Senior Director, Talent Management

About the role

The Senior Director, Talent Management is responsible for shaping and operationalizing Tides’ People strategy, driving labor and employee relations, and leading talent processes including performance, talent acquisition, and organizational development.

This role ensures that Tides Network is structured to enable operational requirements led by capable leaders and staffed with high-performing talent aligned to advance business and impact strategies. This position serves as a strategic partner, translating business objectives into workforce strategy and building systems that foster growth, agility, and sustained performance.

This role will also lead the development of the Talent Center of Excellence (COE), serving Tides Center’s 100+ partners and 800+ staff.

Responsibilities

• Define, steward, and continuously evolve talent strategy to directly support business priorities, multi-year growth plans, financial sustainability, and future workforce requirements, ensuring talent decisions enable long-term mission and impact outcomes.
• Integrate workforce strategy with organizational planning cycles, including strategic planning, annual operating plans, and transformation initiatives, using financial forecasts and organizational performance data to inform investments in people function.
• Serve as a trusted executive and thought partner to senior leadership, elevating insights on workforce trends, labor market dynamics, future-of-work implications, and emerging risks or opportunities.
• Own and set direction for organizational development strategy, including leadership development, succession planning, and organizational capability building, empowering the Director, Organizational Development to translate vision into cohesive execution.
• Lead culture, performance enablement, and values activation strategies that reinforce Tides’ core values, leadership competencies, and expectations for collaboration, accountability, and inclusion.
• Design and embed scalable change management frameworks that support adoption of organizational initiatives, people programs, and structural shifts, ensuring leaders are equipped to lead through change.
• Lead enterprise-wide organizational design efforts to support scalability, clarity, and effective execution, aligning structures and operating models with strategic goals and evolving business needs.
• Establish and enforce governance frameworks for role creation, job modifications, structural changes, and workforce planning decisions to ensure consistency, equity, and fiscal discipline.
• Partner closely with Total Rewards leadership to align job architecture, job descriptions, career pathways, and role clarity with compensation philosophy, internal equity, and talent mobility.
• Collaborate with Finance and Strategy teams on workforce modeling, headcount forecasting, and cost structures.
• Provide leadership during restructuring, reorganizations, or transformation efforts, balancing financial responsibility, employee experience, labor obligations, and organizational effectiveness.
• Lead labor relations strategy with a commitment to constructive, good-faith engagement, strengthening trust-based relationships while advancing organizational effectiveness and protecting institutional interests.
• Partner with the lead negotiator on collective bargaining, supporting negotiation strategy, proposal development, costing analysis, preparation, and direct participation in bargaining sessions, as appropriate.
• Lead and oversee the full grievance lifecycle in alignment with CBA provisions, ensuring timely, consistent, and equitable resolutions.
• Navigate complex employee relations matters, including performance management, conflict resolution, and sensitive workplace issues, applying a values-driven, JEDI-aligned, and trauma-informed approach.
• Ensure timely, objective, and fair investigations by the People Team, maintaining credibility, compliance, and trust.
• Steward updates to people policies, procedures, and the employee handbook, ensuring alignment with CBAs, legal requirements, and best practices in partnership with Legal team.
• Maintain strong partnerships with in-house and external employment and labor counsel, ensuring sound legal strategy and risk management across all labor and employee relations activities.
• Sponsor learning, leadership development, and performance enablement efforts, providing strategic alignment, visibility, and sponsorship to ensure consistency with Tides’ goals to strengthen and shift power, center equity, and cultivate staff agency.
• Ensure organizational development initiatives are integrated with the broader people strategy and that leaders are well-equipped to model desired behaviors during periods of growth, transition, or transformation.
• Define and steward the vision for performance enablement, embedding clear goals, competencies, KPIs, and feedback mechanisms into evaluation processes that promote growth and accountability.
• Lead culture, engagement, and organizational health assessments, translating qualitative and quantitative data into actionable insights and strategic priorities.
• Set and refine the organization’s staffing and hiring strategy, ensuring alignment with evolving business priorities, workforce plans, and future skill requirements.
• Define the strategic and technical direction for the applicant tracking system and position control infrastructure, ensuring data integrity, efficiency, and compliance.
• Enable Talent Acquisition leaders to deliver high-quality, equitable hiring outcomes.

Qualifications

• Commitment to Tides’ mission of shifting and strengthening power for communities facing systemic barriers and demonstrated dedication to advancing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI).
• Proven strategic leadership experience aligning strategies with organizational goals.
• Business and financial acumen with a track record of connecting talent strategies to organizational, operational, and fiscal outcomes.
• Experience driving transformational change, establishing KPIs, measuring outcomes, and implementing scalable systems and strategies.
• Demonstrated success leading core HR domains: talent acquisition, talent development, employee relations, and labor relations.
• Experience leading collective bargaining agreement negotiations, impact bargaining, and formal grievance processes.
• Ability to partner with senior leaders to evaluate and resolve complex employee matters, fostering trust and strong cross-functional relationships.
• Commitment to engaging, developing, and retaining a diverse team through a culture of accountability, feedback, and recognition.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to synthesize and present complex concepts and recommendations to executives.
• Exceptional interpersonal, diplomatic, and conflict resolution skills with ability to manage difficult conversations while maintaining professionalism and strong relationships.
• Highly detail-oriented with project management skills to build, operationalize, and improve systems, policies, and processes.

Preferred Experience

• 8 years of direct applicable business and HR experience and relevant bachelor’s degree; or 10 years of relevant experience.
• 4 years of experience must be in a supervisory capacity.
• 6+ years’ partnering with executives, preferred.
• Proven track record of building, leading, and innovating the People function to deliver exceptional results.
• Experience leading and engaging teams in a remote-first environment.
• A strategic mindset and the ability to develop scalable solutions to support organizational goals.