We advise the world's leading asset managers and insurance companies on the decisions that matter most.
Leadership is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Butterfass Pepe Group was founded on a single conviction: that the right leader, placed at the right moment, can redefine an organization's entire trajectory. Every engagement we take — from a singular C-suite hire to a full investment team build-out — is driven by that belief.
We are not generalists who happen to serve financial services. Insurance and Asset Management is all we do. That singular focus has given us a depth of market knowledge, a breadth of relationships, and a track record of results that generalist firms cannot match.
We’ve built our business through relationships. Over time, that has evolved into something more: a trusted network of leaders and firms who turn to us not just for placements, but for perspective, connection, and insight.
The people who make exceptional possible.
EXPERIENCE
Stanley W. Butterfass
Managing Partner and CEO
Stanley operates in a part of the business most firms get wrong: choosing the people who actually determine outcomes.
He works with asset management and insurance firms on their most consequential decisions—who leads, who doesn’t, and what it really takes to perform at the top of the industry. He has partnered with boards to lead searches for the c-suite, chief investment officers, and senior leaders across global asset managers and insurance, but he is not in the business of “filling roles.” Most searches fail long before a candidate is introduced, because the client hasn’t defined, with precision, what great actually looks like. That’s where he starts.
Stanley is known for being direct with clients, especially when it’s uncomfortable. He challenges vague mandates, tests assumptions, and brings clarity to decisions often driven by politics or habit. The result is not just better hires, but leaders who materially change the trajectory of a business.
He is also a Certified Professional Coach, which shapes how he approaches search. Placement is only the visible moment, performance is what follows. He works with leaders as they step into critical roles, helping them translate capability into impact and build teams that deliver.
His view is simple: talent is not a function to be managed. It is the single biggest driver of performance. Most organizations underestimate that. The best ones don’t.
Outside of his professional work, Stanley is a street portrait photographer. For years, he has photographed strangers—brief, unguarded moments that reveal something real. He sees street portraits as windows into the human experience: struggle, joy, contradiction, resilience. The practice sharpens his instinct for people, deepens his empathy, and reinforces a belief that carries into his work. If you don’t truly see people, you will almost certainly misjudge them.
KNOWLEDGE
Leonida Pepe
Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer
Lee works at the nexus of leadership and organizational performance, helping investment management and insurance firms make the decisions that determine who leads and how well.
What she brings to that work goes beyond search. Her background in HR leadership, change management, and organizational effectiveness means she starts by understanding how a firm actually works, how decisions get made, how teams function, and what leadership genuinely looks like inside that specific environment. That understanding is what separates a well-placed leader from a transformative one.
She has come to believe that the most effective leaders are not defined by their résumé alone. It comes down to judgment, credibility, and the ability to lead with clarity through complexity and uncertainty. Those are the qualities she looks for and the standard she holds herself to as a partner to her clients.
She takes a long-term view of every relationship. The work is not about filling a role. It is about helping build leadership teams that perform, adapt, and endure.
Outside of her professional work, Leonida is a portrait painter. Sitting with a subject, studying how they hold themselves, what they reveal and what they guard has sharpened her instinct for people in ways no assessment can replicate. She believes that if you don't truly see someone, you will almost certainly misjudge them. That conviction carries directly into how she works.
INSIGHT
Anita Chirde
Managing Director
Anita has spent more than 25 years bridging the gap between organizational performance and human capital working inside, and now alongside, some of the most complex institutions in asset management and insurance.
She began her career as an engineer. That discipline never left and became her passion. Where others see organizational complexity, she sees architecture, where the structures hold, where they fracture, and what must change for an institution to perform at its potential. It is a different lens on talent and strategy, and it produces different outcomes.
That perspective was forged in practice. Commercial roles at BNY Mellon, AXA Equitable, and Wells Fargo gave her an intimate understanding of how consequential decisions get made inside large, matrixed financial institutions, and where the gap between intent and execution tends to widen.
She now partners with boards, CEOs, and senior leadership teams on the decisions that define institutional trajectory: how to structure for performance, who should lead in critical roles, and whether the organization has the human capital to execute its strategic ambitions. Her work spans executive search, organizational design, leadership assessment, and strategic consulting. Disciplines she treats not as discrete services, but as integrated levers of the same challenge.
In asset management and insurance, the margin between strong performance and mediocrity is often thinner than firms acknowledge. Talent is where that margin is won or lost. That is where Anita works.
Seven principles. One standard.
Trust
The foundation of every engagement, every relationship, every result.
Integrity
We say what we mean. We do what we say. Always.
Service Excellence
Every client receives the same uncompromising level of attention and care.
Teamwork
We operate as a unified team in service of your goals.
Innovation
Continuously refining our process to deliver better outcomes.
Diversity
The best organizations — and search processes — reflect many perspectives.
Passion
We are genuinely invested in the success of every leader we place.