About Us
Conor Coffey, President & CEO
Verdant Executive Search is the third executive search firm and sixth company founded by Conor. A serial entrepreneur Conor's first business venture was as a teen when he ran a successful seafood and shellfish export business in Ireland exporting to Billingsgate, UK; Madrid, Spain; Frankfurt, Germany; and Bruxelles, Belgium. After completing a B.Sc. at University College Dublin, Conor set out to travel for a year. Ending up in Southern California he was hired as an Account Executive by a preeminent, high tech Executive Search firm, Executive MarketPlace, Inc., where he worked with computer industry titans Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Ashton-Tate, Lotus, Borland, and Oracle. He quickly rose through the company to become Vice President and Partner working on senior search assignments and from 1988 also on identifying technology acquisition targets.
Leaving Executive MarketPlace, Inc., Conor helped San Diego based Nelson Corporation successfully establish itself with breakthrough enterprise and internet companies such as Mosaic Communications (Netscape) and Progressive Networks (RealNetworks). Conor then founded Conor Coffey & Associates in 1995 where he worked with enterprise, infrastructure, and emerging technology leaders such as Interwoven, Hotmail, Juniper Networks, and a host of cutting edge high tech companies and Venture Capitalists. Upon starting a family in 2002 Conor also founded a baby accessory company and a child security product company; the former still in existence and holding key utility patents, the latter having been sold off to outside interests.
Cognizant of an ever changing market and alarmed at the pace of climate change Conor set out to be a part of the solution both in his personal life and in his business life. An executive search firm catering specifically to the Greentech and Cleantech industries was therefore a natural progression of his career to date.
We endeavor to evangelize the adoption and implementation of solutions locally and globally. We strive to be part of the evolution of green and clean tech and to strongly advocate for meaningful solutions to real problems facing us all.