the Founder of Christian & Timbers (CT), Jeff Christian has created a next-level executive search firm that specializes in securing talent for some of the world’s top corporations. The company is renowned for using cutting-edge technology to discover and recruit C-level executives, board members, and tech experts. The business consulting firm has established a global presence, with headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio, and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Jeff Christian earned industry recognition for applying AI-powered technology and science-based data to the executive search process. CT leverages the power of AI-based algorithms to discover the perfect candidate to fulfill the demand for innovative, forward-thinking executives for tech giants, especially those based in Silicon Valley. He has earned a reputation for developing a business model that takes full advantage of digital technology to fulfill challenging executive roles in e-commerce, IoT, FinTech, SaaS, and robotic manufacturing industries.

Timbers, determined to become the market leader in CEO and Board member search solutions, grew the firm to $100 million in annual revenue. He has been recognized as the highest-performing CEO in executive search, with a laser focus on recruiting for Silicon Valley and some of the largest global tech giants.

An Executive Search Disruptor

Christian & Timbers (CT) is marketed as an executive search firm that can find ‘Rocketship Talent’ for tech giants that need to stay competitive, especially within the current climate of digital transformation that corporations require to sustain business success. There is a limited pool of qualified executives for these high-stakes positions. CT has disrupted the executive search industry, which formally relied on a long and tedious administrative process, by leveraging the power of a data-driven selection process underpinned by a science-based search engine.

Generative AI can analyze a large volume of resumes, skills, and experiences to generate a database of potential candidates for an executive position. Predictive AI can assess a candidate’s career trajectory, predict whether a new hire will perform well within certain positions, and possibly determine if they are at the right time in their career to fulfill such a role. Christian has applied these types of patterns and outcomes, discovering C-level and Board leadership that can propel the world’s best companies.

A Data-Driven Business Model

Timbers has been credited with transforming the executive search business. The industry has traditionally been a relationship-based process using industry networks, resumes, interviews, social media probes, and background checks to whittle a large search pool down to a few viable candidates. The executive search process has always been time-consuming and prone to bad choices that can result in hundreds of thousands of lost dollars.

Timbers’ data-driven executive search methods are groundbreaking. His company takes a data-driven approach to finding suitable candidates in a matter of days versus months. By applying key performance indicators (KPIs), the company can locate specific candidates who meet the employers’ metrics for performance and candidate quality. This data-driven business model is what skyrocketed Christian & Timbers to successfully complete over 2000 CEO or Board placements and fill over 5,000 C-Suite assignments.

A Tech Industry Partner

The use of technology to capture a candidate’s complete picture has allowed companies more transparency in high-level hiring practices. Jeff Christian has appeared ten times on Inc 500, a recognized list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States. However, what CT has contributed to the tech industry can be easily seen in the results that some of his hire candidates have achieved. His company was responsible for placing Carly Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard, becoming the first woman to lead a Fortune 50 corporation.

Christian & Timbers also performed the last two board member searches at Apple under the helm of Steve Jobs. The list of strategic industry partnerships or executive placements includes Cisco, Google, Netflix, Vinod Khosla, WebMD, and many more. The company’s core beliefs are guided by its corporate principle of “whoever has the best talent wins.” This thinking has made CT a critical tech industry partner, where competition is won with rapid innovation – and innovation occurs with forward-thinking executives.

A Venture Capital Expert

Timbers’ ability to win the hottest executive search contracts is attributed to his ability to raise private equity and venture capital in the early days of establishing CT. In 2001, Jeff Christian launched C&T Access Ventures, the investment arm of Cleveland-based executive recruiting firm Christian & Timbers. The company worked to fund seed capital, first through fourth round venture financing and pre-IPO funding, for start-ups nationwide.

His $40 million venture capital fund’s vision was to invest in the best CEOs and executive changemakers. The company returned 5x above its initial capital. While C&T Access is no longer operational, it successfully funded a number of start-ups, including UpWork, an online marketplace that connects businesses with qualified employees.

A tech industry leader, Christian is recognized as an industry visionary who successfully used technology to drive hypergrowth in an industry that had yet to experience the power of business automation, backed by artificial intelligence and driven by data.