Senior Director, People & Culture

Oregon Humane•Portland, OR

3d•$128,000 - $141,000•Onsite

About The Position

The Senior Director, People & Culture is a senior leadership role responsible for shaping and executing strategies that attract and retain mission-aligned talent, developing and strengthening employee capabilities and culture, and engaging volunteers across OHS. Responsible for shaping and executing a people strategy that advances OHS’ long-term vision and mission impact. The Senior Director, People & Culture is a senior leadership role responsible for ensuring a consistent and engaging experience for employees and volunteers across Oregon Humane. This role leads strategies that attract and retain mission-aligned individuals, staff and volunteers, who engagement meaningfully in advancing Oregon Humane’s mission. Through leadership of People Operations, Talent Acquisition, and Volunteer Engagement, the Senior Director works across the organization to create a workplace and volunteer environment where people feel supported, connected, and empowered to contribute to Oregon Humane’s impact. As a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), this role partners with the Executive Team to ensure that organizational design, leadership capability, workforce planning, volunteer engagement, total rewards, culture, and compliance infrastructure enable OHS to achieve its multi-year strategic priorities. This role leads Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, and Volunteer Engagement, ensuring OHS operates as a high-performing, inclusive, and mission-aligned organization.

Requirements

Significant progressive leadership experience (10 years) in human resources, specifically in leadership roles managing multiple teams and reporting to the executive team.
Demonstrated experience in designing and executing people operations strategies and oversight of expansive volunteer engagement programs.
Strong understanding of best practices in HR compliance, employment law, and workforce planning.
Proven ability to lead culture change, foster diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in a non-profit setting.
Leadership through influence and rapport building.
Ability to collaborate with others, listen to and recognize different perspectives.
Independent thinking and confidence in decision-making.
Agile decision making and the ability to change quickly when needed.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills - able to communicate with a diverse population in a consistently informative, respectful, and professional manner.
Strong analytical and metrics-driven mindset.
Experience managing budgets and operating HR/volunteer programs at scale.
Able to exercise sound judgment and maintain a professional demeanor during all interactions with the public, partner agencies, donors, staff, and volunteers.
Ability to comprehend, interpret, and apply the appropriate sections of applicable laws, guidelines, regulations, ordinances, and policies.
Experience with benefit administration, and advanced knowledge in applicable regulatory, legal requirements and reporting, including ACA, COBRA, EEO, ERISA, HIPAA, FLSA, OFLA & FMLA.
Ability to acquire a thorough understanding of the organization's hierarchy, jobs, qualifications, compensation practices, and administrative practices related to those factors.
Ability to forecast future needs and evaluate present needs based on objective financial and statistical analysis.
Mission-driven, passionate about animal welfare.
Collaborative leader, able to build strong relationships across diverse teams.
Innovative, adaptive, and mindset toward continuous improvement.
Empathetic, approachable, ethical, able to deal with sensitive and emotionally challenging situations.
Strategic thinker with strong execution skills.
Proficiency using the Microsoft Office Suite, including Outlook, Word, Excel.

Responsibilities

PERSONAL LEADERSHIP Consistently strives to exceed expectations; demonstrates flexibility, resilience, and the ability to maintain positive relationships and composure, even under difficult circumstances. Maintains high ethical standards, including exhibiting behaviors and actions that embrace and align to our organization and customer service values, while treating all people with respect and dignity. Demonstrates an awareness of your individual personal strengths and development needs, modeling non-defensive behavior and openness to feedback; builds a culture of feedback and learning.
TEAM LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT Manage, support, and provide coaching feedback to team members, and create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence within their own team and embrace their role and responsibilities in advancing shared goals and priorities. Manage day-to-day implementation and support for key activities including coordination with other teams implementing complementary activities. Role model inclusive leadership, creating an environment where diverse viewpoints are welcomed and actively engaged
LEARNING Contributes to regular dialogue and accountability with the leadership team and across the organization to review progress and course correct if necessary. Utilizes data and insights to identify, understand and articulate the key inputs and metrics that tell the story of the organization/team strategy and its progress. Builds appropriate feedback loops to measure if we are meeting key milestones and if the impact planned is being felt across the organization.
INFLUENCE & REPRESENTATION Communicate effectively to executive and other stakeholder groups to ensure they are informed and able to actively engage. Liaise with and maintain productive relationships with all stakeholders, including other departments, and donors; build mutually rewarding professional relationships inside Oregon Humane at all levels. Leverage our best practices externally and grow Oregon Humane’s reputation as a leader in the animal welfare space.
MANAGING CHANGE Identify and drives organizational changes necessary to support OHS’ strategic priorities and evolution. Assess organizational readiness and builds the infrastructure needed to sustain change initiatives. Guide leaders through complex transitions including restructures, culture shifts, leadership development, and policy evolution. Communicate change with clarity and alignment, ensuring consistency across SLT and Executive messaging. Build organizational resilience by fostering adaptability, accountability, and continuous improvement.
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES PEOPLE & CULTURE: Strategy and HR Leadership Lead Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, and Volunteer Engagement functions, setting standards for best practices in policies, procedures and compliance. Manage, support, and provide coaching feedback to team members, and create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence within their own team and embrace their role and responsibilities in advancing shared goals and priorities. Design and steward OHS’ total rewards philosophy, including market benchmarking, salary band calibration, and benefits strategy. Provide day-to-day guidance on escalated employee relations cases (e.g., coaching, counseling, disciplinary/corrective actions, mediation). Regularly monitor sector and labor market trends to ensure OHS remains competitive and mission-aligned. Model inclusive leadership and ensure equity is embedded across all people systems.
TALENT ACQUISITION & WORKFORCE PLANNING Develop and execute a strategic, proactive recruitment plan aligned with organizational workforce forecasting. Provide strategic leadership to the Senior Specialist, Talent Acquisition helping to guide the full recruitment lifecycle: sourcing, selection, onboarding, retention, and offboarding. Provide strategic leadership in the development and management of the strategy for talent acquisition with departmental leaders to forecast staffing needs and build pipelines for critical and mission-critical roles. Strengthen OHS’ employer brand to position the organization as an employer of choice in the nonprofit and animal welfare sectors.
VOLUNTEER ENGAGEMENT Provide strategic oversight of volunteer recruitment, onboarding, training, engagement, and recognition across campuses. Ensure volunteers are meaningfully integrated into operations and aligned with mission impact. Develop long-term strategies to grow and sustain volunteer participation while measuring engagement and satisfaction metrics.
CULTURE, ENGAGEMENT & INCLUSION Champion a mission-aligned culture that prioritizes clarity, accountability, belonging, and continuous improvement. Provide leadership around engagement surveys, stay/exit interviews, and organizational health metrics. Embed equity, inclusion, and belonging into all talent systems and leadership practices. Serve as a strategic advisor on internal communications related to people initiatives.
OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT & METRICS Establish, track, and report enterprise-level KPIs related to HR performance, hiring, and volunteer impact. Oversee budgeting and financial stewardship for HR, Talent Acquisition and Volunteer Engagement. Ensure HRIS, ATS, and volunteer management systems are scalable, compliant, and user centered.
SUPERVISOR RESPONSIBILITY Supervises: Manager, People Operations, Program Manager; Talent Acquisition & Internships; Specialist, Volunteer Engagement and Managers, Volunteer Engagement (2 positions).
ACCOUNTABILITY Reports Directly To: Interim CEO and Chief People & Culture Officer Often Engages Directly With: Internal and external stakeholders and team members from across the organization.