Don is one of the founding Managing Partners of Top Gun Ventures and has successfully conducted hundreds of senior-level executive searches over three decades.
Throughout his career, Don has continually raised the bar on the recruitment of executive talent for venture-backed start-up companies, private equity portfolio companies, Fortune 1000 corporations, and higher education. He understands the characteristics necessary for a successful leader to scale a start-up company to a successful liquidity event, as well as for an executive to build and lead a larger business in good economic times and bad.
Don focuses on CEO, President, VP-level, and Board searches across a variety of industries. He has helped many companies to build entire executive teams. Many of these companies have grown, prospered, and undergone successful liquidity events. Don also works closely with British and European companies that require GameChanging executives to expand their business within the United States.
Executive Search Innovator
Don continues to be a thought leader in the executive search industry by setting high performance standards and establishing best practices for executive search processes, methodologies, and candidate-evaluation techniques. The result has been the significant repeat and referral business that Don and Top Gun Ventures receive.
Prior to forming Top Gun Ventures, Don was the founder and CEO of Tuttle Venture Group, a successful national retained executive search firm that merged with Top Gun Ventures in 2002. Don began his executive search career in 1984 and was a partner within one of the largest global executive search firms in the world.
Before entering the executive search profession, Don progressed throughout engineering and operations management roles within a Fortune 500 technology company and has started and scaled four companies in the last three decades. Don received his Bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University and also completed all coursework leading towards a Master of Science degree. Don is a certified GCologist and applies this organimetric assessment tool when evaluating candidates as well as executive teams to better identify, select, and align GameChanging leaders and teams.
Don has been featured on CBS MarketWatch, contributes articles to various newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and globally, and has served as a guest lecturer at universities and business events.
Don was recently elected to be Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Lindenwood University, a private higher education institution with enrollment exceeding 7,000 students, and is known nationally and internationally for innovation, entrepreneurship, and extraordinary dedication to students.