Head of People & Organizational Development

SPUN • New York, NY

3d • Remote

About The Position

SPUN (Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) is a startup NGO working to map and protect mycorrhizal fungal networks. The organization operates globally and is preparing to scale its work across more landscapes, institutions, and countries, with expected hiring at every level over the next two to three years.

The Head of People & Organizational Development will shape how SPUN works as it grows. This is not a traditional HR role: day-to-day HR administration will be handled by a dedicated Operations Manager. The role focuses on how people collaborate, make decisions, develop, and use tools to do their best work. Working closely with senior leadership, the successful candidate will develop organizational structures and working practices, guide tools and AI adoption, and support culture, leadership, and employee development across a distributed, multidisciplinary organization. The position is remote, within six hours of US Eastern Time.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of experience helping organizations scale and build culture, trust, connection, and accountability; experience with remote, cross-time-zone teams is preferred within this qualification.
• Ability to shape strategy and personally build the processes, frameworks, and systems to implement it.
• Strong curiosity about people and team dynamics, careful listening, and ability to identify underlying problems.
• Ability to advise senior leaders and challenge their thinking while building strong relationships and credibility.
• Maturity and care in handling sensitive information and complex interpersonal situations.
• Experience leading adoption of new tools, technologies, or ways of working, including AI, with understanding of training, change management, and confidence-building.
• Excellent communication with scientists, data scientists, policy and partnership specialists, and senior leadership, adapting communication to different audiences.
• Interest in SPUN’s mission and motivation to build organizational conditions that support the impact of an environmental NGO.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in a science, research, environmental, or impact-driven organization.
• Experience in a globally distributed organization operating across multiple countries and employment jurisdictions.
• Experience working with multidisciplinary teams spanning science, policy, partnerships, and operations.
• Experience building career frameworks, performance systems, or development programs from scratch.
• Hands-on experience with AI tools and a genuine interest in how they will change how organizations work.

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve SPUN’s organizational structure, including teams, roles, reporting lines, and leadership responsibilities, to support its strategy and growth.
• Partner with senior leadership to anticipate future organizational capabilities and shape hiring across levels.
• Assess organizational health and identify structural, capacity, or working-practice issues that create friction or limit impact.
• Work with the Operations Manager to ensure people policies and processes reflect SPUN’s values and work across its operating countries.
• Design operating rhythms, decision-making processes, and planning practices for a distributed team.
• Strengthen knowledge capture and sharing across the organization.
• Improve collaboration and handoffs among science, data science, policy, and partnership teams, including between research and applied work.
• Shape SPUN’s core tools and how they are used to support research, people, organizational work, and interactions with partners and the public.
• Partner with senior leadership to develop SPUN’s approach to AI, identifying opportunities to increase impact and capacity while considering implications for the mission and people.
• Work with team leads to identify valuable AI use cases and the workflows, roles, and skills needed to use them effectively.
• Build AI fluency through role-appropriate training, peer learning, experimentation, and practical resources.
• Create ways for teams to share AI experiments, practices, and lessons learned.
• Develop practical approaches to team health, feedback, conflict resolution, and trust-building across a globally distributed organization.
• Create opportunities for connection across time zones, disciplines, and teams.
• Design and facilitate retreats, team sessions, and leadership gatherings.
• Design onboarding that introduces new team members to SPUN’s culture and ways of working as well as its systems.
• Develop an approach to recognizing team and individual achievements.
• Partner with senior leaders and managers to strengthen people leadership and establish clear expectations for management and leadership.
• Establish practices for feedback, goal-setting, development conversations, and performance reviews.
• Develop progression pathways, including support for individual contributors moving into management.
• Identify learning and professional development opportunities across the organization.

Benefits

• Benefits supporting health, well-being, growth, and balance, tailored to local laws and intended to provide the same high standard of support across the globally distributed team.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed