Darren has spent twenty years focusing on culture, talent acquisition, talent development, organizational leadership, and organizational change in Human Resources. Darren has worked with Fortune 50 companies and large public sector clients that include Higher Education, K-12 Education, Municipalities and County governments across the United States. Darren’s clients include Aetna, Northbay Healthcare, Teletrac, US Dermatology, Samsung, City of Fort Worth, TCU, FWISD, City & County of Denver, Oklahoma City, BOKA Powell, Schaefer Advertising, and Miami-Dade County.

Darren is the Chief Talent Officer and founder of Mackenzie Eason, an executive search and consulting firm, and founder of Talent Metrics, an AI cloud-based software that measures an organization’s culture and provides actionable intelligence for executives on how to build a strong culture to improve revenue, retention, and productivity. Darren is an organizational change agent concentrating on best practices, efficiencies, and transformation.

Darren’s deeply held philosophy is that all great organizations develop and implement a talent strategy as a key resource just as they do their business strategy and financial capital. His motivation is to fundamentally change how organizations do business by building a strong culture around an organization’s talent to produce unparalleled operational and financial results. Darren is a frequent industry-expert media contributor and speaker. His work success and community activities earned him recognition as a top 40 Under 40 area executive and the 2018 Neighbor of the Year for the City of Fort Worth. In 2019, Darren co-authoredBroken Handoff-Saving Your Assets, a breakthrough book with transparent insights into mergers and acquisitions and the effects on culture and talent that was published by Brown Books Publishing. In 2020 and 2021, Darren was chosen as one of the Top 400 Influential Executives by FW Inc Magazine for his work in business, philanthropy, and the community. Mackenzie Eason was chosen as a Forbes Top 100 Executive Search Firm in 2021 and 2022.

Darren holds a Master in Liberal Arts in Industrial & Organizational Psychology from Harvard University, along with a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington. He also completed executive programs at the Talent Management Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Entrepreneurial Studies Executive Course at London Business School, and the Howard University Sherpa Executive Coaching course.