Over his career, Conrad worked closely with hundreds of CEOs and business owners as they grew their businesses. In addition to executive mentoring, he held positions in a variety of professional service firms including investment banking, strategic management consulting and C-suite retainer-based executive search.

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Conrad co-founded Ethos Consulting in 1992 which then evolved into Expect Success Tools. He focuses on executive mentoring of CEOs and business owners and their senior leadership teams. His mentoring approach meets five key criteria of mentoring a leader: mastery of the craft of leadership; being a champion of the leader’s cause; acting as a sounding board; being an objective confidante; and providing insights and perspectives on the performance of key members of the leader’s team. Conrad works at the intersection of a company’s strategy and the company’s leadership team tasked with delivering on the strategy. 

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Starting in 2008, Conrad contracted with Vistage Worldwide to serve as a Vistage Chair in the Phoenix Metro area. From 2012 to 2022 he earned and maintained the Master Chair designation as one of the top performing Vistage Chairs in the world. Over almost 15 years he facilitated as many as ten Vistage groups with over 200 members on various group platforms with an emphasis on CEOs of highly entrepreneurial and rapid growth companies.

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In the early years of Ethos, it was a C-suite retainer-based executive search firm where he and his team worked on over 300 executive searches across a dozen industries. Just prior to 2000, before contracting with Vistage, he diversified the firm into broader management consulting services. Specific services included optimizing CEO leadership skills as well as advising companies on the “value stream” to integrate the processes of recruiting, on-boarding and retaining great talent. He innovated the “Management by Expectations" model. He is co-author of Expect Success: How to Manage by Expectations to Make Good Teams Great.

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Prior to Ethos Conrad was a Managing Partner with Heidrick & Struggles, a major global executive search firm. In addition to managing the San Francisco office and his client base, he served on the firm’s Executive and Operating Committees. As Chairman of the Asia Task Force, he was responsible for opening and managing the Tokyo office as well.

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Previously Conrad was with Arthur Young Executive Resource Consultants, a subsidiary of Arthur Young (now Ernst & Young), where he rose to Managing Director of the Bay Area and Pacific Northwest Practice. Earlier in his career, he was a strategic management consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton (now PWC’s Strategy&) in San Francisco and an investment banker with The First Boston Corporation (now Credit Suisse) in New York.

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Conrad speaks English, German and French.