Charlotte Magazine: Life Lessons, Thaddeus Jones
Thadd Jones, a veteran of Lowe’s and Amazon, leads his own fast-growing search firm.
The executive recruiter draws on a deep family history to push for diverse faces in high places.
We’re nearly an hour into a conversation at a SouthPark coffee shop when Thaddeus Jones suddenly goes silent. Jones has just explained that Nexus Search Partners, an executive search firm he launched in January 2023, is “personally fulfilling” because it aims to fill corporate executive positions, traditionally dominated by white men, with more racial minorities and women. “But at the same time, you know,” he begins, then chokes up.
When he speaks again, it’s about Howard Gunn, his maternal grandfather. Gunn was a minister, Ph.D., and civil rights activist who led 1960s voting rights efforts in his (and Jones’) native Chickasaw County, Mississippi. He died in 1997.
“He gave up his career, in terms of high aspirations … to really give back to his community,” Jones says. “That was a foundation that was instilled in all of us—that no matter how high you go, no matter what you do, there’s always a component of you that gives back to other people.”
He says the principle has guided him in his 20-year career in human resources. Jones earned a basketball scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically Black college in Nashville, where he graduated in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. A friend’s father suggested HR as a potential career. Jones recruited employees for Tractor Supply Company and Target in Nashville before he moved to the Charlotte area in 2012. He recruited for Lowe’s Home Improvement, and in 2017, Amazon hired him to develop a diverse workforce for its global operations. He knew Red Ventures founders Ric Elias and Dan Feldstein, which led him to a job as executive vice president and chief talent officer for the Charlotte-based digital media company in 2021.
But he’d already begun to think about founding his own company. Jones worked with search firms during his time in HR and wanted to use that experience in his own firm. Nexus examines the culture, values, and goals of clients and candidates and matches them with an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion. “There’s a huge opportunity here,” he says. “Firms historically haven’t presented diverse talent at all.”
Jones and his wife, Tiffani, an OB-GYN for Novant Health, live in the SouthPark area with their 14-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son. His words have been edited for length and clarity.
I always wanted to go to an HBCU. My grandfather, my uncles, my aunts all went to HBCUs, so that was something that was really important for me.
My best friend’s father was the president of Meharry Medical College (a historically Black medical school in Nashville), and he approached me and said, “Hey, I think you should consider a career in HR. When I watch you on campus with me, you talk to the janitor the same way you talk to my colleagues. You treat everybody the same.” At that point, I knew nothing of HR other than that’s where people went to get fired.I’ve been on the talent management side of HR in my career, which is all about how you attract, develop, and grow talent within organizations. But it’s not just about finding talent. It’s about ensuring that you have talent in preparation for growth. And if you have the right talent in place that can exceed the company’s projections, you’re at an advantage over your competitor. Being given an opportunity like that early on in my life was unbelievable.
I’ve been on the talent management side of HR in my career, which is all about how you attract, develop, and grow talent within organizations. But it’s not just about finding talent. It’s about ensuring that you have talent in preparation for growth. And if you have the right talent in place that can exceed the company’s projections, you’re at an advantage over your competitor. Being given an opportunity like that early on in my life was unbelievable.
I was recruited to go to Amazon in 2017. I joined a division called Worldwide Operations, which was responsible for all of the distribution centers, global logistics, and I think we had roughly about 300,000 employees. We ended up growing that business to just shy of a million (employees) in three years.
I was traveling back and forth to Seattle for four years, every other week. But pre-COVID, that was life. That’s just what you did. I ended up deciding to come back and work for Red Ventures. COVID reset a lot of stuff. The second (reason) was family dynamic; my wife had a demanding job, and I was always traveling. And the third was meeting Ric and Dan.
Dan and I would chat, maybe once a quarter. “Hey, how are you thinking about talent? How are you thinking about diversity? We’re looking to do some of this work here at Red Ventures, and I’d love to pick your brain about things.” He and I had a relationship that was developed and really cultivated over his shared interest.
My profession hasn’t always done a good job of showing up. If people are my No. 1 asset, then how much effort and time and energy should we really be putting into ensuring the people who are finding the people understand what we’re doing? But not just find them—how do you develop them?
This is something that I’ve always felt back from my days when I first started. I was never excited about you starting the job. My excitement came a year from now, when I walk past you in the hallway, and you say, “Hey, I just got a promotion,” or, “Hey, thank you, my wife and my family love the city, we’re doing great, the kids are doing well, and I’m loving what I’m doing.” This might sound cheesy, but people in my world can change lives.
There’s a huge gap right now of diverse talent at the top of organizations. There’s a lot of firms out there that do executive search. I could have stayed in corporate America, been extremely happy, and continued on my journey. But I’ve always worked with executive search firms in my former roles, and the lack of intentionality regarding diversity at the executive level was something I felt was a huge void.
We didn’t officially launch the business until January, and we’ve averaged right at about one hire per month. In the beginning, when I launched the business, I told the team, “If we do four this year, consider that a huge success.”
At the C-suite level of Fortune 500 companies, only 4% (of executives) are African American. So the gap is huge.
We do board-level searches for companies as well: Who’s helping to shape the narrative of the organization? Who’s helping to shape the strategy of the company? Who’s hiring the next CEO? You can have diversity at the entry level, but the higher you go up, there’s a lack of representation. People feel like there’s a ceiling. Those things are critically important.
We do a deep cultural assessment of the company. For one client (Charlotte Pipe and Foundry), it took us about 35 days. We interviewed all the officers. We had interviews with their outside legal counsel, we reviewed all of their HR data in their surveys for the last five years, we had interviews with several team members. And it was important, because this company’s been around for over 100 years. I just don’t think you’re going to get that from firms that are just looking for a search fee and to be able to fill a job.
If (companies) are not really inclusive, and they’re not really open and welcoming, it doesn’t matter who you are and what you belong to if you can’t be yourself once you get there. Inclusion is so important. So I just like to lead with the “I” (in DEI). Because the “I,” to me, introduces all the other things that come.
Nexus, by definition, is a connector.
I’ve always had a passion for doing something in this space. I’m from a small town in Mississippi, and having the ability to lead hundreds of people for one of the largest companies in the world, Amazon, was a phenomenal opportunity in my career. And you say to yourself, “I’ve far exceeded what I thought I would have an opportunity to do, which is great.” And then you get to a point where you start thinking about: What’s my give-back?
What’s my give-back to that younger me? To be quite frank, the firms that are out here right now, big and small—I’ve just been really turned off by the focus on revenue and less of the focus on the client and the candidate.
I don’t think I ever thought about myself as an entrepreneur. It’s not something where I just woke up and said, “I want to be an entrepreneur now.” Tiffani and I are OK financially to do something like this, and I think I’ve been afforded some things over my career that’s allowed me to be able to do it. I would much rather like to have impact and purpose right now versus having to wait.
I guess it goes back to how my grandfather treated people, no matter if he was talking to a dignitary or he was working with someone who couldn’t afford for their life to get better. I think there are more people out here who are looking for a purpose-driven company that believes in that, that ties into that, but also has the prerequisite skills to do the job, because you’ve got to have that part.
I like to call Charlotte the tip of the spear. For us, it’s been really interesting and refreshing to see a very robust, growing minority population from a professional standpoint, which is really positive and good.
But when you start to look at parts of our city that haven’t experienced those things, the question then becomes: What can we do as a business community and on the philanthropic side to really improve the changes in outcomes in some of those areas? So there’s several nonprofits that I’m a part of, like Road to Hire, which is a phenomenal organization that really works to help kids in underserved communities and Title I schools. I think there’s a host of stuff that can be done.
It feels like home. We’ve met some phenomenal people. We have great friends here. We have a great church community here. So this is a place that we want to be in, and hopefully we can help shape what the next 10, 20, 30 years looks like in the city.