Trainor Consulting

Sean Trainor, the founder and Managing Partner, leads all senior-level search mandates personally. He built the firm in 2013 after running the private equity and hedge fund executive recruiting practice at Heidrick & Struggles, where he placed partners and senior investment professionals at some of the largest alternative asset managers globally.

The firm concentrates on senior investment and commercial leadership roles within alternative asset management. Mandates typically include partner-track investment professionals, heads of business development and investor relations, and portfolio operations leaders across private equity, hedge funds, private credit, and real assets.

No. The firm's client base ranges from middle-market specialists to global mega-funds. The common thread is the seniority of the mandate — Trainor focuses on hires that can influence a firm's investment direction or fundraising capacity, not junior or middle-office roles.

The firm relies on a proprietary referral network cultivated over two decades in the alternatives industry. Unlike large, multi-practice search firms, Trainor does not use a database-first sourcing model. Its candidate pool is built from relationships with operating partners, limited partners, and senior deal professionals who refer talent confidentially.

Before founding his own firm, Sean Trainor was a partner at Heidrick & Struggles, where he built and led the firm's private equity and hedge fund recruiting practice. He spent more than a decade there, executing C-suite and partner-level searches for some of the most demanding clients in the alternatives space.