Donato is a Managing Consultant with Korn Ferry’s Sales & Marketing Center of Expertise for Professional Search. With over a decade of commercial experience and several years in recruiting, he specializes in placing top-tier sales talent across the Industrial and Hospitality sectors. Donato believes that successful recruiting is about more than filling roles, it’s about building partnerships that empower both clients and candidates to achieve lasting success.
Donato focuses on sales-driven roles that accelerate revenue growth, including account executives, regional and national sales leaders, enterprise development, channel strategy, and executive positions. His expertise spans technical sales and consultative business development roles such as global business development, territory sales, sales engineering, go-to-market strategy, product management, and segment management. While his functional focus is on sales, he excels within Industrial, Hospitality, and Consumer sectors. He brings market insight combined with a genuine commitment to understanding what drives individual candidates and business objectives.
Before joining Korn Ferry, Donato built his recruiting career at a global staffing firm, where he quickly moved into a leadership role and launching a practice.
He focused on training a team of new recruiters while still leading from the front on key searches and client relationships. His success in building early momentum and driving results led to a move onto the national strategic accounts team, where he partnered with enterprise clients on complex, high-impact roles. Prior to recruiting, Donato spent several years in high-volume sales across hospitality, telecommunications, and consumer products, experience that sharpened his commercial instincts and shaped his approach to both coaching and closing.
Donato’s approach centers on listening carefully to client needs and candidate aspirations to create meaningful matches that foster long-term alignment and success. He builds repeatable, efficient processes that shorten time-to-fill and increase retention, while fostering trust and accountability throughout the hiring journey. For Donato, recruitment is not a transaction but a partnership that thrives on mutual respect and shared goals.
Donato earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He lives in Las Vegas with his wife and enjoys cooking, building custom PCs, reading, and traveling internationally.
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