Courtney della Cava

Courtney della Cava is a business executive with more than 30 years of experience driving growth and value creation across operating, advisory and investing environments. She is an Executive Advisor at Blackstone [NYSE: BX], the world’s largest alternative asset manager, where through April 2026 she served as a Senior Managing Director, the Global Head of Portfolio Talent & Organizational Performance, and a member of the firm’s Global Operating Team. As a trusted operator at the intersection of leadership and strategy, she advised Founders, CEOs and Boards on translating investment theses into leadership, talent and culture strategies; board governance as an alpha creator; and succession and workforce planning with an eye toward the impact of AI on operating models and the future of work.

Courtney has extensive public and private company board governance and currently serves on the boards of American Cancer Society and the Culinary Institute of America, as well as a board observer for Anheuser-Busch InBev (a Fortune 250 company); she is also on the boards of several early-stage technology companies. She previously served on the boards of Mphasis [NYSE: MPHASIS], a global IT services and consulting company; Renaissance Learning, a leading pre-K to 12 ed-tech company; and Rover, the world’s largest online marketplace for pet care services (where she chaired the Compensation Committee). Her governance experience includes succession planning, talent management, executive compensation and incentive design, enterprise strategy oversight, public and private company governance best practices, and enterprise risk management.

In her most recent operating role at Blackstone, Courtney led a global team working across 270+ portfolio companies representing more than $225 billion in annual revenue and 700,000 employees. She was recognized for positioning companies to meet and exceed growth objectives and commercial success by reinventing leadership teams and innovating organizational culture across industries, business lifecycles, ownership structures, and geographies; as a player-coach, she personally focused on Blackstone’s largest investments and CEO selection across the portfolio. Her expertise is in translating business strategy into winning leadership and talent agendas, helping founders and companies scale in complex periods of rapid change. She is also a seasoned Executive Coach with extensive experience in leadership development work.

Before joining Blackstone in 2021, Courtney spent more than two decades at Bain & Company, serving as a Partner and advising global private equity sponsors and corporate CEOs on growth strategy, operational excellence, M&A and enterprise and operating model transformation. She also served as a Partner at Russell Reynolds Associates, advising public and private boards on CEO succession and executive leadership. Earlier in her career, she held P&L accountability for a ~$400M confectionery portfolio across 22 European markets at Mars Confectionery and, earlier, worked in product strategy at Toyota Lexus during a pivotal period of next-generation vehicle development.

Courtney is a sought-after thought leader, author, and speaker. She has authored articles on the topics of business strategy, leadership, and succession planning, including a recent Harvard Business Review (Jan. 2026) article on avoiding the traps that compel nominating committees to select the wrong leaders and talented leaders to accept the wrong roles. She has provided expert commentary for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, been featured in a profile in Fortune magazine, and serves as a Fortune Most Powerful Women Ambassador. She has also been named one of the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business by the San Francisco Business Times.

Courtney earned an MBA in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and a BA in Economics from UCLA. She is a dual US-Italian citizen, and she and her husband have two adult sons and reside in the Bay Area.