Spotlight: Rebecca Conway on balancing two roles at Charles Aris Executive Search

Rebecca Conway joined Charles Aris with a wealth of recruiting experience, but she says the firm allowed her to flex a variety of additional skills by eventually offering a dual role. Now, she leads healthcare corporate development searches as senior associate practice leader while also overseeing the firm’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as DEI manager.

Related: Review our DEI mission statement and track our progress.

Background and education:

Rebecca studied history at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. While a career in history didn’t perfectly suit her post-college ambitions, the UNC graduate knew she wanted to travel. This desire took her to Europe, where she spent time studying in London and Dublin, and she vowed to return as soon as possible.

Back in the United States, Rebecca sought a career that could take her back to Europe on a professional basis. She landed in New York City where she soon found Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which had recently expanded to Europe, and hoped that by proving herself in a manager-level role she could transfer overseas. She began serving in various New York City Enterprise branches, and after two years, she earned a transfer to Ireland working in two different Dublin area offices.

In this career, Rebecca found the customer service aspect of the work to be highly fulfilling. She recalls that her clients at Enterprise weren’t just tourists needing a ride for their vacations; many people had just experienced a car accident or needed critical repair work done on their own vehicle. Rebecca enjoyed being the person who could lend a helping hand.

As an Enterprise manager, Rebecca spent around three years working overseas and eventually returned to New York City in pursuit of the next step in her career. She soon discovered executive recruiting, which was a good fit for her experience, work ethic and personality.

Executive recruiting experience:

Rebecca served successfully as an executive recruiter at Solomon Page, but she also wanted to explore talent acquisition as an in-house recruiter for a large or mid-sized corporation. She eventually landed at Oliver Wyman as a talent acquisition coordinator and credits this experience with building many of the skills she uses today at Charles Aris.

While growing her career in New York, Rebecca also grew her family. She met her husband, and towards the end of her stint at Oliver Wyman, the couple decided to move back to North Carolina to raise their daughters.

They settled close to family in Greensboro, and Rebecca stayed home with their children while assisting with her husband’s small business. When she sought a new career of her own, Rebecca’s close friend suggested she apply to Charles Aris.

After meeting with senior leaders at the firm and confirming Charles Aris had a strong company culture and family values, she agreed to rejoin the executive search industry as an associate recruiter.

Rebecca quickly worked her way up to senior associate practice leader. She served in the Strategy & Go-to-Market Practice first, where she found alignment in the healthcare space, but transitioned to the Finance & Corporate Development Practice after deciding to carve her niche recruiting M&A leaders for private equity-backed healthcare providers.

“Rebecca Conway is a true industry expert in the private equity-backed healthcare field,” said Senior Practice Leader Josh Kotelnicki. “Her promotion to senior associate practice leader solidifies her ability to find and land the best corporate development talent for her clients.”

Rebecca is excited to build out this focus area, but serving as senior associate practice leader still represents only half of her role at Charles Aris.

Diversity, equity and inclusion:

In 2020, senior leaders at Charles Aris took a deep look at who they were as an organization and who they wanted to be. While many companies took this opportunity to reform existing policies, the team at Charles Aris decided they wanted to go a step beyond and create new policies and procedures with the goal of becoming an antiracist organization.

Soon after embarking on this journey, the firm agreed that a full-time DEI manager would be the best step forward and asked Rebecca, a DEI advocate and passionate community member, to fill the role.

In this position, Rebecca is responsible for overseeing the three primary DEI initiatives at Charles Aris: promoting DEI education within the firm, changing the narrative and taking responsibility.

So far, she has helped the firm work toward these three goals by organizing firmwide trainings with external DEI leaders (Mary Kendrick, Michelle Gethers, etc.), conducting inclusion surveys and publishing DEI metrics and goals for both the firm and the public to view and track progress.

Rebecca says this dual role is satisfying because it allows her to continue serving as a helping hand to those in need. On the search side, Rebecca’s clients trust her to deliver candidates who can significantly contribute to and improve their organizations. As DEI manager, she serves as the first resource to the firm and its team members on their DEI journey.

While neither role is easy, Rebecca says she’s continuously motivated by the quality of the people she serves and her passion for DEI advocacy.

To learn more, contact Rebecca Conway at (336) 217-9139 or rebecca.conway@charlesaris.com.