Toby Donovan is a core member of the firm’s Financial Services Practice, where he focuses on payments, consumer lending, credit cards and fintech. From a functional standpoint, Toby has led CEO, GM, tech, product and revenue searches, and has advised clients ranging in size from large, publicly-traded corporations to smaller PE-backed portfolio companies. Toby is the co-founder of Spencer Stuart’s Payments Community of Interest, which brings together colleagues across the firm who have an interest in the payments industry. 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.
Deep payments and fintech expertise
- During his time with Spencer Stuart, Toby has led or participated in almost 300 executive searches, with deep representation across the payments ecosystem. He has advised major global payment networks, leading card issuers and banks, and a variety of innovative fintechs on their most pressing organizational and talent issues.
- In recent years, Toby’s searches have included a global head of real-time payments for one of the world’s top payments networks, several CEO searches for payments-oriented fintech companies, a head of payments for one of the world’s fastest growing e-commerce companies, and a global head of transaction banking for a leading international bank.
- 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.