Helping Companies with changing business models hire tech savvy executives

Isaac Cheifetz helps companies with changing business models hire technology savvy executives. He has nearly 20 years experience consulting to advanced technology businesses on executive search, organizational design and strategy.

He’s made a career intertwining his experience in executive recruiting and organizational design with his interests in history, strategy and workflow optimization. He’s been around long enough to see his vision of Information Technology as a standardized platform for business process optimization become a reality.

Isaac writes a monthly column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Commerce Chain, on trends and best practices in the global economy, with a Business eCommerce focus. He is a member of Financial Executive International's National Committee on Finance & Information Technology (CFIT). He edited The Intranet Data Warehouse, by Richard Tanler, (1997, Wiley Press), and has written strategic White Papers for B2B vendors in industries including graphic arts, logistics and human capital.

Mr. Cheifetz completed a BA in History from Yeshiva University in 1981. He then spent six months picking avocados on an Israeli kibbutz. An interest in the time and motion studies of Frederick Taylor led him to graduate studies in Organizational Psychology at Columbia University, where he completed a Master of Arts in 1983.

The next couple of years were spent as a compensation analyst and organization consultant to Columbia University’s academic and administrative departments, while pursuing additional coursework in computer science and journalism.

Graduate school loans and a fear of bureaucracy drove him into the deep end of the pool as an executive recruiter in 1986, working for Pencom Systems, a New York based search firm focused on advanced technologies nationally, including UNIX, object oriented programming, Artificial Intelligence. Working with the firms building the technologies that became the foundation of the Internet revolution, he developed a deep set of practical skills around hiring and retaining key executives for technology based businesses.

Isaac moved to Minnesota in 1988, after a summer spent in backcountry Alaska in which he rafted down the Noatak River in the Arctic; kayaked in Prince William Sound; hiked in Denali National Park; hiked in Katmai Grizzly Bear Preserve and Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Isaac founded Open Technologies in 1992, as an executive search firm focused on advanced software environments. Candidates were change agents who brought methodological rigor to their discipline, whether marketing, systems integration, product development or sales. Clients were start-ups, consulting firms or companies seeking to re-position their business to better compete in the knowledge-based economy.

He has consulted to early stage Business to Business Ecommerce ventures on strategy, organizational design and raising investor financing. He has served as a CEO coach for many early stage companies.