Stature is an integrated executive search, staffing, and advisory firm serving the middle market. We built it this way because the leadership problem and the business problem are usually the same problem.
300+
Executive searches completed
200+
Middle-market clients served
20+
Years of advisory and leadership experience
MI roots
National reach
Figures reflect the cumulative career experience of Stature's leadership. See placement retention data for engagement outcomes.
Why We Exist
One firm for the whole problem.
Stature was built for middle-market companies that need more than a search firm, more than a staffing vendor, and more than a consultant with a slide deck.
We combine executive search, staffing, and strategy because those needs often show up together. A leadership gap may require interim support while the permanent search runs. A staffing need may reveal a process problem worth fixing. A strategy engagement may only hold if there are better people in the seats.
Most of our clients are not in trouble. They are growing, professionalizing, integrating an acquisition, planning a succession, or building the leadership team the next stage requires. Some are under real pressure, and we are equipped for that too. Either way, our job is the same: help clients make better decisions, build stronger teams, and move forward with confidence.
We are based in Michigan and work nationally. That matters less as a geography claim than as an operating style — we are close enough to the middle market to know how these companies actually run.
The Team
Who runs Stature
A small firm on purpose. The people you meet in the first conversation are the people doing the work.
Dan Ellis
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Executive Search & Staffing
A CPA by background with more than 20 years advising businesses and over 300 completed executive searches, Dan built his practice on a finance and accounting foundation and still works from it.
He leads Stature's search and staffing practices, personally running CFO and senior finance engagements and overseeing the firm's interim and contract placements.
His client work concentrates in private-equity-backed, family-owned and founder-led companies: first-CFO hires, succession planning after a long-tenured controller retires, finance teams that have outgrown their systems, and leadership benches that need depth before the next stage of growth.
The accounting background is the difference. Dan can read a company's financials and its reporting discipline before he writes a role specification — so the search targets the leader the numbers actually call for, not the profile the market expects.
A turnaround and finance executive, Jeff has restructured billion-dollar companies and guided municipalities through some of the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history.
He leads Stature's strategy practice and serves as the firm's senior advisor on interim and fractional finance leadership engagements.
His client work runs from cash-constrained manufacturers rebuilding lender confidence to healthy companies upgrading reporting infrastructure, preparing for a transaction, or integrating an acquisition into a finance function that was not built for it.
Jeff has held the seat, not just advised it — which shows up in how he scopes work. He builds plans a management team can actually execute, and he stays through implementation rather than stopping at the recommendation.
Stacey brings more than 20 years in HR outsourcing and staffing, building and sustaining the workforce infrastructure that keeps middle-market companies running.
She runs Stature's staffing delivery and the compliance side of every contract placement — onboarding, employment verification, workers' compensation coverage and employer-of-record administration.
Her client work covers rapid-growth staffing ramps, seasonal and project coverage, HR function builds in companies that have never had one, and temp-to-hire programs that let both sides evaluate fit before committing.
Stacey treats compliance as part of the service rather than paperwork after the fact, which is why clients can add contract capacity without adding administrative risk.
Gerry is a search professional whose career has been spent identifying and assessing leaders for companies where a single hire moves the business.
He leads search delivery — building candidate maps, running first-round assessment, and managing the process discipline that keeps a search on its stated milestones.
His client work spans private-equity-backed, family-owned and middle-market companies, with concentration in finance, operations and plant leadership roles.
Gerry works the market directly rather than relying on inbound applicants, which is how searches in thin talent pools get finished instead of restarted.
We've done the job when the company is stronger, better led and more valuable than the day we walked in.
Most often that looks like growth: a leadership team with real depth, a finance function that can support the next stage, a succession handled early rather than under duress. Sometimes it looks like survival, a clean handoff or a controlled sale. Success doesn't always come with a victory lap — it looks like the company ending up in the best position the situation allowed.
