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Team/Mak Kemenosh

Mak Kemenosh

Mak Kemenosh

Principal

"Great leaders don't just fill a role, they change what's possible for a company. My job is finding the ones who can do that, and making sure they land somewhere they can actually thrive."

Mak Kemenosh

Principal

As a Principal at Roo Partners, Mak Kemenosh brings an operator’s perspective to executive search, developed over ten years in Los Angeles as a co-founder or early employee at startups across logistics, aviation, and financial services. That experience gives him a direct read on what growth-stage and PE-backed companies actually need in a leader, and what they can’t afford to get wrong.

He spent the following seven years at True Search executing retained C-suite and VP-level searches for investors including Hg, Vista Equity Partners, TPG, Blackstone, Thoma Bravo, Silver Lake, and PSG. His placements span CRO, CGO, President, COO, and SVP-level roles across their portfolios.

Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mak holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Outside of work he surfs, golfs, and maintains strong opinions about Philly cheesesteaks. (It’s John’s Roast Pork, if you’re wondering.)

Perspectives
INSIGHTS

The COO search is rarely about operations

When a sponsor decides it’s time to hire a COO, the instinct is to reuse the job description from the last search. That instinct is usually where the search starts to go wrong.

The Chief Operating Officer mandate in a PE-backed company is rarely a straightforward operational question. Yet private equity COO executive search almost always begins there, with a title and a familiar job description rather than a diagnosis. It’s almost always a diagnostic signal. Something in the business, the board relationship, or the investment timeline has surfaced a need. But until that underlying condition is named, the search is organized around the wrong problem.