The Leadership Bench Problem No One Wants to Admit

Biography

Peter Thies is a managing director with Pearl Meyer. Before joining Pearl Meyer, Peter was the co-founder and president of The River Group, a leadership and organization development firm. He has over 30 years of experience helping global companies implement strategic organizational changes. Present and past clients include public company CEOs and executives across numerous industries, including financial services, consumer products, healthcare, retail, industrial, professional services, telecommunications, and the nonprofit sector.

Peter was a senior client partner with Korn Ferry’s Leadership and Talent Consulting division and co-leader of the firm’s CEO succession practice. At Mercer Delta Consulting (now Oliver Wyman), Peter held several leadership positions during his 11-year tenure, including responsibility for consulting practice development, client relationship management, and client satisfaction processes. Peter also worked in Accenture’s change practice for several years.

Peter has published numerous articles in business journals and books on organizational change and is frequently quoted by the business media on CEO succession, executive development, and M&A integration.  He holds a PhD and an MBA in organizational behavior from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MS in educational psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in psychology from SUNY Albany.

Biography 

David Clary is a Managing Director and Head of the Leadership Advisory Practice at Pearl Meyer based in New York City. He has more than 30 years of experience building and growing a variety of professional services and advisory firms most recently focusing on board impact and executive leadership.  

David works with clients to address critical leadership challenges—aligning talent with strategy, improving team effectiveness, and driving execution against business priorities. He is known for a pragmatic, results-focused approach and for translating strategy into actionable outcomes.

Prior to joining Pearl Meyer, David served as the COO of a prominent leadership advisory firm, and earlier in his career, he was a founding partner at Procurian, a market-leading knowledge-based outsourcing and consulting organization, before its eventual sale to Accenture.

David holds a BS from the Kenan-Flagler School at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and an MBA with honors from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, in the Netherlands.