Cathy Preston (she/her)
President & Founder
Cathy held senior leadership roles during her 17 year career in the marketing services sector followed by 20+ years of executive search experience in which she has built a stellar reputation for her client service orientation and her ability to source and recruit ‘best in class’ talent.
A graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University, Cathy began her career in Marketing at Colgate Palmolive and later joined a contingency-based search firm where her efforts were focused on marketing roles primarily within the CPG sector. In 1984 Cathy was recruited by Marketing & Promotion Group (M&PG) and was instrumental in that company’s exponential growth, including the founding of Mosaic Direct, a sister company to M&PG which became one of Canada’s leading direct marketing agencies. In 1998 she assumed the role of President, Mosaic Marketing Services, the largest marketing services company in Canada, and consistently delivered increased growth and performance. In 2001 Cathy returned to the executive search industry to bring her breadth of business and client service knowledge to her clients and help them build their senior leadership teams.
Cathy is a past member of the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) Leadership Committee and a past member of their Board Nominating Committee, and a Past Board member of the CMA itself. She also served as a board member for five years for Covenant House, a resource for homeless youth. Cathy is a founding member of the steering committee for the Judy Project, a Rotman School of Business executive program for the Advancement of Women in Leadership. Cathy also volunteers with Scala Network, an organization targeted at helping women at multi levels advance their careers which is a personal interest and passion. She is also working to help executive women who are 50 years of age and older with beginning to strategize around their “Next Chapter”.
In her spare time you'll find Cathy whipping up a healthy meal or walking her mini-schnauzer with her husband.
Lindsay Preston (she/her)
Partner
While pursuing her Bachelor in Business Management degree from Dalhousie University with a specialization in Leadership and Organizations, Lindsay spent her summers working in the corporate world. Her first summer was in the Marketing Department at Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts corporate head office where she helped create their internal employee website that was used globally by
employees. The next year she interned at Artez Interactive, a leading provider of online fundraising solutions for non-profit organizations. There Lindsay focused on their website revamp, creating webinar content and on helping them plan for and market their annual conference. Her final summer was spent as part of the Corporate Development team at SickKids Foundation helping them maximize staff involvement throughout southwestern Ontario with corporations such as TD, Walmart and Costco.
After graduating, her first role was in Advertising with Cundari Group, the largest independent full-service Marketing Services agency in Canada. There she learned the importance of time and project management, as well as the value in establishing client relationships that are based on trust and integrity. Within six months Lindsay was promoted. Her clients spanned not-for-profit (Canadian Cancer Society), education (George Brown College), and the financial sector (First National Bank), to name a few. The next stop on Lindsay’s journey was PayPal Canada. In her role as Consumer Marketing Manager, Lindsay was responsible for finding creative and strategic ways to engage the 5.5 million Canadian consumers who use their PayPal account on an annual basis. She worked alongside her agency partners (Publicis, Havas, Konrad Group, The Search Agency), and shared best practices with her global marketing team. Using data as her guide, Lindsay and her team produced the most successful marketing engagement campaign to date at PayPal Canada, resulting in a global internal award for Innovative and Game Changing creative.
Lindsay joined PHC in January 2017 and since then has grown quickly. She cut her teeth by focusing on junior mandates and within two years, Lindsay took on her first executive level search. She has the benefit of learning and observing Cathy, and since 2017 she also directly supports Cathy on senior C-suite mandates. Currently, Lindsay leads her own searches from the Vice President level down.
Over the years, Lindsay has gained the trust of her clients and candidates for her thoroughness and fulsome approach to search. She is excellent at engaging multiple stakeholders to ensure a search is completed on time - or sooner.
In Lindsay’s spare time you’ll find her with her husband, at their local park, chasing their kids and dog.
ian mishkel (he/him)
Partner, interim & Strategic Advisor solutions
Ian has over 30 years of experience in organizational growth and development operations, specializing in strategic transformational funding in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. He has worked extensively in the post-secondary space, with institutions large and small, public, and private, at both the college and university level. Ian is an experienced communicator with a deep understanding of marketing and communications, branding and messaging, donor relations, public and government relations, and commercial and not-for-profit operations. Drawing on a breadth and depth of knowledge around product and service delivery, brand promise, impact and impact measurement, his focus is helping organisations of all kinds create large and replicable transformational funding opportunities.
Ian endeavors to bring the discipline and rigour of private sector practice to public and non-profit operations. His extensive work in the varied disciplines of post-secondary education has shown that in pursuing the resources necessary to fill funding gaps, the fundamental best practices from sales and marketing consistently apply, regardless of the organization’s specific mandate. His goal is to help professionalize non-profits through funding diversification and growth—not incremental growth, but sustainable, exponential growth. Ian believes in a holistic approach, starting with the fundamentals of organizational vision, mission and values, and aligning these with strategy and execution.
Ian is an effective manager with the ability to attract, develop, and motivate enterprise-wide, high-performance teams that are fully engaged in co-creating funding plans they can take ownership of and execute. Driven by a firm belief that fundraising is a “team sport”—it is the responsibility of all areas of the organization—he insists on the importance of building a collaborative and engaged fundraising culture throughout the entire enterprise. With all units coordinated around a funding plan and unified in their objectives and communications, the organization’s imagination and potential can be fully realized.
Ian Preston (he/him)
managing director, operations & finance
After graduating from Dalhousie University with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, Ian began his business career with General Motors where he held positions in Sales, Distribution and Customer Service departments. He then joined Spalding Canada and gained experience in sales and marketing initiatives before moving on to Nestle where, in a career that spanned nearly two decades, he held various senior positions in Marketing, Supply Chain Management and Sales. His many accomplishments at Nestlé included spearheading the significant development of Nestlé Canada’s sales with Walmart and subsequently in helping establish the Ice Cream business for Nestlé as Director of Sales.
In 2001 Ian entered the retained search industry focusing his efforts primarily on senior Sales and Marketing roles as well as non-profit organizations. Ian possesses well honed strategic thinking abilities; communication skills; and a keenly developed, intuitively insightful ability to gauge interpersonal relationships that he has developed during his marketing, sales and search career. As Vice President & General Manager Ian manages the day to day requirements of the firm's operation and provides sage council on search mandates as required.
Ian is a graduate of The Gestalt Institute of Toronto’s four year Training Program as well as the Gestalt Training Program for Professionals. As an accredited Gestalt Therapist he ran a private therapy and personal growth practice from 2005 through 2016 that assisted individuals in addressing challenges that they were experiencing in dealing with everyday life.
Ian has taught sales and marketing courses at George Brown community college and a past-board member of the Gestalt Institute of Toronto.
advisory board
Over the course of nurturing our 15+ year practice we’ve had the good fortune to establish a number of deep trusted relationships with some very talented professionals who we often turn to for their expertise and sage council.