Chief People Officer

Chief People Officer

Job Title

Chief People Officer

Position Summary

The Chief People Officer serves as Gulf Coast Center's senior executive leader for people, culture, leadership, and organizational effectiveness. Reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer and serving as a member of the Executive Leadership Team, the Chief People Officer is responsible for developing and executing an integrated people strategy that advances Gulf Coast Center's mission, strengthens organizational performance, and creates the conditions in which employees and leaders can thrive.

The Chief People Officer provides strategic leadership across human resources, organizational culture, talent, leadership development, learning and development, employee engagement, workforce planning, and organizational effectiveness. The role ensures that Gulf Coast Center's people systems, leadership practices, and organizational culture are aligned with its strategic priorities and responsive to the evolving needs of its workforce and the communities it serves.

The Chief People Officer leads through and alongside capable functional leaders, including the Human Resources Director and Learning and Development team. The position is responsible for setting strategic direction, strengthening integration across the people function, advising the CEO and Executive Leadership Team, and ensuring that people-related initiatives are translated into consistent and effective organizational practices.

Reporting Relationships
Reports to: Chief Executive Officer

Direct reports may include:
- Human Resources Director
- Learning and Development leader
- Organizational development, employee engagement, or other people-function leaders as assigned

Key partnerships:
- Executive Leadership Team
- Senior and middle leaders
- Compliance and legal counsel
- Finance
- Communications
- Quality and risk management
- Board of Trustees and appropriate board committees

Executive Scope
The Chief People Officer is accountable for the overall strategy, alignment, and effectiveness of Gulf Coast Center's people function, including:
- Enterprise people strategy
- Human resources strategy and oversight
- Organizational culture and employee experience
- Leadership and management effectiveness
- Learning and development
- Talent management and workforce planning
- Performance and accountability systems
- Succession planning and leadership pipelines
- Employee engagement and retention
- Organizational development and change leadership
- Executive advising and team effectiveness
- People analytics and organizational health
- Employment practices, compliance, and workforce risk

Essential Responsibilities
1. Enterprise People Strategy
- Develop and lead a comprehensive people strategy aligned with Gulf Coast Center's mission, strategic plan, operational priorities, and long-term workforce needs.
- Translate organizational strategy into clear workforce, leadership, talent, and culture priorities.
- Integrate human resources, culture, leadership development, learning and development, employee engagement, and organizational effectiveness into a cohesive people function.
- Establish annual and multiyear people priorities, measures, resource requirements, and implementation plans.
- Ensure that people initiatives are focused on meaningful organizational outcomes rather than disconnected programs or activities.
- Advise the CEO and Executive Leadership Team regarding the people implications of strategic, operational, financial, and organizational decisions.

2. Executive Leadership and Strategic Counsel
- Serve as a trusted strategic advisor and coach to the CEO on organizational health, executive effectiveness, talent, culture, leadership, and workforce risk.
- Participate fully in Executive Leadership Team decisions and contribute to enterprise-wide strategy beyond the formal boundaries of the people function.
- Provide candid, evidence-informed counsel on executive and senior leadership performance, organizational structure, succession, team dynamics, and significant personnel decisions.
- Strengthen the effectiveness, cohesion, accountability, and collective leadership of the Executive Leadership Team.
- Help executive leaders anticipate and address the human and cultural implications of major decisions and organizational changes.
- Promote enterprise thinking, shared accountability, and effective collaboration across functions.

3. Organizational Culture and Employee Experience
- Define and advance a healthy organizational culture grounded in Gulf Coast Center's mission, values, and commitment to serving employees, clients, and communities well.
- Translate desired cultural commitments into observable leadership practices, employee expectations, systems, and decisions.
- Assess organizational culture and employee experience through quantitative and qualitative data.
- Identify systemic barriers to trust, communication, collaboration, accountability, inclusion, and organizational effectiveness.
- Lead culture-strengthening initiatives that improve both employee experience and organizational performance.
- Ensure that culture is reinforced through hiring, onboarding, leadership expectations, performance management, recognition, development, promotion, and accountability practices.
- Help leaders create workplaces characterized by clarity, respect, psychological safety, shared accountability, and high performance.

4. Human Resources Leadership and Governance
- Provide executive oversight and strategic direction for the full human resources function.
- Lead and support the Human Resources Director in the effective administration of HR operations, policies, systems, and services.
- Ensure that employment practices are compliant, consistent, equitable, timely, and aligned with organizational values and operational needs.
- Maintain appropriate executive oversight of employee relations, investigations, performance concerns, workplace complaints, corrective action, and other sensitive personnel matters.
- Establish clear thresholds for matters managed operationally by the Human Resources Director and matters requiring CPO or executive involvement.
- Ensure that significant workforce risks are identified, escalated, and addressed appropriately.
- Guide the continued development of HR capabilities, systems, service standards, technology, and operating practices.
- Partner with legal counsel, compliance, finance, and other stakeholders on employment-related risk and governance.

5. Leadership and Management Effectiveness
- Lead the continued development and institutionalization of an enterprise-wide leadership philosophy by setting and systematizing clear expectations for how leaders at Gulf Coast Center lead people, manage performance, communicate, make decisions, and advance the mission.
- Develop an integrated approach to leadership development across executive, senior, middle, and frontline leadership levels.
- Strengthen leader capability in areas such as trust, communication, coaching, accountability, delegation, decision-making, change leadership, conflict navigation, and employee development.
- Ensure that leaders receive the feedback, development, tools, and support needed to succeed.
- Partner with leaders to address persistent leadership-performance concerns and systemic management challenges.
- Create mechanisms for assessing leadership effectiveness and measuring the application and impact of leadership development.
- Support the CEO in executive development, succession, and leadership-team effectiveness.

6. Learning and Development
- Establish the strategic direction and priorities for organizational learning and employee development.
- Ensure that learning and development resources are aligned with organizational strategy, workforce needs, compliance requirements, leadership expectations, and employee development priorities.
- Lead and support the Learning and Development team in designing and implementing effective learning systems and programs.
- Develop an integrated learning architecture that may include onboarding, professional development, manager development, leadership pathways, technical training, compliance training, career development, and succession preparation.
- Establish quality standards for learning design, facilitation, application, and evaluation.
- Determine which capabilities should be built internally and when external expertise or partnerships are appropriate.
- Ensure that learning investments produce practical improvements in employee capability, leader behavior, and organizational performance.
- Personally lead or facilitate selected high-leverage executive, leadership, culture, or organizational-development initiatives when appropriate.

7. Talent Management and Workforce Planning
- Develop an enterprise-wide approach to attracting, selecting, developing, retaining, and advancing talent.
- Partner with executive and operational leaders to identify current and future workforce needs.
- Strengthen recruitment and selection practices to improve quality of hire, mission alignment, workforce stability, and candidate experience.
- Establish talent-review and succession-planning processes for critical roles.
- Identify key-person risks, leadership-pipeline gaps, hard-to-fill positions, and emerging capability needs.
- Develop strategies that support internal mobility, career development, high-potential talent, and continuity of leadership.
- Use workforce data to anticipate turnover, retirement, growth, capacity, and capability needs.
- Ensure that compensation, recognition, development, and advancement practices support attraction, retention, fairness, and performance.

8. Performance, Accountability, and Development Systems
- Lead the continued development of Gulf Coast Center's performance-management philosophy, systems, and practices.
- Ensure that employees and leaders receive clear expectations, meaningful feedback, appropriate support, and consistent accountability.
- Integrate performance management with coaching, employee development, leadership expectations, organizational values, and strategic priorities.
- Improve the quality and consistency of goal setting, feedback, performance conversations, evaluations, corrective action, and development planning.
- Equip leaders to address performance concerns promptly, respectfully, and effectively.
- Ensure that performance systems distinguish appropriately among performance management, employee development, discipline, and talent planning.
- Use performance data to identify organizational patterns and inform broader people and leadership strategies.

9. Organizational Development and Change Leadership
- Advise leaders on organizational structure, role clarity, decision rights, team design, spans of control, and cross-functional effectiveness.
- Lead or support significant organizational-design and restructuring efforts.
- Build Gulf Coast Center's capacity to lead change effectively and sustainably.
- Ensure that major changes are supported by thoughtful stakeholder engagement, communication, leader preparation, employee involvement, and implementation planning.
- Assess the organizational and cultural implications of strategic initiatives before and during implementation.
- Help leaders navigate ambiguity, resistance, competing priorities, and workforce impact during periods of change.
- Facilitate selected strategic, organizational, or team-development processes as needed.

10. Employee Engagement, Retention, and Organizational Health
- Establish a disciplined approach to understanding and improving employee engagement, retention, and organizational health.
- Use surveys, listening practices, workforce analytics, exit data, focus groups, and other methods to identify employee needs and organizational patterns.
- Ensure that employee feedback leads to visible, prioritized, and accountable organizational action.
- Partner with leaders to address preventable turnover, burnout, communication breakdowns, workload concerns, and barriers to effectiveness.
- Develop strategies that strengthen connection, belonging, recognition, growth, well-being, and commitment.
- Monitor organizational health indicators and regularly report meaningful findings to the CEO and Executive Leadership Team.

11. People Analytics and Measurement
- Develop a focused people dashboard that provides leaders with meaningful insight into organizational health, talent, workforce risk, and people-function performance.
- Establish measures related to retention, recruitment, vacancies, employee relations, engagement, leadership effectiveness, development, succession, performance, and other strategic priorities.
- Move the organization beyond reporting activities and toward evaluating outcomes, patterns, risks, and impact.
- Use workforce and organizational data to inform decisions and recommend action.
- Ensure that people data is handled ethically, accurately, securely, and with appropriate confidentiality.
- Communicate insights clearly to executive leaders, operational leaders, and the Board.

12. Board and Governance Support
- Provide the Board of Trustees and appropriate board committees with relevant information regarding workforce strategy, organizational culture, leadership, succession, executive talent, and people-related risk.
- Support CEO evaluation, executive compensation, executive succession, or other governance processes as requested and appropriate.
- Ensure that the organization has appropriate mechanisms for addressing concerns involving senior executives or the CEO.
- Present people-strategy priorities, organizational-health findings, and significant workforce risks in a clear and decision-relevant manner.

13. People-Function Leadership
- Build an integrated, respected, responsive, and strategically capable people function.
- Clarify roles, decision rights, service expectations, and accountability across HR, L&D, and related functions.
- Develop the capability and leadership of the Human Resources Director, Learning and Development leaders, and other team members.
- Create strong operating rhythms for planning, prioritization, collaboration, decision-making, and execution.
- Ensure that the people function balances employee care, organizational stewardship, legal compliance, operational responsiveness, and strategic impact.
- Evaluate the structure and capacity of the people function and recommend changes as organizational needs evolve.
- Establish a culture within the people team characterized by trust, candor, sound judgment, confidentiality, service, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Decision Authority
The Chief People Officer is expected to exercise significant executive judgment and authority in areas including:
- People strategy and annual people priorities
- Leadership and workforce-development strategy
- Organizational culture initiatives
- HR and L&D functional direction
- People-function structure, staffing, and resource recommendations
- Executive and senior-leader talent recommendations
- Succession and talent-review processes
- Performance-management and leadership-accountability systems
- Employment policy recommendations
- Significant employee-relations and workforce-risk matters
- Organizational-design and change recommendations
- Selection and management of external people-related consultants and partners
- People analytics, organizational-health reporting, and associated action plans

The Chief People Officer works in close partnership with the CEO and other executives on decisions with significant financial, legal, operational, reputational, or enterprise-wide implications.

Measures of Success
Success in the role will be evaluated through a combination of strategic progress, operational effectiveness, organizational outcomes, and leadership impact. Measures may include:
- A clear and implemented enterprise people strategy
- Stronger alignment among organizational strategy, culture, leadership, and people systems
- Increased executive and leadership effectiveness
- Improved employee trust, engagement, retention, and experience
- Reduced preventable turnover and vacancy risk
- Stronger leadership pipelines and succession readiness
- Greater consistency in performance management, feedback, and accountability
- Improved integration and effectiveness across HR and L&D
- Timely and effective management of workforce risk and employee-relations matters
- Increased use of meaningful people analytics in executive decision-making
- Demonstrated application and organizational impact of leadership and learning initiatives
- Improved role clarity, cross-functional collaboration, and change capability
- A credible, responsive, and strategically valued people function

First-Year Priorities
During the first year, the Chief People Officer will be expected to:
1. Conduct a comprehensive assessment of Gulf Coast Center's people systems, organizational culture, leadership practices, workforce risks, communication systems, and people-function capabilities.
2. Complete the Leadership Excellence strategic plan initiatives as planned through February 2027.
3. Develop and align the Executive Leadership Team around a multiyear people strategy and focused first-year priorities.
4. Clarify the roles, structure, operating model, and decision rights of HR, L&D, and the broader people function.
5. Establish a productive leadership partnership with the Human Resources Director and Learning and Development team.
6. Identify and address the most significant organizational culture, leadership, employee-experience, and workforce risks.
7. Strengthen the performance-management and leadership-accountability system.
8. Establish an integrated leadership-development and learning architecture.
9. Develop an initial enterprise talent-review and succession-planning process.
10. Establish a practical executive people dashboard with meaningful organizational-health measures.
11. Build trust and credibility with employees, leaders, executives, and the Board through visible listening, sound judgment, disciplined priorities, and consistent follow-through.

Required Qualifications
- Advanced degree in strategic leadership, organizational development, human resources, business administration, psychology, public administration, or a related field; equivalent senior-level experience may be considered.
- Significant progressive leadership experience in human resources, people strategy, organizational development, leadership development, talent management, or a related field.
- Demonstrated experience advising CEOs, executive teams, or senior leaders on complex people and organizational matters.
- Experience developing and implementing enterprise-wide people, culture, leadership, or organizational-effectiveness strategies.
- Demonstrated ability to lead through functional directors and professional teams rather than personally owning all operational execution.
- Experience leading organizational change and influencing across functions.
- Strong understanding of employment practices, employee relations, performance management, workforce risk, and HR governance.
- Experience designing or overseeing leadership and workforce-development systems.
- Demonstrated ability to use qualitative and quantitative data to identify patterns, inform decisions, and evaluate impact.
- Exceptional judgment, discretion, integrity, and ability to manage sensitive and confidential matters.
- Strong executive communication, facilitation, coaching, and relationship-building skills.

Preferred Qualifications
- Doctoral degree or other terminal degree in leadership, organizational development, business, or a related discipline.
- Senior leadership experience in healthcare, behavioral health, human services, government, nonprofit, or another complex and highly regulated environment.
- Professional certification in human resources, coaching, leadership development, organizational development, or talent management.
- Experience integrating HR, culture, leadership development, and learning into a unified people strategy.
- Experience supporting a geographically dispersed or multidisciplinary workforce.
- Experience working with governing boards or board committees.
- Experience leading culture transformation, leadership academies, succession planning, or enterprise-wide organizational-development initiatives.
- Familiarity with public-sector, grant-funded, or community-based service environments.

Leadership Competencies
The successful Chief People Officer will demonstrate:

Enterprise Thinking
Sees the organization as an interconnected system and makes decisions based on what best advances Gulf Coast Center's overall mission and long-term health.

Strategic Integration
Connects strategy, structure, leadership, culture, talent, and systems rather than treating people initiatives as isolated programs.

Executive Presence and Courage
Communicates with clarity and confidence, raises difficult issues, provides candid counsel, and maintains composure in complex or high-stakes situations.

Relational Credibility
Builds trust across levels and functions while maintaining appropriate boundaries, objectivity, confidentiality, and accountability.

Accountability with Care
Balances empathy and support with clear expectations, responsible stewardship, and willingness to address difficult performance or behavior concerns.

Sound Judgment
Discerns what requires executive attention, what can be delegated, what carries risk, and what response is proportionate to the situation.

Facilitative Leadership
Creates conditions in which leaders and employees can contribute perspectives, build shared understanding, and take ownership of effective solutions.

Change Leadership
Helps people understand, engage with, and successfully implement change while maintaining focus on mission, outcomes, and organizational capacity.

Developing Others
Builds the capability of leaders and teams through coaching, feedback, opportunities, expectations, and meaningful development.

Results Orientation
Translates strategy into priorities, decisions, systems, action, and measurable organizational improvement.

Employment Structure
This is a full-time executive position with benefits, including paid personal leave, paid holidays, and participation in Gulf Coast Center's retirement program and other eligible benefit plans.
The role is structured around a four-day primary workweek, with flexibility appropriate to the responsibilities of an executive position. The Chief People Officer is accountable for enterprise outcomes, effective leadership, accessibility during significant organizational needs, and fulfillment of the position's responsibilities rather than time-based activity measurement.

Some flexibility outside the regular work schedule may be required for executive meetings, urgent employee matters, organizational events, board responsibilities, or other significant needs.
Subject to applicable conflict-of-interest, confidentiality, intellectual-property, and ethical requirements, the Chief People Officer may maintain approved outside professional activities that do not materially interfere with the performance of the role or create an actual conflict with Gulf Coast Center's interests.

Working Conditions
- This position is primarily remote, with periodic on-site presence at Gulf Coast Center locations required for executive meetings, organizational events, relationship-building, and other responsibilities best conducted in person.
- Gulf Coast Center will provide the customary technology, equipment, software, platforms, system access, and other tools reasonably required for the Chief People Officer to perform the role effectively in a remote work environment.
- This executive role requires frequent interaction with employees, leaders, external partners, and members of the Board.
- Work includes regular meetings, strategic planning, coaching, facilitation, analysis, decision-making, and handling of sensitive personnel matters.
- Some travel to and among Gulf Coast Center locations and occasional travel for conferences, professional development, or organizational business may be required.
- Occasional evening or nonstandard-hour commitments may be necessary.

Equal Employment Opportunity
Gulf Coast Center is committed to providing equal employment opportunities and maintaining a workplace in which employees are treated with dignity and respect. Employment decisions are made in accordance with applicable laws and organizational policy.