Sarah is a Business Director in the Executive Search team at Robert Walters, specialising in senior leadership and c-suite appointments across New Zealand. With over 15 years of local and international experience, she brings deep expertise in executive search, talent strategy, and leadership hiring.
She partners closely with Boards, Chief Executives and senior leaders to appoint executives across a wide range of enterprise functions, including finance, people, technology and customer. Sarah has built a strong track record supporting organisations through business transformation, with over a decade of experience recruiting across digital, operating model and enterprise change environments. Her work spans local government, public sector, financial services, professional services and not-for-profit sectors.
Known for her relationship-led and commercial approach, Sarah is recognised for her ability to navigate complex, business-critical appointments – often in environments where roles are hard to define or challenging to fill. She brings a calm structured approach to search, with a focus on delivery high-quality, future-focused outcomes for her clients.
Before rejoining Robert Walters in 2020, Sarah led recruitment for a high-growth consultancy in London, developing strong commercial acumen in fast-paced, scaling environments.
She is passionate about connecting organsations with leadership that drives transformation, strengthens capability, and delivers long-term strategic impact, with a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion in executive hiring.
At Robert Walters, we believe our success comes from the success of our clients and candidates. We're not just recruitment experts; we're partners in crafting your success story.
As Growing Future Farmers transitions from a successful start-up into a more mature and scalable organisation, we recognised the importance of strengthening both our leadership and governance capability. The team took the time to understand not only our operational needs, but also our purpose and the unique role we play in developing future talent for New Zealand's food and fibre sector.
They understood that organisations like ours require leaders who can balance commercial discipline with a genuine commitment to impact. The quality of candidates presented, and the appointments made have positioned us strongly for our next stage of growth.
“As Growing Future Farmers transitions from a successful start-up into a more mature and scalable organisation, we recognised the importance of strengthening both our leadership and governance capability. The team took the time to understand not only our operational needs, but also our purpose and the unique role we play in developing future talent for New Zealand's food and fibre sector.
They understood that organisations like ours require leaders who can balance commercial discipline with a genuine commitment to impact. The quality of candidates presented, and the appointments made have positioned us strongly for our next stage of growth."
We had a great experience working with the team on our recent benchmarking project. Communication was seamless throughout, and the project was completed with great efficiency and professionalism. I’d highly recommend Robert Walters to any organization seeking expert, data-driven market intelligence. Many thanks once again!
Robert Walters was amazing with supporting our business on the salary benchmarking project, it was incredibly thorough, with excellent collaboration across their departments. The consultative approach ensured the insights were both relevant and actionable—truly a valuable support to our strategic planning.
Collaborating with Robert Walters has been fundamental in advancing our gender diversity initiatives. Their professionalism and dedication have enabled us to develop effective and sustainable strategies.
With their support, we are closer to achieving our equity goals and fostering a corporate culture that values and celebrates diversity.
Additionally, we have gained a clearer focus on our priorities, better appreciated the initiatives already in place, and gained a deeper understanding of their impact.
Having recently established our Internal Talent Acquisition function we were keen to hold up a mirror and ensure our recruitment practices met our values and ambitions to be an organization with diversity, equity and inclusion at its heart. Robert Walters was a stand-out partner for us to work with given their proven expertise in this space. We were looking for a partner who could not only audit our current practices but also share solutions and best practices to enable us to become an exemplary organization in this space.
The Diverse Hiring diagnostic provided us with a clear understanding of opportunities to become a more inclusive and welcoming organization. Supported by best practice recommendations, we have been able to develop a clear roadmap that will enhance our approach across all the lenses we reviewed.
Continually improving the candidate experience at Uber is our North Star in Talent Acquisition. It is our obsession and so much work goes into constantly evaluating the candidate journey to see what works and what can be improved while keeping pace with changing candidate sentiment and change. However, it was truly enlightening to engage with Robert Walters as an external partner was not only a fresh pair of eyes but a tremendous amount of expertise in the space. The key thing for us is to identify actionable items that we can make happen at speed and at scale with impact, so to be able to achieve this with the diagnostic approach was fantastic.
“The results that we achieved in partnership with Robert Walters in attracting top people was excellent. The relationship went beyond recruitment to working side by side for a great outcome.”
We recognise that it is our people on the frontlines who deliver critical care to the most vulnerable in our community. This is why the experience of our managers and candidates is so vital: the people we recruit are the ones who carry out our mission daily. The recruitment landscape is rapidly evolving, and with the increased adoption of AI, a wide range of tools now impact on the process – for better and, at times, for worse. The Masterclass was an eye-opening experience for our Human Resources practitioners. It was invaluable to engage with Robert Walters, whose deep expertise and practical delivery made the session both insightful and relevant.
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