The Aspen Institute
The Client
The highly respected global non-profit/think tank, The Aspen Institute, is tackling the world’s biggest problems. Ascend at Aspen Institute is one of their flagship programs, dedicated to improving the well-being of children and families on a global scale.
The Engagement & Our Impact
Medium-sized nonprofits often have partially decentralized talent teams, as is the case with Aspen Institute. This allows the Institute and their ~50 program teams to have a big impact on their mission because of their agility, but it also means that many of the larger programs need to hire for their own teams. Hiring an external recruiting partner has been a way to make their processes more efficient and effective.
Enter Carrington Talent Group. The Ascend team’s Executive Director first hired us in 2021 to help catapult Ascend’s marketing impact by growing its communications team to include its first executive-level leader. This position was critical to the organization’s success and required great skill: it was a high-visibility role both internally and externally, and would require leadership of an already established, successful team.
In a matter of months, we helped Ascend hire a seasoned leader who, over the past three years, has continued to build out the Communications team extensively and increase visibility for the organization. While we were only asked to make one new hire during our engagement, Ascend and Aspen Institute viewed it as such a successful partnership that we were brought back to hire 10 new team members for Ascend and another four for the broader Aspen Institute team. In partnership with Ascend leadership, Carrington Talent Group has nearly doubled the size of the Ascend team, spanning the programs, policy, operations, communications, and executive team functions.
In addition to partnering with Ascend, over the past 3 years, Carrington Talent Group helped source and hire 4 of the 5 newest team members reporting to the Vice President, People & Culture at Aspen Institute. Now, they have partnered with several other programs teams to offer coaching and upskilling to their external members.
