Origins of Nurole: from a black book to a white fence

I first started to think about the idea that has become Nurole when, as part of a corporate social responsibility initiative, I was tasked with repainting a fence at a local underprivileged school. Armed with a bucket of white paint and a brush, I set upon my task enthusiastically. As the day progressed my initial fears became reality; painting has never been a strength of mine and I knew the whole fence needed to be re-painted.

In over 30 years of headhunting, I’ve been fortunate to meet some inspiring people, many of whom I knew were desperate to help non-profit organisations but struggled to hear about relevant opportunities. As I watched the paint dry, the inspiration for Nurole appeared - I knew if I could help connect non-profit organisations with my proverbial black book of contacts, the long-term impact to the organisations would be much greater than the half painted fence.

Since then, Nurole has placed hundreds of people on non-profit boards. We have provided those organisations with talent offering unquantifiable value through improving governance and management that might otherwise have remained untapped. The Nurole platform empowers individuals to self-select themselves for opportunities which critically unearths individuals’ passions.

Two placements that encapsulate the benefit and power of the platform are:

While we now work with a range of other organisations (publicly listed companies (PLCs), private equity (PE), venture capital (VC), privately owned companies, government and headhunters), our ultimate goal remains - to make the world a better place through improving board governance. Through our candidate-led platform and our network of 15,000 pre-vetted members and their recommendations (50% of our placements come through recommendations), we help organisations and headhunters cast the net wider, creating a shortlist at a speed and cost that the traditional search process cannot match. As the CEO we found in Colombia and placed in a Private Equity backed business in Spain said, ‘Nurole puts the science into serendipity’.