Senior Director, Talent & Development - Succession

The Senior Director I, Talent and Development - Succession translates enterprise succession strategy into practical operating mechanisms and leads priority succession work from design through mobilization and improvement. The role is responsible for designing how succession strategies are executed across global HR teams, talent resources, and business leaders, and may lead a variety of initiatives depending on enterprise priorities. Reporting to the VP, Talent and Development - Succession, the role leads complex cross-functional work across People & Culture and the business and helps ensure succession approaches remain effective, scalable, and aligned to business needs.

Key Responsibilities

Succession Practice Design and Mobilization

• Translate succession strategy into clear methods, decision rights, governance, workflows, tools, data requirements, and guidance.
• Lead priority succession initiatives from problem definition and design through testing, mobilization, adoption, measurement, and continuous improvement.
• Design how work is executed across the Succession team, HR Business Partners, T&D resources, People Services, People Intelligence, Leadership Development, Executive Recruiting, and business leaders.
• Ensure individual initiatives work together as a coherent succession practice rather than as disconnected processes.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, automate, or redesign succession work and improve the quality and speed of talent decisions.

Executive Talent Reviews

• Design approaches that enable high-quality executive talent decisions, including decision criteria, insights, governance, preparation, and follow-through.
• Ensure leaders have trusted, relevant, and decision-ready information about succession depth, readiness, risk, and talent options.
• Translate executive talent decisions into coordinated development, mobility, assessment, internal selection, or external pipeline actions.
• Monitor the quality and effectiveness of decision forums and recommend improvements based on outcomes and stakeholder feedback.

Priority Succession Initiatives

• Lead major projects or areas of work based on enterprise succession priorities and emerging business needs. Assignments may evolve over time and span strategy mobilization, governance, talent identification, pipeline development, mobility, decision forums, technology enablement, or other succession priorities.
• Establish the objectives, scope, roadmap, stakeholder model, measures, and governance for assigned initiatives.
• Provide recommendations to leadership on strategic choices, risks, resource needs, and changes required to strengthen succession outcomes.
• Shift across succession priorities as needs evolve, bringing structure and momentum to complex or ambiguous work.

Project and Program Leadership

• Assemble and lead cross-functional teams based on the expertise required for each succession priority.
• Build alignment among senior HR and business stakeholders on objectives, design choices, roles, decision rights, and expected outcomes.
• Manage dependencies, risks, vendors, resources, and competing stakeholder needs across assigned work.
• Provide direction and coaching to project contributors while remaining close enough to the work to ensure quality.
• Elevate enterprise-level choices and unresolved tradeoffs to the VP with clear recommendations.

Candidate Profile

• Enterprise-minded and pragmatic, able to translate succession strategy into a scalable practice that people can use.
• Comfortable working through ambiguity, shared ownership, and complex stakeholder environments while maintaining momentum and quality.
• Highly trusted and discreet in handling executive talent information and high-stakes decisions.
• Combines strong succession expertise with product, process, governance, data, and change leadership.
• Communicates clearly with senior stakeholders and brings a collaborative, fact-based approach to resolving tradeoffs.

Experience and Background

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business, Organizational Psychology, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience; advanced degree preferred.
• Typically 10 or more years of relevant experience in succession, talent management, executive talent, leadership development, executive recruiting, product or process design, or a related field.