Toby Donovan is a core member of the firm’s Consumer Financial Services Practice, with a specialty focus on retail banking, credit cards, consumer lending, payments, e-commerce and fintech. From a functional standpoint, Toby has participated in general management, CEO, product, data and analytics, and risk searches, and has advised clients ranging in size from large, publicly traded corporations to middle-market PE-backed portfolio companies. He excels when a client has reached an inflection point and desires to make a significant change — transforming an existing business, creating a new strategy or spinning up an entirely new product or business line.
Broad consumer financial services expertise
- During his time with Spencer Stuart, Toby has led or participated in almost 250 executive searches, representing a broad cross-spectrum of the consumer financial services ecosystem. He has advised major global payment networks, leading card issuers and retail banks, and a variety of innovative fintechs on their most pressing organizational and talent issues.
- In recent years, he has led searches that include sourcing an executive to lead a brand-new real-time payments business for one of the world’s top payments networks, sourcing a CEO for a newly spun-out payments technology business and identifying a head of payments for one of the world’s fastest growing e-commerce companies.
- Prior to joining Spencer Stuart, Toby worked for another global executive search firm in New York where he focused on senior level searches in private equity, alternative investments and investment banking.
- Earlier in his career, he spent six years as a commercial conference producer, convening large groups of senior executives from diverse industries in the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Toby earned his Bachelor of Arts in modern history from St Hugh’s College, Oxford. In addition to the United States, he has lived and worked in Australia, Singapore and London.