Director of People at Dalberg

ABOUT YOU

This role sits at the heart of who we are. Dalberg Advisors is focused on bringing the best talent to the most challenging problems facing our planet and its people. Our People Director is critical to ensuring we attract talented and motivated individuals, develop their potential with inclusive and leading-edge support, and advance their careers so they are ready to lead on complex challenges.

This role requires a thoughtful leader who can drive our People function to optimize for the social impact an individual creates. You will join the Dalberg Advisors global management team, made up of our Partners and senior operations leadership, helping us to shape our talent experience across the globe.

To succeed in this role, you need to be:

• Deeply passionate about helping individuals and teams grow and perform at their best.
• A ‘builder’ who is willing to both co-create strategy as well as ‘roll up one’s sleeves’ in driving improvements, such as in how to conduct impartial recruiting, deliver training, run performance management, provide coaching, and build firm culture.
• Experienced in managing teams of HR professionals and working collaboratively with teams across the globe to develop and drive a shared People agenda.
• Excited about our firm’s mission and helping translate that into a values-based and impact-driven People strategy.
• A champion of diversity in all its forms, ensuring how we hire, train, evaluate, and coach is helping maximizing the potential of all our colleagues.
• Able to work across cultures and excited to build personal connections with colleagues.
• We expect this role may suit a wide range of profiles, from fast-growing People leaders keen to work in a mission-driven firm that matches their desire for innovation, to very senior executives looking to apply decades of wisdom on talent management to a growing social impact firm.

While we welcome a diverse pool of candidates, we expect candidates to:

• Have significant experience in HR talent operations (15+ years preferred), including at least 3 years in a senior leadership role.
• Have significant experience in professional services or other industries where high-skilled talent is the main product (strong preference).
• Have demonstrated experience working across cultures. Experience in emerging markets like Sub- Saharan Africa and South Asia, and/or social impact sectors strongly preferred, including managing HR operations in a unified manner that respects differences in working environments and local employment laws.
• Show deep experience in driving innovations within a people function and use of technology to enhance the employee experience.
• Demonstrate a strong track record of building trusted relationships across levels of an organization, building buy-in for change with humility, collaboration, and flexibility.
• Open to candidates of any nationality. Fluency in English is required. Conversational ability in French, Spanish or other global languages is a plus given Dalberg’s global footprint, but not required.

WHAT YOU WILL DRIVE

Our People Director will serve as a member of Dalberg Advisors’ global management team, helping create and drive a common vision for the talent experience across the globe. Reporting to Dalberg’s Chief Operating Officer, the People Director will oversee talent and HR functions led by our Global Shared Services (GSS) team and manage a team of ~10 talent professionals in our GSS team, including three direct reports. You will play a crucial role in shepherding Dalberg’s transformation in a critical period of business growth, and ensuring its talent base and value propositions to staff keep pace with changing needs and opportunities. This will include collaborating as a peer to four regional people leads across the globe, who report to their respective Regional Directors.

Responsibilities:

You will be a thought partner to the Dalberg Advisors leadership, including the COO and Global Managing Partner, peers in regional operations leadership, and our People and Values Committee, providing inputs on global firm-wide strategy, translating it into strategies for people management, driving accountability, managing risks that arise, and driving ongoing opportunities for improvement. This will include:

• Collaborating with regional people lead peers to define priority areas for global alignment and ownership by our GSS team, and identify central and/or regional capacity constraints to deliver these priorities. You will hold accountability for outcomes in these areas, which may include those involving global norms/policies, risk management, reporting, brand implications, among others.
• Acting as a central connector to share learnings, industry trends, and best practices globally, reinforcing a shared ownership mindset across GSS and regional people teams.

You will also oversee and hold accountability for our Global Shared Services People function, to ensure a globally cohesive and locally-relevant employee and Partner experience aligned with business objectives:

• Defining and helping us execute on best in class recruiting and onboarding approaches and work with our regional teams to make these locally relevant and compelling.
• Helping us build a stronger global alumni network. A key plank of our mission is to build future development leaders. Supporting our alumni is a key lever for achieving that mission.
• Supporting Dalberg to build an even more progressive, tech-forward global performance management and training approach. This includes managing two annual review cycles with regions to ensure accurate assessment and recognition for staff performance, organizing global cohort professional growth programs (~10/year) and tailored training resources.
• Driving ongoing improvements to firm-wide HR data and data systems to meet the evolving needs of our global firm and enable data-informed decision-making, including vendor management and negotiations, and pushing systems redesign.
• Strategically aligning and updating global HR policies and approaches to ensure our talent management approaches fit with our ambitions and values. As a talent leader, this will also include engaging in escalation if policies are violated. You will help us build transparent and compliant talent management across the firm, in coordination with regional needs (risk frameworks, compensation policies, and benchmarks etc).
• Championing a cohesive, inclusive, and inspiring employee experience that supports our values, retention, and culture in coordination with governance priorities led by our People and Values Committee, including applying a DEI lens across all aspects of our People function, implementing bi- annual staff pulse surveys, supporting regional alignment to Dalberg’s global Vision and Values, and advising on staff wellbeing efforts.
• Supporting Partner and executive-specific matters, including lateral hires, Partner reviews, Partner career development and training, elections, succession/ transition/ transfer planning, etc.
• Managing, coaching, and advocating for the GSS People team to develop a leadership bench capable of jointly addressing the challenges of a highly dynamic organization, while working as one global team alongside regions.