Case Study: Building the Tax Leadership Behind a High-Growth Biotech Company’s Next Phase
The Challenge
A rapidly growing publicly traded company engaged UNITY Executive Tax on a retained basis to confidentially recruit its next Vice President of Tax. The company was entering a new phase of global expansion and needed an executive capable of building and leading a world-class tax function while serving as a strategic business partner to the CFO.
The role required an exceptional combination of technical expertise, executive leadership, and industry experience. Responsibilities included oversight of global tax planning, ASC 740, international tax, transfer pricing, compliance, SEC reporting, indirect tax, audit defense, and tax strategy across a growing multinational organization.
Adding to the complexity, confidentiality was paramount throughout the engagement. Because the company was replacing its Head of Tax, candidates were required to execute non-disclosure agreements before receiving meaningful information about the company or opportunity. This required careful communication, discretion, and relationship-driven recruiting from the very first conversation.
Why UNITY Executive Tax
The client selected UNITY Executive Tax for three primary reasons.
First, our deep tax technical expertise. Unlike traditional executive search firms, our team has real tax leadership experience, enabling us to conduct the initial technical assessment of every candidate before they ever reached the client. Rather than asking the CFO to spend valuable time determining whether a candidate truly possessed the necessary ASC 740, international tax, provision, transfer pricing, and public company expertise, we thoroughly vetted those capabilities ourselves. This allowed the executive team to focus their interviews on leadership style, executive presence, and cultural fit while having confidence that every finalist had already met the technical bar.
Second, our boutique specialization. As a firm exclusively dedicated to executive tax recruiting, we offered something the large, retained search firms often cannot: complete market access. Because we are not restricted by extensive “off-limits” agreements with prior clients, we were able to recruit from virtually any organization in the market. In a niche executive search where the qualified candidate pool is already limited, this significantly expanded the universe of potential candidates available to our client.
Finally, our flexibility and customized approach. Rather than forcing every engagement into a rigid, standardized search process, we tailored this search specifically to the client’s needs. As priorities evolved throughout the engagement, we were able to quickly recalibrate our strategy, refine the candidate profile, and adjust our process in real time. The client appreciated having a nimble search partner that could adapt quickly instead of following a one-size-fits-all methodology.
Our Approach
Rather than simply presenting resumes, we partnered closely with the CFO and HR leadership throughout the engagement.
Each week we conducted strategic update meetings where we presented a detailed comparative assessment of every candidate under consideration. Candidates were evaluated across a comprehensive set of leadership and technical criteria, including:
- Industry relevance
- Public company leadership experience
- Executive presence
- Global and international tax expertise
- ASC 740 and tax provision leadership
- Tax strategy and planning
- Finance transformation experience
- Leadership scope
- Experience in both large and high-growth organizations
- Relocation considerations
- Compensation expectations
- Additional differentiators unique to each executive
This structured approach enabled the executive team to make objective comparisons while relying on UNITY Executive Tax to assess each candidate’s technical tax capabilities. Company leadership then focused their interview process on leadership style, cultural fit, and long-term organizational alignment.
The Result
Despite an exceptionally limited candidate pool, the search concluded with two outstanding finalists, each bringing an ideal blend of Big Four training and biotechnology industry leadership.
The selected executive accepted the position and quickly made an immediate impact within the organization. Within her first month, she reported thriving in the role and successfully implementing meaningful improvements across the tax department, while earning strong support from the CFO.
Client Feedback
“We had an excellent partnership with Unity Executive Tax throughout our recent search. They integrated seamlessly into our process, quickly becoming a trusted extension of our team while maintaining the highest level of professionalism and confidentiality.”
“What truly stood out was their deep technical expertise in tax. The functional depth they brought was essential in identifying and assessing candidates against the core capabilities and overall fit required for this role.”
“Unity Executive Tax delivered a thoughtful, well-managed, and highly collaborative search process, and we would strongly recommend them as a partner for senior-level financial leadership searches.”
The UNITY Executive Tax Difference
Executive tax searches require far more than identifying qualified candidates. They demand technical credibility, discretion, executive assessment, and the ability to guide leadership teams through complex hiring decisions.
By combining decades of executive tax recruiting experience with firsthand tax leadership expertise, UNITY Executive Tax delivers searches that are efficient, highly consultative, and built to secure exceptional tax leaders for the nation’s most respected companies.