A boutique executive recruiting firm specializing in senior-level search
About SF Search Associates
SF Search Associates is a boutique executive search firm focused on the financial services and wine industries. In executing searches within these industries, SF Search Associates draws from its deep understanding of, and contacts within, the financial services and wine sectors developed over four decades of experience serving and working within these sectors.
SF Search Associates customizes its services for each client, typically providing contingent-fee, non-exclusive recruiting services that take advantage of the firm's extensive business network. SF Search Associates specializes in engaging with high quality candidates who are not seeking new employment, but are open to dialogue when approached by a recruiter who speaks their language and whose credibility comes from having previously sat “on the same side of the table” as the candidate.
About Lisa Blum
Lisa Blum is the founder and President of SF Search Associates. Prior to founding her firm, Lisa was Senior Vice President and Director of the West Coast Office of Jackowitz & Company, a global retainer-based search firm headquartered in Boston.
Lisa’s success in the executive recruiting field is the direct result of more than thirty-five years experience in various roles in banking, financial management and wine industry lending. With a large network of contacts within the industries she serves, and the ability to speak to prospective candidates as a former colleague/peer, Lisa has a unique ability to source for her clients high quality candidates who are not actively seeking career moves.
Lisa’s career began with Chase Manhattan Bank (now J.P. Morgan Chase) in New York City, where she spent four years before moving to the Bay Area in 1981 and joining Wells Fargo Bank’s Northern California Corporate Banking division. Subsequent positions include increasingly senior roles in Corporate/Commercial Banking at Westpac Banking Corporation, First Interstate Bank (now Wells Fargo) and Silicon Valley Bank.
At Silicon Valley Bank, Lisa specialized in winery and vineyard financing for six years. She left SVB to found the Wine Lending Practice at First Republic Bank, where she focused on Private Banking and Wealth Management for wine industry clients. In 2010 Lisa joined J.P. Morgan’s Private Banking group, followed by Chase’s Middle Market Commercial Banking group in San Francisco, to build the bank’s wine industry practice.
In addition to her banking experience, Lisa previously held the positions of Vice President, Finance at a non-profit educational and cultural center located in Napa Valley, and Controller of a small winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California.
Lisa graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Psychology and Social Relations. She was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, lived and made her career in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost 40 years, and recently relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico.