Organised Around the Functions That Drive Industrial Performance
We structured our practices around how energy, semiconductor, and industrial companies actually operate — not around generic HR categories.
Value Chain Practice
The value chain functions — sales, supply chain, manufacturing, operations, procurement, and technology — form the operational backbone of every energy and industrial business. In Asia, these functions take on additional complexity: multi-country supply networks, diverse regulatory environments, and workforces that span dramatically different cultural contexts. Increasingly, these functions are converging with information technology — as supply chain, manufacturing, and operations roles demand leaders who can drive digital transformation, implement ERP and analytics platforms, and manage the intersection of OT and IT within industrial environments.
Our Value Chain Leadership practice focuses exclusively on senior appointments within these functions. We understand the difference between a supply chain leader who has managed global logistics from a headquarters desk and one who has built a procurement function from scratch in a developing market. In the energy sector, this distinction matters enormously.
Rushit Shah leads this practice, drawing on years of experience working within the energy value chain. His approach to candidate assessment is grounded in operational reality: he evaluates how leaders manage complexity, not just how they present it. This means assessing track records in turnaround management, vendor ecosystem development, manufacturing scale-up, and the ability to deliver commercial results through operational discipline.
Typical appointments include VP of Operations, Head of Supply Chain, Director of Procurement, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer, Head of IT, and General Manager roles where operational leadership is the primary mandate. We work across all six sectors but see particular demand in semiconductor manufacturing, petrochemicals, and industrial businesses expanding across Southeast Asia.
Finance & Corporate Practice
Finance leadership in Asian energy and industrial companies carries a broader mandate than the title suggests. CFOs in this region are often the primary interface with investors, regulators, and joint venture partners. They manage treasury functions across multiple currencies, navigate complex tax jurisdictions, and lead corporate development efforts that range from greenfield investments to cross-border acquisitions.
Our Finance & Corporate practice fills senior roles across CFO appointments, treasury leadership, corporate development, M&A execution, and investor relations. We work with publicly listed energy companies preparing for or managing analyst expectations, private equity portfolio companies that need finance leaders comfortable with sponsor governance, and family-owned industrial conglomerates professionalising their financial management as they grow.
The assessment challenge in finance hiring is separating technical competence from leadership effectiveness. A CFO who has managed a successful IPO process is not necessarily the right leader for a company in operational turnaround. A corporate development head who has completed several acquisitions may struggle in an environment where the primary task is integration and value extraction. We evaluate these distinctions carefully, drawing on our understanding of the specific financial environments in which energy and industrial companies operate across Asia.
Human Resources Practice
The CHRO role in Asian industrial and energy companies has changed substantially. Organisations that historically treated HR as an administrative function now need strategic leaders who can manage workforce planning across multiple countries, build talent pipelines for scarce technical skills, and lead organisational transformations that accompany shifts in strategy.
Our Human Resources practice places senior HR leaders across these transitions. We focus on CHRO appointments, regional HR leadership roles, Heads of Talent Management, Total Rewards leaders, and HR Transformation directors. The common thread across these roles is the requirement to lead people strategy in complex, multi-market, multi-cultural environments.
We evaluate HR leaders on their ability to influence at the executive level, their track record in managing across cultural boundaries (a Board Director in Singapore, a plant workforce in Indonesia, and a sales team in India may all report into the same HR function), and their practical experience in the talent challenges that define the energy and industrial sectors: skills scarcity, workforce localisation, and the retention of critical technical talent in competitive markets.
Information & Cybersecurity Practice
As energy, semiconductor, and industrial companies digitise, the boundary between information technology and operational technology has all but disappeared. Connected plants, smart grids, automated fabs, and integrated supply networks have transformed how these businesses run — and have expanded their attack surface just as dramatically. In this environment, cybersecurity is no longer a back-office IT concern; it is a board-level risk that touches production continuity, physical safety, intellectual property, and regulatory standing.
Our Information & Cybersecurity practice focuses exclusively on senior security appointments within industrial organisations. We understand the difference between a security leader who has protected a corporate IT estate and one who has secured OT and ICS environments where a breach can halt production or endanger people. In the energy and semiconductor sectors — where critical infrastructure, proprietary process technology, and complex multi-country regulatory regimes converge — that distinction is decisive.
This matters across Asia in particular, where organisations are building security capability while navigating fragmented and fast-evolving data-protection and critical-infrastructure regulation, rising state-linked and criminal threat activity, and an acute shortage of leaders who can speak the language of both the plant floor and the boardroom. We assess candidates on operational reality, not credentials alone: how they have built security functions from the ground up, driven governance and compliance without stalling the business, and led incident response under genuine pressure.
Typical appointments include Chief Information Security Officer, Head of Information Security, OT/ICS Security Lead, Head of Cloud & Infrastructure Security, Security Architect, and GRC and Data Protection leadership roles. This practice is led by Rushit Shah, drawing on deep experience across enterprise and industrial security environments. We work across all six sectors, with particular demand in semiconductor manufacturing, energy, and critical-infrastructure operators expanding across the region.