Job Description

Chief People Officer

KIPP NYC is seeking an exceptional Chief People Officer (CPO) to serve as chief architect of the organization's talent strategy, culture, and employee experience, and as a critical member of the Executive Leadership Team.

Reporting directly to the CEO, the CPO will own all aspects of the People function — including talent acquisition and workforce planning; talent development and performance management; organizational effectiveness and change leadership; total rewards; employee and labor relations; HR operations, governance, compliance, and risk management; and equity and belonging — across a complex, multi-entity organization of 1,200+ employees serving thousands of students and families across three boroughs.

This is an enterprise-level mandate requiring both strategic leadership and operational excellence. The CPO will sit alongside the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Development Officer as one of the CEO's core strategic partners, responsible for ensuring that the organization's people strategy scales at the same pace as its budget, its footprint, and its ambition. Early priorities include:

• Strengthening and building areas of an integrated, data-driven People function capable of supporting a $300M+, multi-entity, three-borough organization — with the infrastructure to match near-term execution against long-term scale.
• Modernizing core HR systems (HRIS, performance management, applicant tracking) and exploring AI and modern people-analytics tools to move from reactive HR administration to proactive workforce strategy.
• Partnering closely with the CFO on the transition of payroll into Finance, and establishing a durable, well-defined operating partnership between People and Finance going forward.
• Building a school-leader and central-office leadership pipeline strong enough to support continued growth, with clear succession planning at every critical seat.
• Strengthening recruitment, onboarding, and retention strategies for school-based educators — historically the highest-turnover, highest-stakes talent segment in the network.
• Embedding equity and belonging as operating disciplines, not slogans, across hiring, compensation, promotion, and performance management.

Key responsibilities of the CPO include, among others:

Talent Strategist and Empowering Culture Leader

• Serve as a strategic thought partner to the CEO, Board, and Executive Leadership Team, translating organizational vision into an actionable, multi-year talent strategy.
• Own workforce planning across a complex, multi-entity structure — anticipating hiring needs, succession risk, and organizational design questions before they become urgent.
• Build and protect a culture of high performance, accountability, and belonging at every level of the organization, from classrooms to the central office.
• Advise the CEO and executive team on the people implications of major strategic decisions — including organizational design changes, new school openings, restructures, and shifts in operating models — and lead the people and change-management strategies required for successful implementation.
• Champion a leadership philosophy grounded in clear expectations, coaching, and empowerment — modeling the culture the organization wants replicated at every school site.
• Serve as a senior advisor on organizational risk, governance, and compliance, ensuring that people-related risks are proactively identified, appropriately escalated, and addressed through clear policies, controls, and decision-making processes.
• Lead a team of ~18 (with three direct reports: Managing Director, Talent; Managing Director, People Operations; and Managing Director, People Transformation) across functions of recruitment, employee experience and talent development, people operations and transformation.

Employee Experience, Talent Development, & Equity Leadership

• Design and lead an end-to-end talent lifecycle strategy — recruitment, onboarding, development, performance management, advancement, and retention — tailored to the distinct needs of school-based and central-office talent.
• Build a rigorous, equitable performance management approach that sets clear expectations, supports continuous development, differentiates performance, addresses underperformance, and strengthens teacher and leader effectiveness in service of student outcomes.
• Build a leadership development pipeline for school leaders and rising central-office executives, with defined pathways, competency frameworks, and succession plans for the organization's most critical roles.
• Own total rewards strategy — compensation philosophy, benefits design, and market benchmarking — ensuring KIPP NYC remains competitive for top talent in both the education sector and the broader NYC labor market.
• Lead equity and belonging strategy across hiring practices, compensation structures, promotion pathways, and performance management, in direct service of the organization's broader commitment to racial equity and social justice.
• Build listening infrastructure (engagement surveys, exit interviews, stay interviews) and translate findings into concrete action.
• Ensure managers across the network are equipped — through training, tools, and coaching — to lead, develop, and retain their teams effectively.

Enterprise Builder and Systems Leader

• Modernize HR infrastructure and systems (HRIS, ATS, performance and compensation platforms) to move the People function from manual and reactive to integrated and data-driven.
• Establish and oversee strong governance, compliance, and organizational risk-management processes across the People function, including consistent policies, internal controls, documentation standards, escalation protocols, and compliance with New York State and City employment law.
• Ensure consistent, sound employee and labor relations practices across the organization, including investigations, performance and conduct matters, partnership with legal counsel, and effective engagement with unionized stakeholders.
• Partner with Finance to execute the transition of payroll into the finance function, and establish clear, durable ownership and handoff points between the two teams going forward.
• Build people-analytics capability — turnover, time-to-fill, engagement, pay equity — that gives the CEO, Board, and executive team a real-time view of organizational health.
• Recruit, develop, and lead a high-performing People team, with clear expectations, professional growth pathways, and a culture of ownership and continuous improvement.
• Establish a rigorous operating cadence for the People function — annual workforce planning, compensation review cycles, performance calendars, and executive reporting — mirroring the operational discipline being built in Finance and Development.

Qualifications

While it is understood that no candidate will offer every desired skill, quality, and characteristic, the following competencies offer a detailed, aspirational view of the ideal candidate profile.

A Strategic and Empowering Culture Leader

• A track record of serving as a trusted strategic advisor to CEOs, executive teams, and boards on talent and organizational strategy, bringing executive presence, sound judgment, and the confidence to constructively challenge assumptions.
• A demonstrated ability to lead organizational design and enterprise-wide change, including building stakeholder investment, communicating through uncertainty, and helping leaders and teams adopt new structures, systems, and ways of working.
• Significant experience building and scaling people functions within large, complex, multi-site organizations (ideally 1,000+ employees and $100M+ operating budgets).
• A demonstrated ability to build workforce plans that anticipate organizational needs rather than react to them.
• An empowering leadership style that develops high-performing teams through clear expectations, coaching, accountability, and a genuine culture of ownership.

Trusted Relationship Builder and Communicator

• Exceptional communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to build trust and influence across school leaders, executive leadership, and the Board.
• A high degree of emotional attunement – the ability to read what's said and unsaid in a room or relationship and translate that insight into action.
• The ability to pair genuine empathy with high accountability: someone who can hold people closely and still hold the line.
• Executive presence and warmth in equal measure – possessing gravitas that earns trust.
• A sense of humor and levity that builds connection, even amid serious, high-stakes work.

An Equity-Minded Enterprise Leader

• A collaborative, enterprise-wide mindset, with the ability to build strong partnerships across People, Finance, Development, and school-based leadership.
• A demonstrated, substantive commitment to equity in hiring, compensation, and advancement with the ability to translate values into concrete policy and practice, not just language.
• Deep expertise in human resources (HR), compliance, and engagement with complex legal employment matters.
• A demonstrated track record of building effective performance management, talent development, and succession-planning strategies within organizations with distinct frontline and central-office talent segments.
• A strong command of total rewards strategy, including compensation philosophy, benefits design and administration, and competitive benchmarking.

An Innovative Systems-Thinker

• A demonstrated track record of modernizing HR systems, processes, and technology to build scalable, data-driven People operations across multiple HRIS platforms.
• Experience leveraging HR technology and people analytics — including emerging AI tools — to

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