An experienced team, backed by the best technology in the business.

Van is Managing Director and founder of Leichter Advisors, established in 2013. He has been advising global financial services and real estate clients in the US, Asia Pacific and Europe for more than twenty-five years, completing chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief investment officer, and global product development and distribution engagements across real estate, asset management, private equity, hedge funds and investment banks.

Van was previously Managing Director at a global executive search firm, in Chicago and Tokyo, where he expanded its real estate, private equity, investment banking and investment management businesses. Before that he was a Partner in the Japan office of another international search firm, leading the Asia Pacific real estate practice and overseeing operations across several countries, and leading the Japan practice groups in asset management, private equity and investment banking. Earlier, in New York, he specialized in global markets and principal investments, with a focus on derivatives, proprietary trading and distressed assets in the US and Japan.

He holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Colorado Boulder, where he also completed graduate work in International Relations and International Political Economics.

Alex is a senior executive search consultant who has been placing performing leaders for more than thirty years. He founded EymieuPartners in 2009, which merged with Leichter Advisors in 2025. He has lived in Asia since 1992, specializing in senior talent acquisition and leadership transformation. He covers financial services, investment management, real estate, private equity and venture capital clients and their portfolio companies, and has placed over 450 senior executives in leading roles: board directors, chief executives, managing directors, chief investment officers, chief marketing officers and portfolio managers, with leading multinationals, joint ventures, financial institutions and Asian conglomerates. He speaks regularly on cross-cultural leadership assessment and on the financial and operational challenges of operating in Asia.

Alex began his executive search career in 1996 with a boutique firm, acquired four years later by one of the global search firms. Following the acquisition he became a Senior Partner and Managing Partner of the Taiwan office, and Head of Quality and Innovation for Asia Pacific. In 2008 he moved to another international firm, leading its financial services practice for Greater China. He went on to run the Greater China business of a third, and was Head of Asia Pacific for a fourth, based in Hong Kong. He has lived eight years in Shanghai, ten in Hong Kong and eleven in Taipei, and has managed offices across Asia Pacific.

A graduate of the Weller International School of Management in France, Alex also completed a program at the University of San Francisco's McLaren College. He is fluent in English and French, and proficient in Mandarin Chinese.

David runs business operations at Leichter Advisors from New York: the research and sourcing behind each search, the systems that hold the firm's knowledge of the market, and the reports a client receives while a search is running.

Most of what he builds is meant to go unnoticed. Progress reports, candidate reports and talent maps are generated from templates, so the tenth search looks like the first and a partner's time goes into judgment instead of formatting. The same discipline applies to the firm's record of the market. He runs the data work that decides whether a question about a market can be answered in an afternoon or not at all.

He came to executive search through human-capital research at an international search firm, and to that from seven years in teaching and academic advising, which is where the instinct for documentation and training comes from. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Georgia College & State University.