Head of People

Overview

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to our mission of saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries. We work at the invitation of governments to support them and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems.

CHAI was founded in 2002 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with the goal of dramatically reducing the price of life-saving drugs and increasing access to these medicines in the countries with the highest burden of the disease. Over the following two decades, CHAI has expanded its focus. Today, along with HIV, we work with our partners to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Our work has also expanded into cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases, and we work to accelerate the rollout of lifesaving vaccines, reduce maternal and child mortality, combat chronic malnutrition, and increase access to assistive technology. We are investing in horizontal approaches to strengthen health systems through programs in human resources for health, digital health, and health financing. With each new and innovative program, our strategy is grounded in maximizing sustainable impact at scale, ensuring that governments lead the solutions, that programs are designed to scale nationally, and learnings are shared globally.

At CHAI, our people are our greatest asset, and none of this work would be possible without their talent, time, dedication, and passion for our mission and values. We are a highly diverse team of enthusiastic individuals across 40 countries with a broad range of skill sets and life experiences. CHAI is deeply grounded in the countries we work in, with the majority of our staff based in program countries. Learn more about our exciting work:

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

Position Overview

CHAI aims to be the employer of choice in global health by attracting, developing, and retaining top talent. The Head of People will drive this ambition, transforming CHAI's People function into a disciplined, strategic enabler of a workforce of 1,800+ across 40 countries, with measurable progress towards this goal within 18 months. CHAI's talent agenda is more ambitious than it has been in years, and it must cohere into a single strategy and rapidly demonstrate measurable impact for the organization.

The work demands a leader with a clear strategic vision for the People function, relentless focus on outcomes, and the willingness to commit to a multi-year journey while still moving quickly. They should be equally comfortable setting long-range direction and working deep in the detail when execution requires it. They must also be genuinely scrappy, with the creativity to find workable solutions and navigate obstacles in a decentralized, highly matrixed, multi-country environment where the path to success is rarely straightforward.

The ideal candidate also brings demonstrated experience transforming a complex function (People or otherwise) in a multi-country organization. They have the cross-cultural fluency to operate credibly across a distributed workforce, as well as the resolve to uphold a strong standard of excellence across the People team. The role reports to the Chief Operating Officer and can be based in any of our CHAI program countries, see where we work here.

What Success Looks Like

When this role is delivering at its best, several things will be true simultaneously:

• CHAI is the employer of choice for top talent in global health. The strongest people in the sector actively seek CHAI out as the place to do their most meaningful work, and they stay because the work and the organization earn their commitment.
• The People function is a source of strategic advantage for CHAI. The right talent in the right roles – and a culture that brings out the best in people – determine how much CHAI can take on, how quickly it can scale, and how much impact it ultimately delivers.
• The People team is trusted across the organization as a genuine thought partner. Leaders and managers seek them out to think through and solve their most difficult people challenges because the team has earned a reputation for staying laser-focused on getting to desired outcomes even within a complex operating environment.

The following are examples of key priorities that would need to be rolled out effectively across the organization within the first 18 months to deliver on the vision above:

• Clear performance standards for every role and level, alongside an updated career ladder and compensation framework
• Targeted L&D offerings that are proven effective at helping employees meet and exceed performance standards
• An AI-native HRIS that integrates with the rest of CHAI’s technology stack and unlocks efficiencies throughout the HR function
• A revamped Talent Acquisition operating model that allows CHAI to attract and hire high-quality talent quickly

Responsibilities

The Head of People owns CHAI's end-to-end People agenda: the strategic vision, the practical execution, and management of the global HR team of around 30 people that delivers it. Day-to-day, this means:

• Driving a multi-year transformation agenda for the People function spanning talent acquisition, development, and retention; moving quickly while keeping everything anchored to the long-term arc.
• Building the strategic approach to the transformation agenda on data and rigour rather than convention, and challenging inherited assumptions and established practice when the evidence points to a different way.
• Setting clear direction for the People team and translating CHAI's talent strategy into concrete priorities and ways of working, while staying close enough to the work to get into the weeds when the problem demands it.
• Leading the end-to-end modernization of CHAI's People infrastructure – including the procurement and deployment of CHAI's first HRIS – and driving genuine adoption across a decentralized workforce spanning 40 countries
• Positioning CHAI's People function to be AI-native by anticipating how AI and evolving models of work will reshape the workforce, deploying tools that materially improve how the function operates, and managing the risks AI introduces into people-related decisions.
• Reshaping the structure, capabilities, and roles of the People team, while holding it to a high standard of performance and making the difficult calls on talent that CHAI's agenda will sometimes require.
• Building trust-based relationships with CHAI's leaders, and using those relationships to drive difficult organizational changes by building coalitions that can move people and shift behaviour, even when the change is uncomfortable or contested.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent and at least 15 years of relevant professional experience, including senior leadership responsibility for People or a comparable complex function. A formal HR-titled background is not required, but the successful candidate will have significant leadership experience directly owning people outcomes.
• Demonstrated track record of transforming a function or organization at scale in a multinational context, with measurable improvements in outcomes to show for it.
• Prior success in landing difficult organizational changes in decentralized, matrixed environments where delivery depends on influence rather than formal authority.
• Evidence of concrete achievements in resource-constrained settings without abundant budget, headcount, or infrastructure.
• Significant cross-cultural experience – through having worked or lived across multiple countries, or through substantive engagement with stakeholders across diverse contexts.
• Genuine commitment to CHAI's mission and the role CHAI plays in the global health landscape.
• Willingness to travel internationally, up to 30% annually.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience leading a People function at an organization of comparable scale and geographic complexity.
• Experience in global health, international development, or a comparable mission-driven sector.
• Experience using AI to redesign how a function operates, with measurable impact on its performance.

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