About the Team

The People Team partners with our employees to give them the tools and education they need to be the best they can be at their job, and enjoy life at Sovrn while they’re doing it.  We break down the walls of traditional people actions to adapt to the evolving workforce. Our commitment to the Sovrn team: Do more of what you love. Less of what you don’t.

About the Job

The Chief People Officer will provide strategic HR leadership and direction for the company by defining HR goals and objectives. You will drive organizational effectiveness, retention, and employee engagement. In addition, you will provide leadership and guidance to the People team by overseeing talent acquisition, talent management, training and leadership development, along with compensation, benefits and employee programs. 

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Lead and develop the People function across key People areas such as talent management, employee engagement/culture, performance management, organizational development, learning and development, and communications.
• Partner with executive leadership as a member of the team, providing a strong and unique voice on key decisions to help us drive the business forward.
• Work collaboratively across the businesses to enable an innovative and high-performance environment.
• Focus on all elements of organizational performance across the employee journey, specifically building organizational capabilities to grow and scale.
• Build and enable the diversity of people, ideas, and perspectives. Develop and support company-wide Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategies both in the workplace and within our recruiting and promotion processes.
• Create an agile People operations infrastructure and strategy that keeps pace with the changes within the business, while ensuring an exceptional people experience.
• Create tools and development opportunities for business leaders so that they may be prepared and accountable for positive improvements in employee engagement and retention.
• Provide leadership, mentorship, growth opportunities and guidance to the People Team.
• Lead people initiatives during acquisitions, helping effectively integrate the new team into the larger Sovrn organization.
• Develop long and short term people strategies and design approaches for diagnosing and enhancing organizational effectiveness and employee engagement.
• Lead the initiative for people operations, HR, recruiting, onboarding, performance management, talent development/training.
• Build strong connections and communication among employees and between the global offices.
• Design and apply change management and organizational development strategies and assist organizational change initiatives in support of business strategies.

About you

You are a leader through and through. Your strength encompasses a compassionate leadership style that empowers the team and leaders to bring their best to the organization. You mentor. You coach. You influence. You’re thoughtful. You are curious, a learner and not afraid to ask questions. Rolling up your sleeves and getting into the weeds is natural but your strength is leading strategic values on how to envision the future. There is no black and white answer in many situations and never a set of processes that guarantees to work all the time. You will need to be able to analyze what’s happening, detect its impact on the business and employees and help manage the best course of action to rectify the situation in a timely manner. 

The successful candidate will have: 

• Extensive People leadership experience (minimum of 10+ years’ experience) with a strong generalist foundation across all People team functional areas including; recruiting, talent development, organizational development, performance management, change management, compensation and benefits, compliance/legal policies, employee engagement, employee relations.
• Knowledge of federal, state and local employment laws and regulations and practical experience of translating those laws into organizational policies and practices.
• Executive-level experience (ie., reporting to CEO and/or presenting to Board of Directors) in high growth companies with multiple offices.
• Experience with M&A and successful integration of employees post merger.
• Experience building, leading and managing a cross functional HR team
• Experience building and implementing People programs that drive company results
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to manage complex relationships and difficult conversations.
• Proven track record of identifying issues and opportunities,  and using strategic skills to drive and influence appropriate solutions.
• Ability to drive organizational design and planning.
• Aligning business insights to inform people strategy. 
• Growth Mindset: We are a growing company and need people who will take initiative, fail fast, and learn from their mistakes  to be successful in the role. 
• Dangerous curiosity, not afraid to ask questions, learn about our business, our technology, our mission.
• Demonstrated experience managing multiple functional areas of HR such as payroll, benefits, organizational design, workforce planning, talent acquisition, etc
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving environment and managing priorities
• Track record of using metrics and analytics to make data-informed decisions 
• Superb organizational skills,  strong attention to detail, deadline-driven and punctual.
• Clear, concise and engaging written communication style 
• Experience with Google suite, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word 

This position reports to: Chief Executive Officer (Walter Knapp)

Location: Boulder, Colorado

We understand that no candidate is perfectly qualified for any job. Experience comes in different forms; many skills are transferable; and passion goes a long way. To that end, we’re committed to attracting, developing, retaining and promoting a diverse workforce, and infusing DEI throughout all of our internal practices. Even more important than your resume is a clear demonstration of accountability, impact, learning and the ability to thrive in a fluid and collaborative environment. We expect you to learn new things in this role, and we encourage you to apply if your experience is close to what we're looking for. 

About Sovrn

Publishers create the content the world depends on for education, entertainment, and commerce. Sovrn provides products and services to tens of thousands of online publishers to help them grow, operate their business, understand their readership, and manage consumer data. Sovrn is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado with offices in San Francisco, New York, and London. 

With 10,000 customers deploying one or more products across 30,000 websites, Sovrn reaches 200M consumers across more than 3.5B pageviews everyday. Sovrn has been a leader in online publisher technology since its founding, and has been recognized by IAB, JICWEBS, and TAG for its role in combating advertising fraud and promoting pro-transparency initiatives. Sovrn is dedicated to helping content creators do more of what they love, and less of what they don’t.

Sovrn Core Values: Candid, Customer Empathy, Learning, Scrappy, Second Order Thinking

Compensation and Benefits

In accordance with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, the approximate compensation range for this role in Boulder, Colorado is $225,000 to $275,000, including base salary and any related bonuses or commissions. Final compensation for this role will be determined by various factors such as a candidate’s relevant work experience, skills, certifications and geographic location. Sovrn offers a full slate of benefits from competitive salaries, stock options, medical, dental and vision coverage, short and long term disability, life insurance,11 paid holidays, flexible vacation, commuter benefits, a 401(k) plan and match, and a paid parental leave program.

Equal Opportunity Employer 

Sovrn is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, parental or pregnancy status, marriage and civil partnership, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Reasonable accommodations will be made to meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act and will be provided as requested by candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.