Adele Mezher

Adele is a certified Diversity & Inclusion Recruiter with three decades of experience in the executive search industry. At Pearl Street, she manages a full portfolio of executive search and talent strategy engagements, advises clients on market trends affecting recruitment and retention, and guides them through organizational change and the impact on people and culture. Her clients range from global university systems and independent schools to federated organizations, mid-range and grassroots nonprofits at inflection points.

She has successfully completed hundreds of searches across sectors, missions, and functions during her career, ultimately building an expertise in advancement and development. Adele has distinguished herself by remaining hands-on with the work, believing it imperative to personally recruit on her client engagements so that she can directly take their opportunity to market and guide conversations with candidates who value her career counsel. A student of human behavior, she expertly manages the pacing of the search process with highly developed instincts and emotional intelligence. Her sincere interest in people means that she engages with openness and a natural warmth that builds confidence.

The first half of Adele’s career was spent implementing strategies for media relations, new market entry, and practice expansion as head of Marketing for several multinational forprofit search firms. She also carried a portfolio of CEO and VP-level searches for Fortune 500 and venture/private-equity backed technology and manufacturing clients. Responding to her own mission drive, she found herself transitioning to the nonprofit sector where she has spent the last fifteen years.

Her interest in advancing mission driven work was borne of her own family’s search for a better life. As a child, they fled civil war in Lebanon to settle north of Boston, in a vibrant community known for its culturally diverse population as well as its poverty rate and the barriers to success that creates. Those life experiences created within her a drive to advocate for equity and access. Of the 100 searches that she completed in the last five years, more than 40% of her placements represented leaders who were underrecognized in their prior roles.

In addition to supporting equity through her daily work, she finds significant opportunity in her volunteer roles as an academic mentor with SquashBusters Lawrence and advisory board member to Aaron’s Presents. She is both a member and mentor with Women of Color in Fundraising & Philanthropy, an active supporter of the #HIREBLACK Initiative and the scholarship-granting Lebanese American Awareness Association, and a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, BoardSource, SHRM, and Women in Development. The proud daughter of schoolteachers, she is also an Instructor for Boston University’s Certificate in Fundraising Program. Occasionally you’ll see her pinch-hitting as a substitute teacher at her high school alma mater, the Greater Lawrence Technical School, where the teenagers give her the education.

A lifelong learner, she is often refreshing her language skills or taking a course to satisfy her interests in human resources, sociology, and psychology. During off hours, she can be found literally running after her four-time marathoner husband and picking up shiny trinkets that her beloved rescue cats Vincent and Mia have pushed off tabletops.