Global HR Portfolio Lead

AbbVie•North Chicago, IL

3d•$160,500 - $305,000

About The Position

The Global HR Portfolio Lead is part of AbbVie's People Strategy & Transformation team and is responsible for establishing and sustaining an enterprise-wide view of work delivered by HR across strategic priorities, ongoing programs and services, and locally managed work across affiliates and regions. Reporting to the leader of People Strategy & Transformation, the role connects people strategy to execution through portfolio governance, technology, an integrated roadmap, and decision forums. It provides the CHRO and HR Leadership Team with visibility into commitments, timing, dependencies, capacity, risks, and outcomes to support disciplined prioritization and trade-offs. The role develops a practical portfolio approach and technology solution, establishes portfolio intake and maintenance practices, and creates an integrated view of HR activations and change demands. It leads quarterly portfolio reviews focused on impact, value, risk, capacity, and future decisions, and partners with analytics teams and program owners to measure outcomes and value realization. The Global HR Portfolio Lead also builds strong partnerships across central, regional, and local HR teams and develops sustainable portfolio-management capabilities without creating unnecessary administrative burden.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Development, Project or Portfolio Management, or a related field.
5–10 years of progressive HR experience, including meaningful responsibility for HR strategy, portfolio management, program governance, transformation, HR operations, or a related discipline.
Demonstrated experience establishing, managing, and using an HR portfolio to support prioritization, sequencing, governance, and leadership decision-making.
Experience designing and running business or program reviews focused on outcomes, value, risk, capacity, and forward-looking decisions rather than basic status updates.
Ability to operate in ambiguity, structure complex problems, and build clarity and alignment around new enterprise capabilities.
Strong experience influencing senior HR leaders and stakeholders in a complex, matrixed, global organization without relying on direct authority.
Ability to translate strategy into simple processes, governance, decision frameworks, and actionable outcomes.
Experience partnering with analytics teams and program leaders to define metrics for HR programs and services and use evidence to improve accountability and investment decisions.
Strong written, verbal, facilitation, and executive communication skills, including the ability to synthesize complex portfolio information into decision-ready insights.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree in business, human resources, organizational development, or a related field.
Experience in the pharmaceutical, biotech, life sciences, or another highly matrixed and regulated global industry.
Experience selecting, implementing, or administering enterprise portfolio, project, work-management, or strategic-planning technology.
Familiarity with portfolio and program management methodologies, including Agile, SAFe, stage-gate governance, capacity planning, benefits realization, or change-portfolio management.
Professional certification in project, program, portfolio, change, process improvement, or Agile disciplines.

Responsibilities

Create and maintain a comprehensive global HR portfolio covering strategic initiatives, run-the-business programs and services, and local or regional HR work.
Define portfolio taxonomy, minimum data standards, ownership expectations, and governance across Centers of Excellence, Business HR, regions, and affiliates.
Connect portfolio insights to HR strategy, annual prioritization, planning, budgeting, technology strategy, and transformation.
Ensure portfolio information reflects strategic alignment, outcomes, delivery commitments, dependencies, resource requirements, risks, and expected employee and business value.
Evaluate and recommend a technology platform for the global HR portfolio in partnership with HR Technology, BTS/IT, and stakeholders.
Define technology business and user requirements, information architecture, data standards, reporting, access, and integration needs.
Guide implementation and adoption of the portfolio solution while balancing enterprise visibility with low-burden maintenance.
Create and maintain an integrated, multi-horizon roadmap that gives executives visibility into HR activations, business moments, dependencies, decision points, and concentrated periods of change.
Identify overlapping activations, conflicts with business moments, and cumulative change demands, and support fact-based sequencing and trade-off decisions.
Design and implement portfolio intake processes for central, global, regional, and local HR teams.
Define minimum project and service information and establish ownership, validation, update, escalation, review, exception-management, and quality-control processes.
Simplify portfolio processes and standards based on stakeholder feedback, data quality, adoption, and decision usefulness.
Establish and help manage quarterly portfolio reviews focused on impact, risk, value, capacity, and future decisions rather than basic status reporting.
Design review forums, pre-reads, analytics, and decision agendas; facilitate alignment on global and local work and needed trade-offs.
Surface portfolio dependencies, risks, capacity constraints, and decisions requiring HR Leadership Team sponsorship or intervention; track decisions, owners, and follow-through.
Partner with People Analytics & Insights and program teams to define outcome measures, leading indicators, and value-realization metrics.
Build portfolio views connecting investment, delivery health, adoption, employee or business impact, and strategic contribution.
Translate portfolio data into executive insights, recommendations, and narratives for the CHRO, HR Leadership Team, and other senior stakeholders.
Build partnerships across HR, Finance, BTS/IT, and regional and affiliate teams, and influence leaders to adopt common portfolio practices.
Coach program owners on portfolio standards, outcome definition, executive storytelling, and business-review preparation.
Build a sustainable portfolio-management capability that can scale globally without unnecessary administrative burden.