Michael Sarnoff is the leader of Diversified Search’s Financial Services Practice, and is based in Los Angeles. Prior to joining Diversified Search in 2018, he spent five years as Co-Founder and Partner at Highland Road LLC, a boutique executive search and capital advisory firm in Los Angeles, where his clients included asset and investment managers, hedge funds, private equity and private debt funds, and investment banks, among others. The roles he has filled include senior leadership (CFO, COO, General Counsel), investing and investment research, origination, capital raising, investment banking, and sales and trading.

Prior to co-founding Highland Road, Sarnoff served as a Partner at Heidrick & Struggles, where he concentrated on capital markets in the financial services sector, and as a Client Partner at Korn Ferry International, where he helped build the firm’s global markets business. At Korn, he became the first senior associate under the age of 30 in the Financial Services Practice to ever be promoted to Client Partner.

Before entering the executive search industry, he was a manager of human resources for the University of Southern California, and began his career as the head of human resources at PBJ Digital, a North Hollywood web development and consulting start-up.