Built for the world's most ambitious leaders and families.

10+Years placing Executive Assistants, Chiefs of Staff, and OCEO teams

50,000+Professionals in our network

USCoverage across key hubs

Traditional values, modern approach.

Blackbook Associates was founded on a simple observation: the people who sit closest to the world's most demanding principals are the most important hires a firm or family will ever make - and the most overlooked.

Most search firms treat these roles as an afterthought. The result is a generalist approach that fundamentally misses what makes them different: the proximity to power, the need for absolute discretion, and the reality that the wrong hire at this level costs far more than the fee.

We built Blackbook Associates around a single focus - placing the people who sit closest to those leading the firms and households operating at the top of their fields. Executive Assistants, Personal Assistants, Chiefs of Staff, and Office of the CEO teams across the United States.

Traditional in our standards. Modern in how we find, assess, and deliver.

We're building the search firm we'd want to work with - one that understands the worlds it operates in. The dynamics are unique, the relationships are closer, and the margin for error is zero. Our mission is simple: to become the first call when you need to hire, and to deliver every time.

Through Blackbook Network, we've built a private community of thousands of Executive Assistants, Personal Assistants, Chiefs of Staff, and right-hands supporting the world's most demanding principals - across firms and family offices alike. This gives us constant visibility into the talent ecosystem: who's thriving, who's ready to move, and where the best people are before they're on the market.

James Ketteringham

Founder

“

The gap in this market has never been a shortage of recruiters. It's a shortage of sophistication.

Too few understand the difference between placing an EA into a bulge-bracket bank versus a single-family office, or between building an Office of the CEO from scratch for a scaling platform and placing a Personal Assistant for an S&P 100 CEO. These aren't variations of the same search. They're fundamentally different mandates.

That's what sets us apart. Whether it's a Chief of Staff brought in to streamline operations across a global asset manager, an Executive Assistant placed with the founder of a high-growth technology business, or building an entire Office of the CEO for an influential principal - every search at this level sits inside a bigger question: what they're building, who they're working alongside, where they're heading.

Our depth across the worlds we operate in - and our executive-first approach to every search - is why the firms and families we work with keep coming back.”