Meet Nathan
About Nathan Jenner
Twenty-five years on both sides of the executive equation—running global businesses, and assessing the leaders who run them.
Nathan Jenner advises boards, CEOs, and investors on CEO succession, executive assessment and development, senior team effectiveness, and organizational change.
He was Chief Operating Officer for Electronic Markets and Global Head of Market Transparency Products at Bloomberg, where he helped lead industry transformations arising from shifts in market structure and regulation, and served as an advisor to the CFTC and global regulators. Before Bloomberg, he led risk management, pricing, and merger integration for JPMorgan's structured products group across New York and London.
Recognizing that leadership blindspots pose the greatest risk to enterprise value, he joined ghSMART, advising CEOs, boards, and private equity sponsors on leadership assessment, succession planning, and organizational effectiveness—before founding ExecutiveCode.
Nathan earned an MA in Organizational Psychology and Change Leadership from Columbia University and a BSc in Psychology and Business from Aston University. He serves on the Advisory Board of Georgetown University's Human Resources Management Program and the board of the Conflict Resolution Center of Northern Virginia, and previously led restorative justice interventions as a Peacemaker at the Center for Court Innovation.
The Question That Changed Everything
What boards don't see until it's too late
Boards and CEOs kept describing the same surprise. An executive with a strong record, obvious capability, and real ambition would reach the top of the enterprise—and stall. Others with similar credentials kept rising. Nobody had seen it coming.
It was rarely a failure of intelligence or effort. More often, the gap originated in the very strengths that had fueled the rise: relentless operational execution, a heroic approach that closed every deal, an ability to make today's plan work. Capabilities that accelerated their ascent through middle management, and simply weren't enough at the top.
Conventional talent reviews rewarded those traits rather than probing what sat beneath them. So the gaps stayed invisible—to the leaders themselves and to the people evaluating them—until they were elevated into roles where the effects were magnified.
By then the cost had moved. It no longer sat with the executive; it sat with the organization that promoted them. Succession is the highest-stakes decision a board makes, and directors are candid that it is among the hardest to get right—evaluating polished candidates on signals that reveal past performance but not how someone will lead when the plan breaks, the market turns, or the organization pushes back.
What surprised Nathan was how consistently those gaps clustered: seven recurring patterns, holding across industries, company sizes, and leadership styles. Seen from the operator's desk and through the organizational psychologist's lens, they became the foundation of Seven Blindspots.
Who Nathan Works With
Nathan works with leaders responsible for high-stakes talent decisions.
Boards of Directors
Strengthening CEO succession planning, executive selection, and governance effectiveness.
CEOs & Executive Teams
Improving leadership selection, effectiveness, and organizational performance.
Private Equity Investors
Evaluating management teams, leadership risk, and value creation readiness.
CHROs & Talent Leaders
Building stronger leadership pipelines and accelerating executive readiness.
The Cost of Getting It Wrong Is Rarely Visible in Advance
Whether you are planning succession, evaluating a finalist, or supporting a leader already in the seat, the risks worth knowing are the ones that don't surface in an interview.