Spotlight: Noah Schultz on sparking innovation through executive search

Having entered the healthcare and life sciences space via executive search, Senior Associate Practice Leader Noah Schultz says one of the most rewarding aspects of his work is seeing new and advanced products come to market.

Noah has been an executive recruiter for nearly two decades. He launched his career by applying his search capabilities in the tech space but entered healthcare and life sciences at a pivotal time: just before the Covid-19 pandemic.

This forced the recruiter to quickly master his new industry focus, and it paved the way for his current role at Charles Aris where he’s dedicated to finding strategy consultants for clients in the medical and research spaces.

With deep roots in the Chicago area, Noah joins Charles Aris remotely from his home in the city’s northwest suburbs. The lifelong Midwesterner earned his bachelor’s degree in marketing at Judson University where he also played soccer, a lifelong passion which he continues to pursue in various leagues and through coaching.

Early in his career, Noah fell into the recruiting world by way of tech and IT, where he focused on delivering the most qualified individuals to assist with various technology-related initiatives and ERP. The recruiter worked his way into leadership roles where he expanded his focus into business development and transitioned along the way between several executive recruiting firms. In 2019, he joined a search firm focused on placing consultants within the healthcare and life sciences industry and helped build several teams that were instrumental in launching Covid-19 vaccines.

Noah calls this time a “trial by fire,” where a few short months of becoming acquainted with this new industry focus quickly transitioned into a high-pressure recruiting initiative. After gaining experience during this period, he went on to serve the healthcare and life sciences space as an in-house recruiter for a startup organization focused on bringing the decentralized clinical research approach to the market.

While serving as an in-house recruiter, Noah partnered with the Charles Aris Healthcare & Life Sciences Practice to build his organization’s strategy and operations team and recalls noticing the high quality of the search firm’s work. Around this time, Noah had begun to miss the retained search model he had become familiar with earlier in his career, and the fast-paced environment it offered became more appealing to the lifelong competitive athlete.

A few months later, Noah decided to reach out to Charles Aris Vice President Jody Bischoff to discuss opportunities at Charles Aris and successfully landed a new role within the firm’s healthcare and life sciences vertical, where he’s now focused on placing top strategy talent with his clients. As the firm continues its current growth trajectory, Noah is dedicated to building even deeper client relationships in these spaces, especially life sciences.

Noah has two sons and spends much of his free time outdoors camping, hiking and mountain biking, and he continues to pursue his passion for playing soccer. He’s also a certified soccer coach and has found his niche in mentoring children and young adults who compete and eventually vie for Big 10 scholarships and other merit-based achievements.

The drive Noah taps into both inside and outside of the workday stems from his belief that you should never limit yourself or your abilities. Even if you aren’t 100% confident in your ability to do something, you should still push yourself to try and figure it out. Using this drive to find and recruit senior executives who play instrumental roles in seeing through new innovations is a major motivator for Noah, especially as it relates to medicine.

Recruiting in healthcare and life sciences throughout the pandemic showed Noah that bringing in the right talent at the right time can result in major medical innovations like vaccines and other treatments. Now, he hopes to continue supporting clients with similar initiatives by finding candidates with the right mix of consulting experience and industry knowledge to oversee critical innovation from a strategic perspective.

To learn more about our recruiting capabilities in strategy, healthcare and life sciences, contact Noah Schultz at noah.schultz@charlesaris.com or (336) 217-9192.