About TFG

About TFG2017-03-13T12:23:33-07:00

Established in 1981, the Ferneborg Group is a premier boutique West-coast based professional executive search firm specializing in attracting, recruiting, and developing the best executive talent for forward-thinking companies representing wide a variety of industries.

Our Team

We’re experienced and disciplined professionals who know and network with successful senior executives.

Commitment to completion and providing end-to-end executive search services have been the long-standing hallmarks of The Ferneborg Group, and the driving force behind more than several thousand successful searches. Our strategic partnerships help us focus on your needs and bring extraordinary value to every search project.

  • John Ferneborg, Sr.
    Founder & Senior Partner
    John Ferneborg, Sr.
    Founder & Senior Partner

    Over the past 30 years, John Ferneborg has excelled in the field of Executive Search. His expertise and track record in the industry have created a myriad of successful leadership teams in a broad range of industries. Already named one of “North America’s Top Executive Recruiters” in the book The Career Makers, John has more recently been named one of the “World’s Most Influential Headhunters” by Businessweek.com and was recently featured in Money Magazine.

    Prior to founding the Ferneborg Group, John served as a Senior Vice President at Heidrick & Struggles and was a founding partner of Smith, Goerss & Ferneborg. He also recently served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC), which represents retained executive search consulting firms worldwide.

    Education

    John graduated from North Park University in Chicago, Illinois, with a Bachelor of Science degree. He attended graduate school at Northwestern University.

  • John Ferneborg, Jr.
    Managing Partner
    John Ferneborg, Jr.
    Managing Partner

    John Ferneborg is an accomplished executive search professional with twenty-four years of strategy, operations, and executive acquisition experience. He has demonstrated the ability to build mid-level and senior-level executive teams for a broad range of regional, national, private, and public companies.

    Throughout his search career, Mr. Ferneborg has partnered with entrepreneurs, founders, investors and board members, helping them attract leadership talent across a wide range of executive functions. A key to John’s success has been consistency through deep industry research, strong insight, and analytically-driven decision making. 

    John graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Social Science and Communications.  While at USC John worked as an intern with USC Alumni Relations officers on a broad range of networking and fundraising events for the school.

    In 1994 John was recruited to join his father’s West Coast-based executive search firm, Smith, Goerss & Ferneborg.  While learning the executive search business as a second-generation recruiter, John developed a new database system and brought in search capabilities which helped the firm reduce search completion time by over forty percent.

    In 1995, with the passing of a partner, the firm rebranded as The Ferneborg Group.  Over the years, John grew into the Managing Partner role through his ability to bring a systematic and quantitative approach to the increasingly challenging and competitive world of executive search. Always seeking better solutions for their clients, John continued to enhance the firm's website, ATS database and IT infrastructure, resulting in a faster and more thorough search process than many of their competitors. Following the completion of hundreds of executive searches, and the firm's decision to move into a virtual environment, John is seeking an opportunity to work more closely with corporate, non-profit and other organizations to help them achieve their human resources goals.

    John is married, father of three children. Outside of work John enjoys family vacations, futures trading, woodcraft, classic board games, reading, and golf.

    Education:

    John earned his Bachelor's degree in Communications from the University of Southern California.

  • Tom A. Harvey
    Partner
    Tom A. Harvey
    Partner

    Tom Harvey is a Partner with the Ferneborg Group and brings more than 25 years of consumer electronics and international operations experience to the firm.

    Drawing from his work as a president of one of the Sony Corporation of America divisions and his experience with Silicon Valley companies, Tom brings a unique perspective and consultative approach to recruiting and his clients.

  • Peter Engler
    Leadership Partner
    Peter Engler
    Leadership Partner

    Peter Engler strongly believes people should “Look for meaningful work, not just a job,”and has created a unique senior executive transition program, “Career Keys." Specifically, Peter works with each client carefully to assess strengths and weaknesses, make adjustments as necessary, and to move forward with vigor and confidence, realizing new career goals and objectives. His program is highly-valued by clients throughout the U.S. as a realistic and effective transition program that has led to new employment and career shifts for many executives.

    Peter's experience includes thirty years of senior marketing management experience at major advertising agencies in New York and San Francisco, ten years as a retained senior executive search partner, eight years of senior executive career coaching expertise at major firms, and his own personal coaching and search consultancy, Engler Career Group Inc.

    A decorated Navy pilot during the Vietnam Conflict, Peter is married with five children and seven grandchildren. He enjoys water sports, tennis, skiing and reading a broad range of fiction and non-fiction. He is also at work on two novels, and is teaching himself to paint acrylics.

  • Richard Selmeier
    Leadership Partner
    Richard Selmeier
    Leadership Partner

    Dick Selmeier spent the first 20 some years of his career honing his skills in consumer packaged goods marketing and sales with Procter & Gamble, Foote, Cone & Belding Advertising, and American Express financial services, before launching a CEO career.  Over the next 20 years he led several successful enterprises as President/CEO for Sandaro Industries, a high-tech company sold to Total, Ltd.; GM of DTS Decision Support, a financial data modeling firm; President/COO of Tele Atlas North America, the Dutch-owned digital mapping company; and President/CEO of Aserta Sports, designer of revolutionary sports equipment.

    Sandwiched between these CEO assignments, he developed and operated a management consulting practice providing strategic planning, branding, and sales management expertise to a “who’s who” of clients including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, GE Capital, Bank of America, McKesson, Clorox, Monsanto and The American Red Cross.  Just before joining Stanton Chase in 2009, Dick spent a year recruiting top professional talent in San Francisco with a national consulting firm.

    Dick has an MBA and BBA from the University of Michigan. 

    He served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and is recognized for distinguished service in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

  • Rob Williams
    Research Director
    Rob Williams
    Research Director
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  • Carol Tognoli
    Office Manager
    Carol Tognoli
    Office Manager
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  • Linda Manzon
    Director of Finance
    Linda Manzon
    Director of Finance
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Exceeding expectations and ROI
on every search project we conduct.

Over the last 35 years, The Ferneborg Group has earned a reputation as one of the most efficient, results-oriented firms in the search industry. Our firm dedicates its resources and focuses on a consultative, collaborative and customized search approach.  The result is the ability to identify quickly and deliver the most capable and committed candidates for your executive team. We have a successful search completion rate of over 97% which is a reliable indicator of our ability to solve your human capital needs while also being efficient with your time and budget.

“A seasoned recruiter knows how to turn opportunity into interest, attracting the most successful candidates.”

John Ferneborg Jr., Managing Partner

  • Senior Partner Managed Work

    Our firm’s partners conduct the entire search process from reaching out to all industry contacts, to conducting all interviews and assessments. This results in the highest possible yield of top-quality candidates.

  • Specialists in Executive Search

    At TFG, we specialize in executive-level talent searches and consultative insight for companies of all sizes. We study and understand evolving business and industry trends and challenges and know what kind of executive it takes to be successful with each.

  • Swiftness and Efficiency in Every Search

    Search swiftness and efficiency are vital factors for our clients. We use all of our resources and focus on presenting a panel of the best candidates within an average timeline of three to four weeks.

  • Confidentiality

    Whether your search is to replace an incumbent or is just confidential in nature, you can rely on us to keep your details confidential. Our employees adhere to strict internal policies relating to the privacy and confidentiality of information it receives from clients and candidates alike. Trust is paramount.

The Association of Executive Search Consultants is the global association for retained executive search and leadership consulting firms.

The AESC’s mission is to promote the highest professional standards in retained executive search consulting, broaden public understanding of the executive search process and serve as an advocate for the interests of its member firms.

 Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC)

The AESC is the official body representing retained executive search consulting firms worldwide. As a full-service organization with regional councils in the Americas, Europe, and Asia/ Pacific and an International Board of Directors, the AESC’s mission is to promote and enhance the practice of retained executive search. Retained executive search consulting is defined as an exclusive senior executive recruitment mandate from an organization, which is performed under a retainer agreement.

The AESC and its members believe that senior executive recruitment must be conducted in a measured and research-based way, employing objective and yet similar assessment criteria. Such a task requires the dedicated time and resources of a senior consultant who can apply their comparative recruiting experience, often combined with career experience in executive management or management consultancy. This work is of such importance that, in the view of the AESC and its members, it cannot and should not be performed on a contingent basis.

The AESC’s primary mission is to establish standards for executive search consulting that ensure highly professional execution of search assignments and protect the interests of clients and candidates. The AESC publishes a Code of Ethics and Professional Practice Guidelines, a Client’s Bill of Rights and a Client’s Charter, all of which are designed to help clients obtain the best value from executive search and to ensure compliance of the search firm with agreed and tested principles. Membership of the AESC is only granted to an executive search firm that meets rigorous criteria and following a process of due diligence involving client references, site visits, and a vote by the appropriate regional council. Thus clients are assured of quality service from AESC member firms and have recourse with complaints against members of the AESC’s Committee on Ethics and Professional Practice.

All members of the AESC endorse the AESC’s standards and role in maintaining the highest level of professionalism in performing executive search work. In its quest to better educate and inform client organizations about the retained executive search profession, the AESC offers information and educational services via the CorporateConnect section of its website www.aesc.org.

For more information please visit:  www.aesc.org