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Yarmouth, Maine · Since 1994 · Certified Predictive Index Partner

Closing the Gap Between
Strategy and Execution.

Every service we offer was designed with a single purpose: to help organizations build the talent architecture needed to turn great strategy into measurable results.

500+ Searches Closed
30 Years Active
Up to 2yr Guarantee
Our Mission

Built around one conviction.

Most organizations have a strategy. Very few have the talent architecture to execute it. The distance between what leadership intends and what the organization delivers is almost always a people problem.

Pemberton & Associates was redesigned from the ground up to close that gap. Our three practice areas form a coordinated system. Each one addresses a different aspect of the same challenge: getting the right people in the right seats, aligned to the right objectives, within a structure built to let them win.

The products and services inside are available individually or in combination, each one an investment in closing the distance between your strategy and its execution.

Derek Pemberton
Derek Pemberton
Managing Partner · Pemberton & Associates
dmp@pembertonhr.com  ·  D: 207.888.9346
Maverick PI Profile
PI Profile Maverick

"Ted Pemberton founded this firm in 1994 with a simple conviction: that small and mid-market organizations deserve talent counsel as strategic, rigorous, and personal as anything available to large enterprises. He had built HR from the ground up inside a publicly traded bank, led the function through rapid growth, and understood what the right person in the right role actually meant to an organization's trajectory. When the opportunity came, he wrote his own package and set up shop.

Thirty years later, that conviction is still the one. What has changed is the environment, and the urgency that comes with it. The pace of change is creating talent gaps faster than most organizations can respond to them. AI is widening the distance between exceptional talent and everyone else. The organizations that get ahead of that curve will pull away from those that don't.

We've been fortunate to work alongside some remarkable organizations on that journey, and we don't take a single one of those relationships for granted. This next chapter is built on everything those partnerships taught us."

Track Record

Recent Placements

Bangor Savings Bank
Head of Product Management
Financial Services · JD Power Award Winner · Top 10 Forbes Best Bank
InterMed
Chief Financial Officer
Healthcare · Portland, Maine
Community Health Options
Chief Operating Officer
Healthcare · Lewiston, Maine
J.B. Brown & Sons
Chief Executive Officer
Real Estate & Development · Est. 1828 · Portland, Maine
Mascoma Savings Bank
SVP Community Development
Financial Services · Lebanon, New Hampshire
Practice I
01

Executive Search & Interim Leadership

Retained · Up to 2-Year Guarantee

A misaligned executive hire does not just underperform. It compounds. Poor fit, mismatched expectations, and unclear objectives erode momentum at the exact moment an organization needs it most.

Our search process is built differently. We begin with outcomes, not job descriptions. We learn your organization before we approach a single candidate. And when we engage top talent, we do it as authentic advocates, telling your story compellingly because we know it deeply. The result is a process that identifies more precisely, attracts more effectively, and sets every new leader up for long-term impact.

Objective-Defined Search Design

We work with your search committee to identify and rank the 3 to 4 outcomes that define success, including how each will be measured, before a single name enters the process.

Data-Driven Candidate Identification

We identify who is producing the best results in the market for your specific objectives. From there we determine who is most responsible for driving those results. We find the right person, not just the right title.

Deep-Lever Vetting

We assess how each candidate contributed to their results, which levers they pulled and how, evaluating those methods against your specific challenges, culture, and constraints. Our searches also leverage insights from the Predictive Index behavioral assessment.

Organizational Immersion

We learn how work actually gets done inside your organization: culture, operating dynamics, current challenges, strategic inflection points, so we assess candidates against reality, not a description.

Authentic Brand Ambassadorship

The best candidates are succeeding where they are. They have to be moved. We engage top talent as genuine advocates for your organization, not as transactional recruiters.

Interim & Fractional CxO

When you need executive capability before the permanent hire is in place, we place proven operators who move the needle immediately while the long-term solution is built.

01

Objective Setting

Define & rank the top 3 to 4 role objectives and success metrics with your search committee.

02

Org Immersion

Learn culture, operating dynamics, challenges, and strategic context — the full picture.

03

Market Intelligence

Identify who is producing the best results against your objectives and trace true accountability.

04

Strategic Attraction

Engage top talent as authentic brand ambassadors — compelling passive candidates with your story.

05

Deep Vetting & Placement

Assess lever-pulling, fit, and contribution. Present a slate built for long-term impact.

Practice II
02
THEO TARGETED HIRING & EMPLOYEE OPTIMIZATION POWERED BY Pemberton & Associates
Subscription · Multi-Year Contract

Approximately 20% of positions in any organization drive roughly 80% of its outcomes. THEO is built on that premise. Rather than waiting for critical roles to open and reacting under pressure, THEO gives organizations a curated, continuously managed talent portfolio. The goal is simple: the right people available before a seat goes empty.

THEO is a subscription product structured around multi-year contracts. It combines ongoing market intelligence, proactive pipeline management, real-time opportunity monitoring, and both retained and contingency search, within a single integrated engagement that delivers compounding value over time.

Intelligence

Continuous Market Coverage

We monitor top performers at competitor organizations in real time, tracking who wants to move, why, where, and when. You receive talent intelligence most organizations never have access to.

Portfolio

Custom Talent Portfolios

We build a bespoke talent portfolio organized around your most critical positions. Portfolios are reviewed and rebalanced quarterly to stay aligned with shifting strategic priorities and open requisitions.

Activation

Real-Time Opportunity Alerts

When a top prospect in your portfolio becomes open to new opportunities, you are notified immediately, giving you access before the broader market does.

Deployment

Monthly Hiring Recommendations

Each month we provide ranked recommendations from your portfolio matched against current requisitions and strategic priorities, so every hiring decision is grounded in the best available talent.

Performance

Portfolio Reporting

We deliver regular reporting on portfolio depth, placement outcomes, and talent market trends, giving you the visibility to measure the return on your talent investment directly.

Included

Minimum 5 Retained Searches

Every THEO contract includes at least five objective-defined retained searches executed using our full Practice I methodology, amplified by portfolio intelligence for faster and sharper outcomes.

Retained Component

All contracted retained searches are executed using our full executive search methodology: objective-defined, data-driven, with deep vetting and strategic attraction included in every engagement.

Contingency Component

Portfolio prospects can be activated and hired on a contingency basis at any time, with volume discounts that improve economics as the relationship matures, making every successive hire more efficient than the last.

Practice III
03
TAD TALENT ARCHITECTURE DIAGNOSTIC POWERED BY Pemberton & Associates

Talent Architecture Diagnostic™ & Advisory

Diagnostic · Modular · Roadmap

Every organization has a talent management system. It is the architecture that sits between strategic intent and financial performance, and most organizations have never assessed it with any real rigor.

The Talent Architecture Diagnostic was built from two things most firms in this industry never had in the same room: thirty years of direct observation of how talent systems succeed and fail across industries, and the financial and audit discipline to evaluate practices that directly and significantly impact financial performance. That intersection is what makes it diagnostic rather than descriptive. It does not just identify what is broken. It maps cause and effect, tracing which failure is driving the others and what to fix first to produce the most leverage.

The Diagnostic — 8 Dimensions

A structured assessment across eight interconnected dimensions. Organizations may engage the full diagnostic or individual dimensions based on current strategic priorities.

DIMENSION 01
Strategic Foundation
DIMENSION 02
Organizational Architecture
DIMENSION 03
Talent Intelligence
DIMENSION 04
Talent Acquisition
DIMENSION 05
Performance & Rewards
DIMENSION 06
Development & Continuity
DIMENSION 07
AI & Workforce Modernization
DIMENSION 08
System Performance
Assessment Deliverable

Ranked findings. Cascade analysis. Sequenced roadmap.

Every deficiency is ranked by causal impact, not surface severity. The roadmap enforces dependencies so the right problems are addressed in the right order.

Ongoing Advisory

From diagnosis to execution.

Advisory engagements extend the diagnostic into implementation, providing ongoing strategic counsel as organizations close gaps and build the talent architecture their strategy demands.

Why Pemberton & Associates

A firm intentionally designed around one problem.

We did not assemble a menu of HR services. We built a practice around a specific thesis: that the gap between strategy and execution is a talent architecture problem. Every offering is designed to address a different dimension of it.

Every Product Shares the Same North Star

Search, THEO, and the Assessment are not separate offerings. They are a coordinated system. Each one addresses a different point at which most organizations lose ground between strategy and execution.

We Manage to Outcomes, Not Activity

Our search process begins with objectives and success metrics. Our Assessment ranks findings by impact. Our THEO portfolios rebalance against strategic priorities. Everything we do is oriented toward measurable results.

Intelligence Compounds Over Time

The longer we work with a client, the sharper our understanding of their culture, objectives, and talent needs. Our market intelligence deepens alongside it. Our model is built to compound in value as the relationship matures.

Our Firm

Thirty Years.
One Standard.

Founded by Ted Pemberton in 1994, we've completed over 500+ searches for financial services, healthcare, legal, nonprofit, and professional services organizations across New England and nationally. As a preferred partner for TD Bank, we recruited hundreds of positions as they scaled to a top-10 bank with over $300B in assets. It remains one of the longest and most productive client relationships in our firm's history.

Today we partner with the region's most respected organizations that hold us to a high standard because they understand what the right hire actually means. We are second-generation, family-owned, and built to stay that way.

Partner Badge_Certified
Pemberton 2.0

The practice evolved.
She's why.

When Susan Pemberton, CPA, CIA joined the practice, she brought something the executive search industry rarely sees: a top-down, financially grounded perspective on talent. Where most search professionals start with the role, Susan starts with the organization: its performance, its structure, and the gap between what leadership intends and what the workforce is actually delivering. Her background in finance, audit, and human resources gave her a lens that executive search has largely never thought to look for: the ability to evaluate talent the way a CFO evaluates capital, and to make the case for why it belongs at the center of executive decision-making, not at the edge of it.

Today she leads CxO and key finance searches and serves as the firm's lead on Talent Architecture Diagnostic™ engagements. A practice that finally gives boards and executives a rigorous answer to the question they've always had but never been able to ask properly: what is our workforce actually worth, and are we getting the return on our talent investment that our strategy requires?

Susan Pemberton
Susan Pemberton
sfp@pembertonhr.com  ·  D: 207.888.9346
CPA · CIA · Partner
Maverick PI Profile
PI Reference Profile Maverick
Anthem · Corporate Accounting
Financial reporting and corporate accounting inside one of the country's largest health benefits organizations; foundational training in how enterprise finance drives organizational decision-making
Public Accounting
Audit methodology, financial controls, and the measurement standards that became her operating philosophy
TD Bank · Finance & Risk Management
Top-10 U.S. bank · $300B+ in assets · high-growth, high-accountability environment during rapid national expansion
L.L.Bean · Senior Audit Leadership
Operational and enterprise audit across retail and manufacturing; cross-functional executive collaboration at scale
Pemberton & Associates · Partner
CxO search practice · Talent Architecture Diagnostic™ · Key Finance Roles
Syracuse University · Certified Public Accountant · Certified Internal Auditor
When she's not in a boardroom, she's on the mountain at Sugarloaf, striper fishing off the Maine coast, or cheering on the Red Sox with Avery and Ridge.
Financial Services · Behavioral Intelligence

Andrew Sullivan, Executive Recruiter

Andrew specializes in financial services executive search, advising community and regional banks, credit unions, CUSOs, wealth and investment firms, and fintech organizations across the United States. He partners with leadership teams to identify and secure top talent across critical functions: commercial lending, retail banking, and wealth management.

What distinguishes Andrew's practice is the lens he brings to it. A graduate-level background in psychology and behavioral analysis means he does not simply evaluate candidates against a job description. He studies how they think, what motivates them, and how they are likely to perform under the specific pressures of your organization. Most search professionals can tell you what a candidate has done. Andrew can tell you how they did it.

The result is a quality of finalist presentation that goes well beyond a résumé review or a phone screen, giving search committees genuine confidence before an offer is ever extended.

Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
Executive Recruiter
ams@pembertonhr.com  ·  D: 207.888.9769
Specialization
Community & Regional Banks · Credit Unions · Wealth Management · CUSOs · Fintech
Functions
Lending · Retail Banking · Wealth · Risk & Compliance · Operations
Geography
United States · New England focus
Education
BA · Saint Joseph's College of Maine
Education
MS Behavioral Analysis · University of Southern Maine
PI Profile
Altruist PI Profile Altruist
Off the Clock
Married and based in Maine. Hiking the White Mountains and fly fishing across New England with his wife and their dog, Allagash.
Client Portfolio

30 Years of
Partnership

Clients past and present: a diverse portfolio spanning financial services, healthcare, education, nonprofit, legal, manufacturing, and technology, built over three decades across New England and beyond.

TD Bank
Bangor Savings Bank
The Jackson Laboratory
Martin's Point Health Care
Cape Cod Five
NH Mutual Bancorp
NH Trust
First National Bank
Goodwill Northern New England
Camden National Bank
L.L.Bean
IDEXX Laboratories
Citizens Bank
FDIC
Vermont Teddy Bear
Mascoma Bank
Colby College
University of New England
Verrill Dana
Maine Bankers Association
Good Shepherd Food Bank
Soleras Advanced Coatings
Aegon
Lighthouse Credit Union
InterMed
Community Health Options
Androscoggin Bank
Baker Newman Noyes
Eaton Peabody
Greenbacker Capital
Spurwink
Sweetser
MDI Biological Laboratory
IBM
Bernstein Shur
Brann & Isaacson
Tilson Technology
WIPFLI
M&T Bank (Legacy)
Kennebunk Savings Bank
InsurBanc
YMCA of Southern Maine
Farnsworth Art Museum
United Way
Avesta Housing
Atlantic Federal Credit Union
Bigelow Investment Advisors
Boston Financial
Hammond Lumber
Husson University
Thomas College
Logically
Newburyport Bank
Emera
Prentiss & Carlisle
Machias Savings Bank
R.M. Davis
MEMIC
Maine Biotechnology
Redhook Brewery
Chief Financial OfficerChief Executive OfficerChief Operating OfficerChief Medical OfficerChief Information Security OfficerChief Risk OfficerChief Lending OfficerChief Growth OfficerPresident & CEOPresidentGeneral CounselSVP Community DevelopmentSVP Commercial BankingSVP Director of RetailSVP Wealth ManagementVP Agile DeliveryVP Commercial BankingVP ComplianceVP FinanceVP Internal AuditVP MarketingDirector of Commercial BankingDirector of ComplianceDirector of FinanceDirector of Human ResourcesDirector of Information SecurityHead of Product ManagementControllerEVP Senior Banking OfficerExecutive DirectorMedical DirectorCHROCFOCOOCROPartnerSenior LenderChief Financial OfficerChief Executive OfficerChief Operating OfficerChief Medical OfficerChief Information Security OfficerChief Risk OfficerChief Lending OfficerChief Growth OfficerPresident & CEOPresidentGeneral CounselSVP Community DevelopmentSVP Commercial BankingSVP Director of RetailSVP Wealth ManagementVP Agile DeliveryVP Commercial BankingVP ComplianceVP FinanceVP Internal AuditVP MarketingDirector of Commercial BankingDirector of ComplianceDirector of FinanceDirector of Human ResourcesDirector of Information SecurityHead of Product ManagementControllerEVP Senior Banking OfficerExecutive DirectorMedical DirectorCHROCFOCOOCROPartnerSenior Lender

Strategy doesn't execute itself.
Let's close the gap.

Whether you are looking to make a transformative executive hire, build a proactive talent pipeline, or understand what is standing between your strategy and its execution, we would welcome the conversation.

Executive Search
Retained search. Up to a 2-year guarantee. Performance-aligned structures available.
THEO™ Talent Intelligence
Always-on talent portfolio. Dedicated Portfolio Manager. Minimum 5 included searches per term.
Talent Architecture Diagnostic™
Assess your workforce as a capital asset. Built for CFOs, CEOs, and boards. Led by Susan Pemberton, CPA, CIA.
Just a Conversation
Not sure where to start? Tell us the problem. We'll tell you honestly whether we can help.