John Steele is a Managing Director of Banister International, and is based out of the Switzerland office. Born in 1947, married with two sons, dual Swiss and English nationality. After completing his schooling near Manchester he entered Imperial College, London University reading Physics. During his studies he completed a one year research project at the Culham Plasma Physics Research Establishment before obtaining his B.Sc. with honours. Immediately upon graduating he joined Services Technique Schlumberger as a Field Engineer. He completed three months intensive training in Australia before relocating to his first field assignment in Singapore. Over the next seven years he was assigned to various projects in the Middle and Far Easts working in Burma, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. He gained significant operations management exposure during this period with full responsibility for multi million dollar operations. His interest in people led to an assignment as one of two European based recruiters based in the company's Paris headquarters. He was jointly responsible for recruiting more than 150 graduate engineers per year from Europe, with special emphasis on the UK and France. Prior to an assignment in Singapore as Far East Personnel Manager he was made International Policies Manager where he was responsible for development of personnel policy for the company's international staff comprising over 1500 graduate engineers of more than 50 nationalities working in more than 70 countries world wide. As Far East Personnel Manager he headed the personnel function throughout the region with a staff of 12. He was responsible for the full range of personnel functions including recruitment, career development, compensation, planning, budgeting etc for over 2000 staff based in as differing countries as China, Australia, India,Indonesia and the Philippines. In 1982 he resigned to return to Europe and established his own consultancy, Manserv AG, based in Switzerland. In late 1996 he became Master Licensee for Humana International for Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein. In 1999 Humana International became part of the MRI network and Manserv AG consequently changed the name to MRI Manserv AG to reflect the new relationship. MRI Manserv AG has established a reputation within a broad range of technology based companies for Executive Search and Consultancy services. Assignments have been completed in countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Norway and Holland. Additional projects have been completed in the Middle and Far Easts. In particular the company has gained considerable expertise in multi country assignments for European level executives. John has been recognised for his executive search achievements with a number of company awards including the Humana Producing Owner of the Year award in 1998-9 in Harrogate in England. His office won the International Office of the Year award for the same period. In March 2000 in Acapulco Mexico his office was awarded the MRI International Office of the Year award. In Autumn 2000 the Wil office was recognised for its international cooperation with other MRI offices with the award of Internationa Interoffice Referal Office of the Year. In 2000 he was runner up as Producing Owner Manager of the Year. In 2001 he again won the International Office of the Year for the third consecutive time. In addition John has served on a number of internal MRI committees such as The Millenium Group, an internal company think tank and The IT Steering Committee setting IT development objects for MRI WW. He was also the founder of The International Board, a highly integrated group of 8 MRI offices in the USA and Europe which he formed to further stimulate international joint projects. He has recently been elected to the board of the MRI Franchise Association that represents the interests of MRI franchise offices.