James Ballard

Managing Partner & Co-Founder

With 25+ years of experience with a specialism across HR search, James leads Annapurna’s executive search practice, supporting C-Suite & Exec level roles. James’ passion for relationship-driven search marries with focusing on finding world-class senior talent for transforming organisations.

James is also the founder of ERUPT (previously The Business Transformation Network, The BTN), an international thought leadership platform for content and events, generated by our community of 100,000+ members.

Since founding Annapurna, one of his proudest moments was winning ‘Best Professional Services Recruitment Firm’ for the 3rd time at the Recruiter Awards for Excellence.

James has hosted the ERUPT conference on 5 occasions, spoken at the HR Technologies conference, presented at industry trade shows and is the host of the ‘In The Spotlight’ podcast. Over the years, James has also hosted over 100 VIP roundtables for industry leaders.

Aside from his work at Annapurna, James is a cricket coach for children and a champion for equity in the workplace.