Chief People Officer (CPO)

REMOTE
***25-30% Travel Required***

About the Company:

MedZed is a leader in delivering value-based, technology-enabled social support to a diverse population of high-cost Medicaid members who have been unreachable with telephonic outreach, disconnected from primary care, and using hospital-based services as their primary point of care. We combine field-based outreach with innovative technologies to find and engage these members. Our Community Health Navigators are directly connected to those they serve – speaking the same language, attending the same schools or houses of worship, they understand the neighborhood, know the people who live there and building trust with members that the system has failed. We then apply a model of care designed to re-connect them to primary care, address the Health-Related Social Needs (HRSNs) that contribute to their disengagement and present barriers to care, and provide them with the means and knowledge to take more control over their healthcare. Our interventions yield reduced Emergency Department and Inpatient utilization costs for our health plan partners and improved quality of life for their members. We are seeking an accomplished individual to help realize our vision and contribute to long-term value creation.

About the Role:

Reporting directly to the CEO, the Chief People Officer (CPO) is a core member of MedZed’s executive leadership team and a strategic partner to the CEO and COO, accountable for architecting and sustaining a people strategy that enables scalable growth, operational performance, and regulatory confidence in a value-based healthcare environment. MedZed’s people leader will inspire and enable our growth from a base of 300 people serving members in 3 states to 1,000+ people providing care in five states over the next 3 to 4 years. This role is responsible not only for designing people systems, but for actively partnering with the CEO to steward MedZed’s culture, leadership capability, and employee experience as the organization scales. The CPO ensures workforce decisions are grounded in data, aligned to business outcomes, and reinforced by a strong, measurable culture. Success will look like:

• High engagement – eNPS remains strong and stable and turnover meets targets, even during periods of rapid growth
• Internal growth – we are consistently promoting from within because our L & D programs are working
• Operational excellence – our staffing levels consistently meet growth targets and patient care needs

Responsibilities:

Strategy & Business Alignment

• Partner with the CEO and executive team to ensure that MedZed’s “people plan” ensures company meets business objectives while overseeing change management.
• Create organizational structure that optimizes results. Define skills necessary for each position to make our care model successful.
• Partner with the CEO and ELT to translate business strategy into workforce capabilities and organizational design.
• Ensure people strategy supports both short-term execution and long-term sustainability by balancing humanity and productivity and not burning out the team or diluting what makes MedZed a great place to work.

Culture & Employee Experience (eNPS)

• Serve as executive owner of our values and shared behaviors and drive connection to the mission throughout the organization.
• Curiosity — Ask why and dream
• Relentlessness — Find a way to GSD
• Ownership — Accountability
• Collaboration — The whole is better than the sum of its parts
• Empathy — Walk in the other person's shoes
• Responsiveness — Decide, Do it now and prioritize
• Maturity / Professionalism / Respect / Trust - Avoid drama. It’s business. Assume positive intent
• Joy and humor
• Establish and maintain a measurable culture framework with eNPS as a core enterprise key performance indicator and leverage the information to drive improvement throughout the organization.
• Create a place where associates want to build a career, specifically focusing on the unique challenges of field-based care.

Learning & Development (L&D)

• Own the strategy and delivery for how we train our people, ensuring that our investments in learning lead to better performance and higher job satisfaction.
• Align L&D programs to MedZed’s business priorities, workforce needs, and performance expectations.
• Build clear “whats next” maps for every employee. Nobody should wonder how they can grow at MedZed.
• Strengthen our managers. Our operations team is passionate about what we do and who we do it for. Provide them with the tools to lead with accountability and empathy. Teach them to continuously look around corners and develop critical thinking and analytical skills.
• Build systems that integrate learnings from exit interviews and formal and informal feedback into a continuous cycle of improved hiring, training, and development.

Talent & Recruiting

• Lead enterprise workforce planning across field and corporate teams to ensure company has people in the right place at the right time to meet revenue targets.
• Design role frameworks, job leveling, and career pathways.
• Ensure every role has a clear purpose, competitive market-pay, and a defined path for advancement.

Leadership Effectiveness

• Trusted advisor to leaders throughout the organization.
• Strengthen manager capability with focus on engagement, performance, and retention.
• Hold leaders accountable for culture, learning adoption, and engagement outcomes.

People Analytics & Tools

• Own Human Resource’s analytics strategy and move beyond simple headcount. Use data to tell the story of our team to leadership and the board to help inform better decisions about the future.
• Manage HR technology to make sure that it’s a tool that helps people get work done, rather than an obstacle to be overcome.

Compensation, Safety & Economics

• Partner with finance to keep pay and benefits competitive and fair.
• Align performance systems with business and engagement outcomes.
• Lead initiatives to combat burnout that is common in healthcare and particularly in field-based care.

Governance, Compliance & Risk Management

• Partner with Legal to proactively mitigate employment risk and workforce compliance while addressing issues.
• Partner with legal to keep us compliant and, more importantly, ensure our field teams are safe and supported in their daily work.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in human resource or business administration, or a related field.
• 15+ years of progressive HR and people leadership experience.
• Proven CEO and executive partnership experience.
• Strong expertise in people analytics, HRIS, and learning strategy.
• SHRM-SCP or SPHR are highly preferred to demonstrate expertise.
• Experience in healthcare or regulated environments.
• Deep knowledge of labor and hour regulations in complicated states including CA.
• Bi-lingual a plus.