Jonathan E. McBride, President
James S. Hostetler, Managing Director

Jonathan E. McBride, President

Jon McBride’s career as a management consultant began in 1976. He founded McBride Associates, Inc., in 1979, and managed the firm as a sole practitioner for 25 years. He has worked in collaboration with Jim Hostetler informally through Association activities since 1989 and more formally since 2005.

For 25 years Mr. McBride focused on corporate leadership issues and conducted executive search consulting engagements in a wide variety of industries, globally, with emphasis on financial, marketing, and general management positions. The practice was “generalist” in nature and relationship-driven, rather than industry-, functionally- or geographically-driven.

For a quarter of a century McBride Associates was retained by clients confident that Mr. McBride would thoughtfully diagnose the high-impact leadership issues critical for their organization’s success and then identify, assess and attract first-rate individuals to lead the organization. In more recent years Mr. McBride’s focus shifted towards governance issues as he was retained to identify and attract individuals to fill seats on clients' Boards of Directors.

Over the years McBride Associates, and Mr. McBride, achieved considerable recognition for their efforts. McBride Associates was:

Listed as one of the “50 Leading Executive Recruiting Firms in the U.S. Today” by Kennedy Publications’ Executive Recruiter News (ERN) in 1986
Listed as one of the “50 Leading Retained Search Firms in the U.S.” by ERN in 1989
Listed as one of the “50 Leading Retained Search Firms in North America” by ERN in 1997

Mr. McBride was:

Listed as one of “America’s Top 100 Executive Recruiters” in The Career Makers by John Sibbald, published by Harper & Row in 1990
Included in “America’s Top 150 Executive Recruiters” in a revised and expanded The Career Makers in 1992
Included yet again in the revised The New Career Makers published in 1995
Listed as one of The Global 200 Executive Recruiters by Nancy Garrison-Jenn in her book of the same title published by Jossey-Bass in 1998

From 1984 until 2005 McBride Associates, Inc., was a member of the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC). Mr. McBride:

Served on the AESC’s Board of Directors from 1989 – 1992
Served on the Government Affairs Committee from 1989 - 1998, chairing it from 1989 – 1990
Served on the Ethics and Professional Practices Committee from 1991 – 2000

Additionally, Mr. McBride sat on blue-ribbon panels charged by the Board of Directors with reviewing and rewriting the AESC’s Code of Ethics (1995 – 1996) and Professional Practice Guidelines (2001 - 2002). These panels were guided through issues of governance, ethics and compliance by the association’s outside counsel, James S. Hostetler, Esq., a member of the Washington DC office of Kirkland & Ellis, LLP.

In 2005, having become aware of the critical governance role an organizational Ombudsman plays in creating a corporate culture that fosters ethical behavior and sustained high performance, Mr. McBride collaborated with Jim Hostetler in refocusing McBride Associates’ efforts on governance consulting services with emphasis on the role of the organizational Ombudsman. The firm thus took on its present form.

For nearly eight years before entering management consulting, Mr. McBride held sales, marketing, and general-management positions in the investment counseling and brokerage industries with Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York and Washington.

Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, Mr. McBride served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. He managed liaison between the Navy Department and the motion picture, television, and radio industries in Hollywood, California. He also served as public affairs officer on the flagship of the Navy’s carrier-based air forces in Vietnam.

Mr. McBride received his BA in American Studies from Yale University.

He is a member of the Metropolitan Club of Washington, DC, the Chevy Chase Club, and the Yale Club of New York City.

James S. Hostetler, Managing Director

Jim Hostetler has been active in private law practice since 1964. He was a member of the Washington office of the national law firm, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, from 1987 - 2005. In his private law practice, Mr. Hostetler specialized in representing corporations, associations, and nonprofit organizations on regulatory, legislative and federal procurement matters.

In recent years, Mr. Hostetler’s law practice focused increasingly on governance, risk-management, compliance and ethics issues. In his representation of the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC), he provided guidance to blue-ribbon panels responsible for reviewing and updating the AESC Code of Ethics and the Professional Practice Guidelines. He drafted codes of conduct and compliance programs for a variety of other associations and corporate clients. He conducted internal investigations and counseled organizations on a wide range of ethical concerns. He has provided training, facilitated dialogue and spoken on these issues in a variety of forums.

As a result of this experience, Mr. Hostetler has become an advocate of “early warning” systems that surface and resolve problems before they threaten the mission of an organization. In his judgment, a particularly effective early warning system is an organizational Ombudsman, an independent, neutral, confidential source representing neither an organization nor its employees, but acting as an intermediary that promotes fair process.

In 2005, Mr. Hostetler departed Kirkland & Ellis to join McBride Associates as its Managing Director to consult with organizations regarding their governance practices and to advocate for the establishment of organizational Ombudsman programs.

Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Hostetler served as a legislative attorney in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and also as Special Assistant to the Administrator of the Area Redevelopment Administration (now Economic Development Administration) in the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Over the years, Mr. Hostetler has served on a variety of advisory bodies, including the:

Legal Advisory Committee of the Government Accountability Office
Procurement Council of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Ethics Task Force of the Council for Excellence in Government
Vice Chair and Director of the Leadership Forum International, an organization dedicated to promoting ethical leadership in business and government in central and eastern Europe
Director of the Research Institute for Small and Emerging Business
Founding Director of the Appleseed Foundation which has established 17 Centers for Law and Justice around the country to advocate for systemic reforms in the public interest

Mr. Hostetler received his BA from Yale University (magna cum laude) and his JD from the Harvard Law School.