Liz Moulton makes the jump to Elevate.Caryn Leigh Photography
Elevate is launching a search firm and talent development vertical, called Elevate Talent, and has named Liz Moulton chief talent and people officer.
Moulton, a 2018 SBJ Game Changer, will sit in the agency’s C-suite and report to Chairman and CEO Al Guido. She’ll lead the formation of Elevate’s new division, a global talent consultancy that will work externally with clients and internally within Elevate on identifying and recruiting talent, developing and growing workers and building organizational structures and communicative cultures to ultimately help clients, and Elevate, succeed.
“The vision for this is as we are consulting the clients and helping serve clients, whether in premium ticket sales, partnership sales, we like to go in at an early stage, ‘how can we help holistically?’” Moulton said. “One of the top, top things people bring up is ‘I need help with talent.’ We want to be able to serve our clients in this very important way because it’s one of the top things they voice to us.”
Moulton joins Elevate from Activision Blizzard, where she was brought in by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick to help the company revise its recruiting and retention practices. She spent more than three years there as global head of talent but always planned to exit once Activision’s merger with Microsoft kicked into gear. Moulton’s career has been spent either finding executive leaders for clients or helping develop them internally with stops at search firm powerhouses Spencer Stuart, Korn Ferry and Russell Reynolds. With Elevate, she’ll remain based out of Salem, Mass., where her husband, Seth, serves as a U.S. congressman.
Moulton inherits what she called a “well-performing” human resources group at Elevate, helmed by Amy Lukas, executive vice president, people and culture. Beyond finding and developing talent for the company, Moulton will oversee Elevate’s organizational structure and internal talent development, crucial for a firm with roughly 200 employees that is growing quickly and consistently hiring new people.
Elevate joins a growing crowd in the sports and entertainment executive search/talent development space, one that increasingly includes agencies. CAA launched its CAA Search in 2017 but the space really heated up post-pandemic. General search firm ZRG acquired Turnkey’s sports-focused search business in 2021, Excel Sports Management bought Nolan Partners in early 2022, and UTA recently acquired James & Co., helmed by Michele James and Roysi Erbes. Prodigy Search is also a player in the field.
Moulton said Elevate Talent would likely land somewhere in the 20- to 60-employee range; the company is also likely to acquire existing search/talent development firms in the future.
The value for agencies is in using search to develop trusted adviser-type relationships with clients, which can lead to opportunities for other lines of a company like Elevate’s business.
“One of the things I love about search is the in-depth work,” said Moulton. “I was a trusted adviser and did really in-depth work with people like MLS and Don Garber, Kevin Demoff and the Rams, and Sam Kennedy and the Red Sox. I’m getting to know you so well, I’m like an extension of your team. I think a lot of agencies aspire to that.”
