Sharon Sands

Sharon Sands is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ London office and leads the Leadership Development, Leadership Assessment, and Executive Coaching practices as part of the consulting global leadership team. She also co-leads the CEO & Board of Directors Practice in London. Sharon has led the design teams and managed some of the firm’s largest global leadership performance and assessment programmes and has pioneered a first-to-market digital solution for assessment. She leads the firm’s approach and methodology for CEO succession and acceleration.

With more than 20 years of experience as a leadership consultant and executive coach, with a deep understanding of behavioural complexity in organizational systems, Sharon’s combined depth of knowledge in behavioural sciences and her commercial background, helps leaders shape the organizations they lead and accelerate performance. Sharon is a member of Heidrick & Struggles’ Consultant Promotion Committee, which robustly reviews, presents, and confirms internal appointments to partner level.

Following a successful career in engineering (primarily focused on process re-engineering), Sharon’s passions for process and for performance through people motivated her to retrain in behavioral sciences. As a result, she was invited to lead the Leadership Academy for a prestigious automotive organization globally, achieving recognition as the global leader in sales and leadership development.

Subsequently, Sharon set up and ran a successful behavioral change consultancy for 12 years, working with FTS100/250 companies, as well as SME clients. Her sector experience spans pharmaceuticals, finance, technology, automotive, health, and government. She has led projects for designing award winning development initiatives. Following an acquisition by Heidrick & Struggles in 2016, many clients migrated with her.

She is a master practitioner in neuro-linguistics, a certified team accelerator practitioner, and earned diplomas in behavioural sciences and performance coaching. She is certified in a neuroscience-based psychometric tool, proprietary Heidrick & Struggles assessment tools, and a certified Hogan assessor.

Ashridge Business School, MSc in Executive Coaching

Ashridge Business School, Post-Graduate Degree in Advanced Organizational Development Supervision

Sharon continues to contribute to the field of coaching and leadership development. She has been a research board member for field studies with the EMCC and provided pro-bono coaching for the New Entrepreneurs Foundation (NEF). Sharon has also supported the largest global empirical research project to date on behalf of the Harvard Medical School on the impact coaching has on performance.