Executive Bio
How to Write a Senior Biography, With Six Examples for Boards, Websites and Search Firms

The key insight:

Your bio is often read by people who will never see your CV. Write it so a stranger knows within one paragraph what you run, what you changed and why they should listen to you.

An executive bio is the short, third-person biography that goes everywhere your CV does not: the board pack, the company website, the conference programme, the candidate pages a search firm sends to its client. Here is what a good one looks like at 150 words, before we get into lengths, uses and how to write your own.

Example 1. Company website, 150 words. Hannah Okafor is Chief Operating Officer of a listed European logistics group with 6,200 people across eleven countries and revenue of 1.4 billion euros. She joined in 2021 to lead a recovery of the group's road freight business, which moved from a loss to an operating margin of 7 per cent in three years. She also led the consolidation of fourteen warehouses into five regional hubs, cutting delivery times by a day across the network. Before this, Hannah spent twelve years in operations and supply chain roles at a global consumer goods business, including four years running its Central European plants. She sits on the group's sustainability committee and leads its plan to halve fleet emissions by 2032. Hannah holds an engineering degree and an MBA. She is a trustee of a national charity that trains young people for careers in transport, and lives in Rotterdam.

That is just under 150 words, and every sentence carries a fact. It tells a stranger the scale she runs, two results with numbers, where she came from and what she is responsible for beyond her main job. Hannah is not a real person. She, and the other five people in this article, are composite examples built from patterns we see across senior searches. The structure is the part to copy.

The three lengths, and where each one is used

Most senior people have one bio, usually written years ago for a conference, which gets stretched or squeezed to fit wherever it is needed. It works better to keep three versions and pick the right one.

Write the 300-word version first. It is much easier to cut a good long version than to stretch a short one, and cutting forces you to decide what really matters.

Five more executive biography examples

The examples below cover the other common uses. Each one is a composite; the names and businesses are invented.

Example 2. Conference programme, 50 words

Daniel Reyes is Chief Financial Officer of a privately owned healthcare services group in the UK, where he led the refinancing of 600 million pounds of debt in 2025. He has twenty years in finance leadership across healthcare and infrastructure, and speaks regularly on funding growth in regulated sectors.

Fifty words is enough for a role, a result and a reason to listen. The last clause tells the conference reader why Daniel is on this panel, which is the only question they have.

Example 3. Board papers for a director election, 150 words

Leila Haddad is Group Chief Commercial Officer of a regional telecoms operator serving 9 million customers across four markets. Since 2022 she has rebuilt the enterprise division, growing it from 18 to 31 per cent of group revenue, and led the launch of the group's first cloud services business. Earlier, she spent nine years at an international technology company, latterly running its business across the Middle East and Africa. Leila has been an independent non-executive director of a listed consumer finance company since 2023, where she sits on the risk committee and chairs the customer and technology committee. The board recommends her election because she brings direct experience of digital change in a regulated, customer-facing business, which supports the company's plan to move most of its lending online by 2028. Leila holds a degree in electrical engineering and is a member of a professional institute of directors.

Board papers have a job beyond describing you. The UK Corporate Governance Code says the board should set out, in the papers for each director's election, the specific reasons why their contribution is, and continues to be, important to the company's long-term sustainable success. So a board bio needs a sentence that links your experience to the company's plan. The line beginning "The board recommends" does that.

Example 4. Search firm longlist, 300 words

Tom Whitcombe is Managing Director, Northern Europe, for a global industrial equipment manufacturer, responsible for a business of 2,300 people, five factories and revenue of 900 million pounds. He took the role in 2020, when the region had lost money for three years. He closed one factory, moved two product lines to a single site and introduced a service contract model that now makes up 38 per cent of revenue. The region returned to profit in 2022 and delivered an operating margin of 11 per cent in 2025, the highest in the group.

Tom began his career as a mechanical engineer and has spent his whole working life in industrial businesses, moving from plant management to sales, then to running a country and then a region. That mix means he is as comfortable on a factory floor as he is presenting to investors, and he has led businesses through two downturns.

He has run three acquisitions, the largest a 140 million pound purchase of a service business in Germany, and led its integration in eighteen months without losing a major customer. He has also led a full union negotiation in two countries and a pension scheme restructuring with the trustees.

Tom reports to the group chief executive and sits on the group executive committee, where he leads the company's work on factory safety. Lost-time injuries across his region have fallen by 60 per cent since 2020.

He is now ready for a chief executive role in a mid-sized industrial or engineering business, ideally one that needs operational recovery followed by growth. He is open to listed, private equity-backed or family-owned businesses, and to a move within Europe.

Tom holds a degree in mechanical engineering and is a chartered engineer. He is married with two children and lives near Manchester.

A longlist bio is the one most people get wrong, because it is the only one with a stated next step. A search consultant presents eight to twelve people to a client at this stage, often as one page each. The client reads them side by side. The paragraph on what Tom wants next is what makes his page useful rather than merely accurate. If you are not sure how to judge your own readiness for a step like this, our guide to how to become a general manager covers the move from running a function to running a P&L.

Example 5. Annual report or US proxy statement, 65 words

Sara Lindqvist, 54, has been an independent director since 2021 and chairs the audit committee. She was Chief Financial Officer of a listed packaging company from 2016 to 2024 and previously held finance leadership roles at two industrial businesses. Her experience of financial reporting, capital allocation and acquisitions in manufacturing businesses supports the board's oversight of the company's investment programme. She is a chartered accountant.

Formal disclosure bios are plainer than website ones, and they follow rules. In the US, Item 401 of Regulation S-K asks companies to describe each director's business experience during the past five years, and the specific experience, qualifications and skills that led to the conclusion that the person should serve. That is why this version is so factual. It is a statement of record, not a profile.

Example 6. First-time non-executive, 150 words

Omar Farouk is Chief Human Resources Officer of a fast-growing financial services group with 4,000 employees across the Gulf and South Asia. Over five years he has led the people side of two acquisitions, built the group's first leadership succession plan and designed a long-term incentive plan approved by shareholders in 2024. He works closely with the board's remuneration and nomination committees, where he presents on pay, succession and culture each quarter. Before this he held senior HR roles at a global bank in London and Dubai. Omar is seeking his first non-executive director appointment, ideally on the remuneration or nomination committee of a mid-sized business in financial services, healthcare or education. He brings practical experience of executive pay design, board-level succession and integrating teams after a merger. He holds a master's degree in organisational psychology and is a fellow of a chartered HR institute.

A first board bio has to make the case without board experience. Omar does it by naming the committees he already works with as an executive and what he presents to them. Boards and chairs want proof that you know how a board works from the inside. Our guide to becoming a non-executive director covers the rest of that route, and JOH Partners has written on what the non-executive role now asks of people from the search side.

How a bio differs from your CV summary and your LinkedIn

These three documents get confused, and the confusion shows. They have different readers and different jobs.

Your CV summary is written in the first person, sits at the top of your CV and argues for one specific next role. Our guide to the CV executive summary covers how to write those four to six lines. Your LinkedIn profile is also first person, written for search and for people who already know your name. Your bio is third person, stands on its own and is usually published by someone else.

The practical test is this: if a stranger read only this document, would they understand what you do and why it matters? A CV summary can rely on the rest of the CV to support it. A bio cannot. It is often the only thing the reader sees.

What a good executive bio always contains

Across the six examples, the same pieces turn up in roughly the same order.

1. Your full name and current role in the first sentence, with the type and scale of the business. Use descriptions a reader can picture: people, revenue, countries, customers.
2. Two or three results with numbers. Margin moved, revenue grown, costs cut, time saved. One strong number is worth more than five adjectives.
3. The shape of your career in one or two sentences. Not every employer, just the path that explains how you got here.
4. Board, committee or wider roles, if you have them. These matter more as you get more senior.
5. Qualifications that a reader would expect or value. A professional qualification belongs; a list of short courses does not.
6. For a longlist or board bio only, what you want next or why the board recommends you.

What it leaves out matters just as much. Cut "dynamic", "visionary", "passionate" and "results-driven". Cut "proven track record", because the results either show it or they do not. Cut anything confidential about your current employer, especially figures they have not published. And cut the long list of every role since university; the CV is where that lives, and our guide to how to write an executive CV covers it.

How to write yours in an hour

Set aside an hour and do it in this order.

Spend the first fifteen minutes on facts only. Write down your current scale, your three best results with numbers, your career path in one line and any board or committee roles. No sentences yet.

Spend the next twenty minutes writing the 300-word version. Third person, your full name once, then your surname or a pronoun. Lead with the present, then the results, then the path, then the wider roles.

Spend fifteen minutes cutting it to 150 words, then to 50. Each cut should remove whole sentences, not just words. If the 50-word version still says what you run and the one thing you are known for, it works.

Use the last ten minutes on a check. Read each version aloud. Ask someone who does not know your work well to read the 150-word version and tell you, in one sentence, what you do. If their sentence matches yours, you are done.

One part people find hard is describing how they lead, rather than what they achieved. A bio is not the place for a long passage on leadership style, but a single accurate line helps, particularly on a board or longlist bio. If you are not sure what that line should say, you can take the free Leadership Psychometric, a 50-question leadership profile across five dimensions, which gives you plain words for how you tend to lead and where your strengths sit.

When the bio is done, check that your CV tells the same story. A bio that says one thing and a CV that says another is a common reason a search consultant pauses on a candidate. The CV Rewriter, built by executive recruiters, rewrites your CV for the market and role you are aiming at, so the two documents match.

You can rewrite your CV for free and then use it as the source for all three bio lengths. For more on senior CVs and applications, the full CV and Applications collection covers the rest.

Key takeaways

• An executive bio is a third-person document used where a CV would be too long or too personal: board packs, websites, conference programmes and search firm longlists.
• Keep three versions, at 50, 150 and 300 words. Write the longest first and cut down.
• Every version should say what you run, at what scale, and two or three results with numbers.
• Board and disclosure bios follow rules. In the UK, election papers should explain why a director's contribution matters; in the US, disclosure covers at least five years of business experience.
• A longlist bio is the only one that states what you want next, and that line is what makes it useful to a client.
• Update all three every six months, and make sure your CV tells the same story.

JOH Partners Intelligence

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