Deerfield Associates celebrates its 21st year in business!

October 1, 2021
Dear Clients, Colleagues & Friends:
This fall DEERFIELD ASSOCIATES is starting year 21! What a remarkable journey. We would like to take this opportunity to say “thank you” for all of your support and encouragement.

Since starting the firm, we have successfully conducted and completed 500+ searches over the past two decades to become a true national search firm, working with 141 highly satisfied clients, placing top tier professionals at colleges, universities, and the nation’s best independent boarding and day schools.

At DEERFIELD ASSOCIATES, we are known for our strategic, proactive, and disciplined approach to solve complex hiring needs. We take great pride in that 92% of our 141 clients in education have returned to us for additional search work. In some cases, repeat business from hiring clients has been significant: Yale University (26), Dartmouth College (13), The Taft School (9), Bowdoin College (8), The Spence School (7), Deerfield Academy (6), The Nightingale-Bamford School (6), Milton Academy (6), Mount Holyoke College (6), Amherst College (5), Babson College (5), Hopkins School (5), and Ethical Culture Fieldston School (5). Repeat business from hiring clients is the best measure of high-quality search work. Here is what our hiring clients and candidates placed say about us: Deerfield Associates Testimonials 2021

DEERFIELD ASSOCIATES, now entering year 21, continues to focus on long-term relationships with fabulous hiring clients and talented candidates. Earlier in my career, as a graduate student in sociology at UMass Amherst, I took a course called Social Change, never realizing that a course from that long ago would have such relevance today. DEERFIELD ASSOCIATES enjoys relationships collectively over the years with Heads of Schools, College Presidents and Trustees. At the same time, we continue to adapt to a new business climate that is more complex than ever in order to hire the right talent for key leadership positions. Our ability to adapt to such changing needs in the marketplace, for both hiring clients and candidates, is essential to our core values. Over the past five years, DEERFIELD ASSOCIATES has teamed up with 46 new clients, along with institutions from our long-term client base. Hence, one-third of our client base is new within the past five years. We continue to change and offer strategic value to our clients during times of vital social change. Here is a roster of all of our placements over the course of the past six years: 138 Completed Searches 2015 – 2021

The name of our firm, DEERFIELD ASSOCIATES, comes from my wanting a meaningful and symbolic name that would remind our clients of the historic values, strong work ethic, integrity and academic foundation of my upbringing in Western Massachusetts. My hometown is Northampton, Massachusetts, where I grew up a block from Smith College. I spent my college years in Amherst and my wife is from Deerfield. Deerfield is a beautiful, historic town surrounded by a hard-working farming community and home to a superb Academy. Hence the name DEERFIELD ASSOCIATES made perfect sense. It still does.

Again, this communication is intended to thank you for all of your support. As we start our 21st year, we intend to proceed enthusiastically, with complete dedication to our clients, resolve and a few snickers.

Sincerely yours,
Doug Cooney