About Tides

Tides is a nonprofit and philanthropic organization committed to advancing social justice. We work across the social sector to shift power to communities of color and other groups historically denied power.

Centering equity and justice in everything we do, we collaborate in deep partnership with movement leaders, nonprofits, donors, foundations, and corporations to amplify the impact of their work by providing services like fiscal sponsorship, donor advised funds, grant making, and a variety of innovative solutions. Learn more at tides.org.

About The Role

The Senior Director, Talent Management is a senior leader responsible for shaping and operationalizing the organization’s people strategy, driving labor and employee relations, and leading talent processes including performance, talent acquisition, and organizational development. This role ensures that Tides Network is structured to enable operational requirements, led by capable leaders, and staffed with high-performing talent aligned to advance both short and long-term business and impact strategies. This leader serves as a strategic partner to functional leaders, translating business objectives into workforce strategy and building systems that foster growth, agility, and sustained performance while ensuring values aligned consistency and compliance. This role will also lead the development of the Talent Center of Excellence (COE), serving Tides Center’s 100+ partners and 800+ staff.

The Senior Director leads a dedicated team of four direct reports and three indirect reports across Talent Acquisition, Organizational Development, JEDI, Employee Relations, and Labor Relations professionals. The Senior Director, Talent Management works in close partnership with the Director, Total Rewards & People Operations and the Senior Manager, Internal Communications, to ensure cohesive employee-facing functions, messaging, and programming and with the Vice President, Strategy & Impact to ensure alignment between workforce strategy and Tides’ strategic and operating plans.

As a leader the Senior Director, Talent Management is responsible for modeling and demonstrating Tides’ core competencies of leading self, leading people and leading results.

What you will Do

Enterprise Talent + Culture Strategy (30%)

Define, steward, and continuously evolve the enterprise talent strategy to directly support business priorities, multi‑year growth plans, financial sustainability, and future workforce requirements, ensuring talent decisions enable long‑term mission and impact outcomes.
Integrate workforce strategy with enterprise planning cycles, including strategic planning, annual operating plans, and transformation initiatives, using financial forecasts and organizational performance data to inform forward-looking people investments.
Serve as a trusted executive and thought partner to senior leadership, elevating insights on workforce trends, labor market dynamics, future-of-work implications, and emerging people risks or opportunities.
Own and set direction for enterprise organizational development strategy, including leadership development, succession planning, and organizational capability building, empowering the Director, Organizational Development to translate vision into cohesive execution.
Lead culture, performance enablement, and values activation strategies that reinforce Tides’ core values, leadership competencies, and expectations for collaboration, accountability, and inclusion.
Design and embed scalable change management frameworks that support adoption of enterprise initiatives, people programs, and structural shifts, ensuring leaders are equipped to lead through change.

Organizational Design & Workforce Architecture (20%)

Lead enterprise-wide organizational design efforts to support scalability, clarity, and effective execution, aligning structures and operating models with strategic goals and evolving business needs.
Establish and enforce governance frameworks for role creation, job modifications, structural changes, and workforce planning decisions to ensure consistency, equity, and fiscal discipline.
Partner closely with Total Rewards leadership to align job architecture, job descriptions, career pathways, and role clarity with compensation philosophy, internal equity, and talent mobility.
Collaborate with Finance and Strategy teams on workforce modeling, headcount forecasting, and organizational cost structures.
Provide workforce leadership during restructuring, reorganizations, or transformation efforts, balancing financial responsibility, employee experience, labor obligations, and organizational effectiveness.

Employee & Labor Relations Leadership (25%)

Lead labor relations strategy with a commitment to constructive, good-faith engagement, strengthening trust-based relationships while advancing organizational effectiveness and protecting institutional interests.
Partner with the lead negotiator on collective bargaining, supporting negotiation strategy, proposal development, costing analysis, preparation, and direct participation in bargaining sessions, as appropriate.
Serve as subject matter expert on the collective bargaining agreement, coaching and advising leaders on interpretation, application, and compliance to reduce risk and inconsistency.
Lead and oversee the full grievance lifecycle in alignment with CBA provisions, ensuring timely, consistent, and equitable resolution processes.
Navigate complex employee relations matters, including performance management, conflict resolution, and sensitive workplace issues, applying a values-driven, JEDI-aligned, and trauma-informed approach.
Ensure timely, objective, and fair investigations by the People Team, maintaining credibility, compliance, and organizational trust.
Steward updates to people policies, procedures, and the employee handbook, ensuring alignment with CBAs, legal requirements, and best practices in partnership with Legal, Risk, and Compliance.
Maintain strong partnerships with in-house and external employment and labor counsel, ensuring sound legal strategy and risk management across all labor and employee relations activities.

Organizational & Learning Development Enablement (15%)

Sponsor enterprise-wide learning, leadership development, and performance enablement efforts, providing strategic alignment, visibility, and sponsorship to ensure consistency with Tides’ goals to strengthen and shift power, center equity, and cultivate staff agency.
Ensure organizational development initiatives are fully integrated with the broader people strategy and that leaders are well-equipped to model desired behaviors during periods of growth, transition, or transformation.
Define and steward the vision for performance enablement, embedding clear goals, competencies, KPIs, and feedback mechanisms into evaluation processes that promote growth and accountability.
Lead enterprise-wide culture, engagement, and organizational health assessments, translating qualitative and quantitative data into actionable insights and strategic priorities.

Talent Acquisition Strategy + Infrastructure (10%)

Set and continuously refine the organization’s staffing and hiring strategy, ensuring alignment with evolving business priorities, workforce plans, and future skill requirements.
Define the strategic and technical direction for the applicant tracking system and position control infrastructure, ensuring data integrity, efficiency, and compliance.
Enable Talent Acquisition leaders to deliver high-quality, equitable hiring outcomes.

What you will Bring

Deep commitment to Tides’ mission of shifting and strengthening power for communities facing systemic barriers and demonstrated dedication to advancing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI).
Proven strategic leadership experience aligning People strategies with organizational goals, including the ability to influence enterprise-level priorities.
Strong business and financial acumen with a track record of connecting talent strategies to organizational, operational, and fiscal outcomes.
Experience driving transformational change, establishing KPIs, measuring outcomes, and implementing scalable People systems and strategies.
Demonstrated success leading core HR domains: talent acquisition, talent development, employee relations, and labor relations.
Experience leading collective bargaining agreement negotiations, impact bargaining, and formal grievance processes.
Ability to partner with senior leaders to evaluate and resolve complex employee matters, fostering trust and strong cross-functional relationships.
Commitment to engaging, developing, and retaining a diverse team through a culture of accountability, feedback, and recognition.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to synthesize and present complex concepts and recommendations for executive audiences.
Exceptional interpersonal, diplomatic, and conflict resolution skills with the ability to manage difficult conversations while maintaining professionalism and strong relationships.
Strong customer-service orientation and a servant leadership approach to supporting internal and external stakeholders.
Highly detail-oriented with rigorous project management skills to build, operationalize, and improve systems, policies, and processes.
Ability to thrive in a dynamic, fast-paced environment with shifting priorities, demonstrating adaptability and resilience.
Skilled collaborator and influencer capable of engaging at all levels of the organization to drive People‑centric outcomes.
A strategic mindset and the ability to develop scalable solutions to support organizational goals.

Ideal Experience

8 years of direct applicable business and HR experience and relevant bachelor’s degree; or 10 years of relevant experience. 4 years of experience must be in a supervisory capacity.
6+ years’ partnering with executives is preferred.
Proven track record of building, leading, and innovating the People function to deliver exceptional results.
Experience leading and engaging teams in a remote-first environment.
A strategic mindset and the ability to develop scalable solutions to support organizational goals.
Demonstrated track record of building and cultivating culture and measuring outcomes through a justice, equity, diversity and inclusion lens.
Leadership experience within the People function of an organization undergoing transformational change, establishing core KPIs and effectively measuring performance across key goals and outcomes.

Equal Employment Opportunity

We look forward to reviewing applications from all qualified job seekers. We strongly encourage applications from women, people of color, and bilingual and bicultural individuals, as well as members of the LGBTQIA+ communities. No applicant will be discriminated against because of their race, religion, sex, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, color, marital status, or medical condition including acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and AIDS-related conditions. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we encourage and will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Where required by state law, we utilize E-Verify as a part of our employment authorization process.

Applicants with Disabilities

Reasonable accommodation will be made so that all who are interested may participate in our interview process. If you are in need of an accommodation, please advise in writing at the time you apply.