Vice President, People and Culture

We’re looking for a Vice President, People and Culture to join our People Area.

When you come work with us, here’s what you’ll find:

• Work that is meaningful. We are a fast-paced, deadline-driven consulting firm that only works with nonprofit clients who are essential to advancing the cause of justice, alleviating suffering, and solving the greatest challenges we face.
• Commitment to Anti-Racism, Equity, and Inclusion (AEI). We envision an anti-oppressive workplace that ensures an inclusive employee experience, promotes equitable outcomes for staff, and supports clients to center accessibility and anti-racism in their programs.
• Colleagues you can count on. Kind, dedicated, passionate people who work collaboratively to get things done and help you do your best.
• An organization that embraces change. We strive to improve and adapt and always seek new ways that we can contribute to a just, inclusive, and sustainable world. We are also continually working on making M+R a better place for our staff.
 

So that’s us. Now about the work:

The Vice President, People and Culture is part of our Shared Services Division -- comprising four areas: finance and accounting; operations; people; and marketing and business development. We ensure M+R is positioned to deliver outstanding services to clients such as Planned Parenthood, Feeding America, International Rescue Committee, NRDC, and many more. 

 

Day-to-day, we help cultivate high-functioning teams and a healthy and psychological safe work environment, so that our staff can work collaboratively, efficiently, and effectively, fostering a strong organizational culture that reflects and furthers M+R’s values.

Here’s what you’ll be doing in this role:

We are seeking an experienced People leader to develop and execute an enterprise-wide talent strategy that ensures M+R has the people, capabilities, leadership, and organizational capacity needed to achieve its goals.
 
Reporting to the Chief People and Culture Officer, the Vice President, People and Culture leads the organization’s talent strategy and workforce planning, with oversight of talent acquisition, staffing operations, employee and leadership development, succession planning, talent management, and organizational effectiveness. The Vice President partners with senior leaders to anticipate current and future talent needs, build critical capabilities, strengthen leadership pipelines, attract and retain high-quality talent, and create meaningful opportunities for employees to grow and contribute.
 
The ideal candidate brings strategic vision, strong business acumen, and deep expertise in talent strategy, workforce planning, and organizational development, with a demonstrated ability to translate organizational priorities into scalable talent programs and build high-performing teams and scalable People programs.
 
Key Responsibilities:
 
People Strategy & Strategic Leadership
• Develop and lead an integrated, enterprise-wide talent strategy aligned with M+R’s mission, values, business priorities, and future needs.
• Partner with senior leaders to assess current and future talent requirements, identify critical capabilities, and develop strategies to attract, retain, develop, and deploy talent effectively.
• Establish talent priorities, workforce plans, and measurable goals that strengthen organizational capability, performance, retention, and leadership capacity.
• Build and maintain a strong leadership and talent pipeline, including succession planning and strategies for critical and hard-to-fill roles.
• Use workforce and talent data, organizational insights, and external market trends to identify talent risks, gaps, and opportunities and inform strategic decisions.
• Lead and develop staffing, recruiting, and talent development teams, including the Senior Director, Talent Development and Director, Staffing Operations.
• Serve as a strategic advisor to senior leaders on talent, workforce, culture, organizational effectiveness, and change.
• Champion equity, inclusion, belonging, and psychological safety throughout the employee lifecycle.
• Continuously evaluate and evolve talent practices, systems, and technology to improve organizational effectiveness and employee experience.
 
Talent, Workforce Planning, and Organizational Effectiveness
 
• Provide strategic oversight of talent acquisition, staffing operations, and workforce planning.
• Develop staffing models, capacity plans, talent pipelines, and workforce forecasts aligned with organizational priorities and budgets.
• Strengthen recruiting strategies, employer brand, and employee value proposition in partnership with Marketing and Business Development. 
• Establish talent acquisition metrics and use data to improve quality of hire, retention, candidate experience, and workforce outcomes.
• Ensure talent practices promote fairness, consistency, diversity, and an exceptional candidate experience.
• Lead an enterprise-wide strategy for leadership development, career development, talent mobility, performance, and succession planning.
• Identify the capabilities and skills M+R will need to achieve its future goals and develop strategies to build those capabilities internally. 
• Establish talent review and succession planning processes for key roles and partner with leaders to develop high-potential and emerging talent.
• Create career pathways and opportunities that support retention, engagement, internal mobility, and long-term growth.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning, accountability, performance, and professional growth.

Skills and experiences required for this role:

• At least 15 years of progressive HR/People experience, including at least 10 years in leadership roles.
• Experience developing and executing enterprise-wide People and Culture strategies aligned with organizational priorities.
• Expertise across talent acquisition, workforce planning, employee engagement, talent development, performance management, succession planning, and organizational effectiveness.
• Experience advising executive and senior leaders on people, culture, workforce, and organizational matters.
  Proven ability to lead and develop high-performing
• People teams and build scalable programs and processes.
• Demonstrated experience leading organizational change and supporting new structures, processes, and ways of working.
• Commitment to equity, inclusion, belonging, and psychologically safe workplaces.
• Strong business acumen and analytical skills, including the ability to use workforce data to inform decisions and measure impact.
• Experience managing budgets, HR technology, vendors, and external partners.
• Experience overseeing leadership development, career pathways, employee development, and succession planning.
• Experience leading organization-wide culture and engagement activities, including retreats, conferences, team-building initiatives, and employee events.
• Excellent communication, relationship-building, facilitation, and influencing skills, with sound judgment and discretion.
• Experience in a mission-driven, nonprofit, advocacy, or professional services organization.
• Experience working in unionized environments.
 

Skills and experiences we expect of all M+R employees:

• Demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively to gain trust and give respect to others through honesty, integrity, kindness, empathy, and authenticity.
• Acute attention to detail and demonstrated ability to prioritize time to meet deadlines for multiple projects.
• Proven track record to successfully pick up new skills, including learning new technologies.
• Drive to seek what can be improved and offer ways to fix any potential roadblocks.
• Comfort admitting what you don’t know and recognizing that feedback is part of the learning process.
• Strong ability to relay your ideas clearly verbally and in writing.
• Able to work within equitable and inclusive decision making models in moving decisions and initiatives forward.
• Experience using HR and ATS systems, preferably Lever, Trakstar, and Rippling.
 
We love hearing from anyone who strives to make the world a better place! Not sure if you meet all of the qualifications? There is no harm in applying! We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and strongly encourage you to apply!
 

Salary and Benefits:

This is an exempt position. The starting salary for this position is $162,000. As part of M+R’s commitment to compensation equity and transparency, we have a no-negotiation policy. Salary negotiations can introduce bias and perpetuate wage inequality. If your years of relevant experience for this position are more than what is required above, we may offer a higher starting salary to reflect that, and compensation will be discussed more in depth in the initial interview.

 

We also offer a generous benefits package:

• A 36-hour workweek with half-day Fridays and scheduling flexibility;
• Three weeks of vacation and 17 paid sick days;
• Medical, dental, and vision benefits with premiums fully paid for by M+R for individual employees;
• 401(k) plan;
• Discretionary profit-sharing contributions;
• Annual $1,250 professional development stipend for qualified educational expenses;
• Flexible Spending Accounts for medical, dependent care, and transit;
• 11 holidays and a Mid-summer break the week of July 4;
• Exceptional paid Parental, Personal Medical & Family Caregiving leave policies.
 

The fine print:

M+R is currently able to hire candidates who reside in the following states: AK, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, ID, IL, KS, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, DC, WA, WI, WY. If you do not live in a state where we are currently registered, we may not be able to hire you for a currently open position. However, we welcome you to apply and if we are able to hire in your state we will contact you.

Staff working from an M+R office must be vaccinated against COVID-19, and all staff will be asked to provide their vaccine status.

To apply, use the button on this page. No calls, please. 

Our Hiring Process:

We aim to be transparent and efficient in our hiring process. Each question you will be asked throughout our hiring process ties directly back to one of the skills and experiences listed above. In each interview, you will be asked to provide examples of these skills and experiences or how you would draw on your experience to handle a scenario commonly found at M+R. Our typical hiring process includes: 

1) Phone Interview
2) Written Skills Assessment
3) Video Interview(s)
4) Reference Check

Depending on logistics and scheduling, our hiring process generally takes about 6 weeks from phone interview to a job offer. There is no application deadline; we review applications on a rolling basis. M+R has developed an application stage informational document that some candidates may find helpful. We let candidates know after each step in the process, once we’ve made a decision, whether they are moving forward to the next stage or not, so candidates know the status of their application. If you need accommodations for this application process or any of the hiring process steps listed above, please email accommodations@mrss.com or call 202-681-8743.