Elena Vasquez

Elena Vasquez leads Halverson Reed's organization and leadership practice from the firm's London office. She joined the firm in 2023, bringing both academic depth and operating experience to the engagements where strategy must be made to work through people.

Vasquez holds a PhD in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan, where her dissertation examined leadership transitions in mid-sized firms with high tenure-to-revenue ratios. Before joining the firm she spent eight years inside a Fortune 500 industrial company, ultimately as the head of HR transformation, where she led the integration of acquired businesses representing more than $2 billion in revenue. She has also taught executive education at INSEAD and the London Business School.

Her engagements concentrate on the human work of mergers — the integration that reaches the org chart, the early decisions that determine whether retained talent stays — and on leadership transitions in privately held companies, where the founder's departure is rarely as orderly as the term sheet suggests. She is the firm's most prolific writer and the editor of the Halverson Reed Perspectives series.

She is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, a member of the Academy of Management, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Organizational Behavior. She is based in London.