Who We Are

At Forte Search Partners, we help companies build transformative leadership teams — because the right leader doesn’t just fill a role, they shape culture, accelerate growth, and define what comes next. Our approach is rooted in deep partnership, strategic insight, and a personalized process that delivers lasting impact.

We offer high-touch, hands-on service delivered by experienced teams who are fully engaged from start to finish. Every search is customized, rigorous, and grounded in understanding your culture, values, and vision.

Meet our team

Babak Dehnad

Chief Partner

My career began in recruitment and evolved into executive HR leadership, where I was consistently brought in to scale companies, drive talent transformations, and architect cultures of excellence. I’ve led all facets of executive hiring—through both in-house teams and external search firms—and have built People functions from the ground up.

At Forte, our mission is to build inspirational cultures by helping companies align their leadership, strategy, and values. My focus is culture-based retained executive search, specializing in G&A roles. Through decades of in-house experience, I’ve learned how to recognize the patterns behind leadership success—and failure—and I bring that insight to every engagement.

Alongside Michelle, I co-lead our additional offerings: hands-on culture workshops to diagnose your current culture and build a plan for your preferred one (as taught at Stanford Continuing Studies), and our proprietary 4-S Culture Assessment Tool (CAT), which helps organizations and individuals understand where they are and where they want to go.

I’m proud to be building Forte with Michelle—a brilliant recruiter and a close friend—who shares my commitment to shaping not just teams, but cultures that inspire.

Michelle Ashby

Partner

Recruiting has been in my life since I was 14, helping out at my mom’s staffing agency—and it’s been my passion ever since. I’ve spent my career scaling companies through high-impact talent strategies, with a deep specialization in Go-to-Market (GTM) executive hiring.

At Forte, our mission is to build inspirational cultures. That means finding not just any leaders, but the right ones—those who align with your values, goals, and long-term vision. I lead our culture-based retained executive search for GTM roles and bring the same precision and passion I’ve used to grow teams from 100 to 500+.

Beyond search, we offer culture workshops to bridge the gap between your “now” and “preferred” culture—both professionally and personally—based on what we teach at Stanford and wrote about in our book. Our 4-S Culture Assessment Tool (CAT) helps companies and leaders see the invisible levers behind high-performing cultures.

I’m fortunate to work side-by-side with Babak, a strategic HR leader and friend, to help companies grow with purpose and integrity.