People

Sarah Avendaño

Managing Associate

Executive Search, Managing Associate, Nonprofit and Social Impact

Sarah comes to Koya Partner’s global practice with extensive international recruitment and staffing experience. Before joining Koya Partners – a part of Diversified Search Group – she worked for Euromonitor International in Chicago, a UK-based global market intelligence firm that provides strategic research services for consumer markets. She served as a senior member of the project staffing and development team, responsible for recruitment, training, and project staffing for contract analysts across 30+ countries in the Americas.

Previously, Sarah worked for Tetra Tech DPK in San Francisco on recruitment and proposal writing for USAID-funded rule of law and good governance projects in more than 25 countries across Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. She has also worked in development with nonprofits in San Francisco, news writing and assignment editing for a news network in St. Louis, and a national political campaign in Boston.

Sarah is a long-time volunteer with Upwardly Global, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping skilled, legal immigrants join the professional U.S. workforce by offering career preparation guidance and training. Passionate about issues of social justice, she is a co-facilitator for Race Conscious Dialogues, a community anti-racism program in Oak Park, IL.

Sarah is fluent in Spanish and lives in the Chicago area with her two young children and her husband.

Education

BA, Communications
St. Louis University – Two of four university years were spent in Madrid, Spain