Director of OE Strategic Operations & Impact

University of California, San Francisco•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

The Director of OE Strategic Operations & Impact is a senior leader within Human Resources who reports to the Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness/Chief Learning Officer (VP/CLO). Acting as the VP/CLO’s organizational right hand and OE’s strategic operating integrator, the Director translates enterprise priorities into a coherent portfolio, disciplined execution, a strong customer experience, and measurable organizational results. The role leads OE strategic operations, including portfolio planning and prioritization, budget and resource governance, leadership operating rhythms, cross-pillar integration, executive decision support, and processes that move decisions and commitments to closure. The Director strengthens the quality and impact of OE’s work by connecting work across capability areas, clarifying intended outcomes, and ensuring initiatives progress through implementation, adoption, sustained use, and measurable impact. The role establishes review and organizational learning practices that connect enterprise needs and investments to execution, customer experience, and organizational outcomes, using evidence to inform what to improve, scale, sustain, redesign, or stop. The Director provides focused leadership for evolving enterprise priorities that require integration, execution discipline, and organizational follow-through. The initial priority is to reimagine and implement Enterprise and Executive Onboarding across UCSF Health and Campus, creating an integrated experience and operating model that accelerates connection, effectiveness, and contribution. Working alongside the VP/CLO, the Director translates organizational needs into OE priorities and investment choices, pressure-tests approaches with HR and business leaders, and creates conditions for OE to deliver as an integrated team. The role works horizontally across Leadership Development & Learning, Talent Management, Organization Design & Effectiveness, and Future of Work & Leadership Experience Innovation. It complements, rather than replaces, the expertise and accountability of pillar leaders through analytical challenge, customer insight, portfolio integration, implementation discipline, and evidence of impact. The Organizational Effectiveness function within Human Resources develops leaders, strengthens organizations, optimizes talent and learning systems, and advances innovative approaches that help UCSF’s people and mission thrive across UCSF Health and Campus. OE Strategic Operations & Impact provides the function’s integrated operating system, including strategy translation, portfolio planning and prioritization, budget and resource governance, cross-pillar integration, executive decision support, review and measurement, customer-oriented challenge, and focused execution leadership for high-priority enterprise work.

Requirements

Demonstrated expertise in strategic operations, enterprise planning, portfolio prioritization, governance, and strategy execution within a large, complex organization.
Exceptional executive partnership, synthesis, communication, and decision-support skills, including the ability to serve as a trusted thought partner and translate ambiguity into clear choices, recommendations, and action.
Ability to work horizontally across expert functions, constructively challenge senior peers, integrate competing perspectives, and drive follow-through without relying on positional authority or excessive bureaucracy.
Strong customer orientation and ability to use stakeholder insight, experience data, operational evidence, and business outcomes to challenge assumptions and improve enterprise people and organizational solutions.
Strong financial and operational acumen, including budget planning, resource and capacity visibility, forecasting, business-case development, and investment trade-off analysis.
Measurement literacy and evaluative judgment, including defining meaningful outcomes, distinguishing activity from impact, interpreting quantitative and qualitative evidence, and partnering effectively with analytics experts.
Experience establishing review and learning mechanisms such as premortems, implementation reviews, retrospectives, or post-implementation reviews and converting evidence into decisions and continuous improvement.
Demonstrated success leading complex cross-functional enterprise initiatives from strategy through implementation, adoption, integration, and sustained impact.
Breadth across organizational effectiveness disciplines such as talent, leadership development, learning, organizational development, change, employee experience, or workforce strategy sufficient to integrate work across specialized teams.
Practical fluency with AI-enabled tools and automation to improve work visibility, synthesis, reporting, coordination, and operational efficiency.
Demonstrated ability to lead and develop professional staff and establish clear operating standards and accountability.
At least 10 years of progressive experience spanning strategic operations, strategy execution, enterprise program or portfolio leadership, transformation, organizational effectiveness, HR strategy, Chief-of-Staff work, or related disciplines in a large, complex organization.
Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional enterprise work and advising senior leaders on priorities, trade-offs, governance, customer needs, measurement, and execution.
Experience translating enterprise strategy or complex organizational priorities into implementation, adoption, and measurable outcomes.
A bachelor’s degree in business, organizational effectiveness/development, strategy, operations, human resources, analytics, healthcare administration, or a related field, and/or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing, governing, or transforming onboarding, executive onboarding, employee lifecycle, or comparable enterprise experiences.
Experience in healthcare, academic medicine, higher education, or another complex, highly matrixed enterprise.
PMP, PgMP, Prosci, Lean, Agile, program/portfolio management, measurement/evaluation, executive coaching, or related certification.
Graduate degree in business, organizational development, organizational psychology, strategy, analytics, public administration, healthcare administration, or a related field.

Responsibilities

Lead OE’s strategic operating system, translating enterprise priorities into a visible, sequenced, integrated portfolio across OE capability areas.
Establish portfolio intake, prioritization criteria, governance, decision rights, milestones, escalation mechanisms, and operating rhythms to support timely decisions and disciplined follow-through.
Lead integrated OE budget, investment, and resource planning with the VP/CLO and Finance; maintain visibility into commitments, forecasts, demand, capacity, and trade-offs.
Develop and challenge business cases for significant investments and recommend work to initiate, sequence, accelerate, pause, scale, redesign, or stop based on strategic value, customer need, evidence, capacity, and enterprise priorities.
Identify cross-pillar risks, dependencies, duplication, and integration opportunities before they impede execution or customer experience.
Serve as the VP/CLO’s organizational right hand and senior thought partner, translating strategic direction into coordinated leadership action and anticipating issues, decisions, and opportunities.
Work horizontally across OE Directors to challenge assumptions, strengthen strategies and proposed solutions, and improve portfolio coherence and customer orientation while respecting functional accountability.
Synthesize complex information into executive-ready choices, recommendations, and materials; represent the VP/CLO’s strategic intent when appropriate and advance priority work.
Design and lead OE leadership operating rhythms, including direct-report meetings, cross-pillar integration forums, and all-hands meetings, to drive alignment, decisions, accountability, and closure.
Establish OE review practices so significant initiatives have a clear customer or organizational problem, intended outcomes, success measures, assumptions, evidence expectations, and implementation risks.
Lead premortems, implementation reviews, retrospectives, and post-implementation reviews for priority work; distinguish activity, adoption, experience, behavior change, and organizational impact.
Partner with OE leaders, customers, business stakeholders, and analytics partners to interpret quantitative and qualitative evidence and assess whether solutions are working as intended.
Translate evidence into decision-useful conclusions and learning loops that improve design, investment, prioritization, execution, and decisions to scale, sustain, redesign, or stop work.
Strengthen OE’s ability to demonstrate a credible connection between enterprise need and investment, execution, customer experience, and organizational outcomes.
Provide focused leadership for high-priority organizational initiatives requiring integration, execution discipline, and follow-through as enterprise priorities evolve.
Partner with the OE leader or functional expert accountable for solution design to turn strategy and design into an executable enterprise approach with clear outcomes, governance, roles, resources, dependencies, customer requirements, implementation plans, and success measures.
Lead cross-functional execution of priority initiatives through implementation, adoption, integration, and sustained impact; identify barriers, mobilize partners, resolve dependencies, and establish accountability for results.
Lead the strategy, redesign, and implementation of Enterprise and Executive Onboarding across UCSF Health and Campus, including an integrated experience, operating model, governance structure, and measurement approach.
Lead and develop the OE Operations Coordinator and OE Program & Onboarding Coordinator, establishing clear accountability, development priorities, and high operating standards.
Ensure OE has reliable operational infrastructure, documentation, budget and vendor practices, work visibility, program coordination, and review support.
Build practical use of AI and automation into OE operations to reduce administrative burden and improve visibility, synthesis, reporting, coordination, and execution.
Continuously strengthen team capabilities and ways of working so OE can scale its impact without unnecessary bureaucracy.