Executive recruitment firm Slone Partners named Leslie Loveless as CEO, effective immediately. She succeeds Adam Slone, who founded the firm in 2000.

Loveless joined Slone Partners in 2007 and was promoted to chief operating officer in 2014. Prior to joining the firm, she served as director of training and development for AmeriPath.

Adam Slone will remain engaged with Slone Partners, focusing specifically on strategy, finance, mergers and acquisitions, advisement and business development in Boston and California. He will also dedicate more time to the tennis foundation he founded, Life Serve Youth Foundation, a tennis camp for financially disadvantaged children from Boston and New York.

“With her strategic skill set and capacity to deliver the best the market can offer to Slone Partners’ clients, I am confident that Leslie will build on the company’s promise to consistently deliver exceptional service while moving the team and the organization forward,” Slone said.

Slone Partners targets the diagnostics, life science tools, clinical trials, contract research, healthcare IT and laboratory testing industries with offices in Boston, New York, Washington and San Francisco.