GSB Introduction
Stanford's Graduate School of Business (GSB) has built a global reputation based on its immersive and innovative management programs. We provide students a transformative leadership experience, pushing the boundaries of knowledge with faculty research, and offering a portfolio of entrepreneurial and non-degree programs that deliver global impact. We invite you to be part of our mission of developing innovative, principled, and insightful leaders who change lives, change organizations, and change the world.
Success at the GSB is defined by The GSB Way, a commitment to shared purpose, community, and excellence in all that we do. We seek individuals who elevate themselves and those around them through the practice of academic candor, generous collaboration, and bringing curiosity and rigor to solving meaningful problems. At the GSB, impact means taking ownership and contributing to a purpose-driven, collaborative, and high-performing community in service to the institution's mission.
Job Summary
The Stanford Graduate School of Business is at an exciting inflection point. With key operational leadership foundations in place, we are entering a period defined by accelerated cultural and structural transformation, including: the multi-year stabilization of Sequoia, Stanford's university-wide Oracle HCM implementation; a redesign of transactional processes shared across Human Resources, Finance, and Academic Administration; and the continued embedding of the GSB Way, our renewed framework for staff excellence, as the operating norm for a high-performing community. Execution at this scale requires structure, capacity, and functional leadership that did not previously exist within the team.
The Director, HR Transformation is a newly established role on the GSB HR leadership team, created to fill that gap and build the operational foundation the school needs to sustain its momentum over time. Reporting to the Executive Director of Human Resources, this individual will oversee the HR Operations function and serve as a facilitator of process improvement across the administrative ecosystem. The mandate is clear: strengthen the alignment of people, processes, and systems that delivers genuine change in how the school operates.
In practice, the role is about building the operational infrastructure that makes the HR function run with greater precision and less friction, standing up processes, workflows, and data capabilities that can sustain the GSB's evolving model through a period of sustained institutional change. That includes assessing how existing platforms integrate with or extend Sequoia's capabilities, identifying gaps in automated workflows, and determining if new tools to better document the rich history of the employee experience are the right investment. This individual works in active partnership with the HR Business Partners, Talent Development team, and the University's HR Service Center, ensuring that progress on the technical side translates into a materially better experience for managers and staff.
The ideal candidate brings a track record of leading process transformation in complex organizations, with direct experience in HRIS implementation and adoption. More than technical expertise, this role calls for someone who understands that durable operational change requires as much attention to how people adopt new ways of working as it does to the systems themselves, and who can build trust across functions that have long operated independently. In addition to the requirements mentioned further below, advanced knowledge of Oracle Cloud, Google Workspace, Smartsheet and data workflow integrations preferred.
Additional Details
Budgeted Salary: The expected pay range for this position is $192,354 - $233,460.
Work Schedule: Hybrid workweek typically at least 3 days onsite.
To be considered, applicants must submit both a resume and cover letter.
Core Duties
- Independently provide input to project approach and execute significant portions of a project. Plan, perform and implement process improvement initiatives. Diagram and evaluate existing processes.
- Organize, lead, and facilitate cross-functional project teams. Communicate team progress. Perform cost and benefit analyses.
- Develop metrics that provide data for process measurement, identifying indicators for future improvement opportunities.
- Collect data to identify root cause of problems. Measure performance against process requirements. Align improvement to performance shortfalls.
- Provide expert consultation on the use of process improvement techniques to improve process performance and product quality.
- Provide hands-on team facilitation, coaching, mentoring and/or training, and process improvement subject matter expertise to business partners.
- Challenge current working practices: identify process improvement opportunities and facilitate goal setting using customer feedback, analysis, and other systems.
- Survey and analyze best practices for techniques and processes.
- May mentor, coach, and train junior team members.
Minimum Education
Bachelor's degree in Science, Engineering, Accounting, Finance, Business, or other related field
Minimum Experience
8 years of progressively responsible, relevant process improvement experience or combination of education and relevant experience. At least 2 year of experience leading complex projects.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
- Advanced working knowledge and technical expertise and experience using and applying process improvement best practices /techniques, Lean Six Sigma, and project management skills in a structured project environment.
- Demonstrated experience modeling business processes using a variety of tools and techniques.
- Ability to work with little or no direction in environments resistant to change or unable to change quickly.
- Exceptional communication skills and the ability to communicate and present appropriately at all levels of the organization through written and verbal methods.
- Proven ability to Influence change/innovation initiatives at all levels, with the ability to interact at the most senior levels of the organization.
- Strong, demonstrated, ability to work across multiple, distributed, silo’d, functional groups.
- Strong enterprise-wide vision, seeing the big picture, recognizing critical details, and dealing with ambiguity.
- Understanding organization operations and culture and the related functional capabilities of implemented enterprise applications (custom and off-the-shelf).
- Strong proficiency in Microsoft Office, Google Suite, and software applications involving dynamic models and process flows.
- Advanced ability to effectively facilitate training sessions, one on one, or with a group across all constituencies.
Certificates and Licenses Required
Preferred Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt or other recognized change/process certification.