Chief of People & Performance

George B. Kaiser founded the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF®) in 1999 around a fundamental conviction: no child’s future should be limited by the circumstances of their birth. He believes those who have benefited from opportunity have an obligation to help extend it to others, and that philanthropy should be used to increase opportunity for children and families facing the greatest barriers.

That conviction has shaped a distinctive approach to philanthropy in Tulsa, grounded in evidence, analysis, long-term commitment, and a willingness to act boldly when existing systems or solutions fall short. From helping establish the Tulsa Community Foundation (TCF) in 1998 to founding GKFF a year later, George has invested not only in individual programs and organizations, but in the institutions, partnerships, and capabilities needed to strengthen Tulsa over time.

GKFF practices hands-on, place-based philanthropy. Rather than simply making grants, it builds, convenes, and stays involved alongside the operators and partners closest to the work, using its resources and influence to make things happen that otherwise would not. It pairs transformational ambition with practical discipline: it seeks lasting change, learns from results, and adjusts course. Over the past several years, GKFF continues its legacy as a grantmaking foundation to one that both continues that legacy while also overseeing a network of affiliated programs and initiatives. 

Today, GKFF and TCF work closely across a broad network of organizations and initiatives focused on expanding long-term opportunity, strengthening family well-being, revitalizing neighborhoods, and contributing to a thriving Tulsa.

As the GKFF and TCF Networks continue to grow in size, complexity, and impact, the strength of their leaders, teams, and organizational capabilities becomes increasingly important. Employed by GKFF, the Chief of People & Performance will lead People & Performance strategy across both Networks and strengthen the People Team and organizational capabilities needed to support their continued effectiveness and evolution.

The Opportunity

The Chief leads an integrated People Team of approximately nine professionals serving the GKFF and TCF Networks, which together include approximately 600–700 employees. This includes GKFF’s own staff of nearly 50 and more than 25 Network organizations, each led by its own executive leader.

The Chief reports to the Executive Director and serves on the GKFF Leadership Team, which meets biweekly and is the primary forum for setting direction and building consensus across the foundation.

This role will strengthen the organizational capabilities needed to sustain the GKFF and TCF Networks for their next generation. Central to that work is institutionalizing GKFF’s Approach in Action within GKFF, strengthening the executive bench and succession, and developing strong people managers across both Networks. The Chief helps ensure that strong leadership, management practices, organizational capabilities, and distinctive ways of working endure as the Networks continue to evolve.

Historically, the People function has focused on core HR services, including payroll, benefits, and day-to-day employee relations support. The Chief will shape and build a proactive, enterprise-wide People function, with significant latitude to set its vision and priorities. Most of GKFF’s senior leaders have shaped the foundation over the past two decades. As GKFF grows and a new generation of leaders emerge in tandem, expectations around leadership, systems, and ways of working may also evolve. The Chief will help bridge these approaches, preserving what has made GKFF successful while introducing the practices and structures needed for its next chapter.

The person who thrives here is equally at home advising the Executive Leadership Team, facilitating candid conversations, designing organizational structures and operating models, and shaping long-term People strategy.

This is a builder’s role. The right leader earns trust through partnership, credibility, and results. They simplify complexity, bring clarity to hard organizational decisions, and build leaders, teams, and practices that continue to strengthen the networks long after the work is done.

First-Year Priorities

In the first three to six months, the Chief will:

• Listen, learn, and build relationships across GKFF and its affiliated organizations, developing a genuine understanding of the culture, existing People services, what works well today, and where needs are evolving before making major changes.
• Get to know and partner with the existing People Team, understanding its strengths, capabilities, responsibilities, and capacity. Together, identify opportunities to build on what’s working, strengthen services, and expand the team’s impact.
• Carry forward important work already underway, including succession and bench building, where initial assessment work has begun, and support the thoughtful transition of GKFF’s Approach in Action into the People function.
• Over the longer term, the Chief will work with the People Team and GKFF leadership to establish the function’s priorities. These will likely include strengthening succession and bench building, developing managers and leaders, embedding GKFF’s Approach in Action into everyday practices, and providing organizational design thought partnership as the Networks continue to grow and evolve.

Responsibilities / Essential Job Functions

Enterprise People & Performance Leadership

• Establish long-term People & Performance strategy across the GKFF and TCF Networks, translating it into sequenced priorities, ownership, decision points, and measures of progress.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to the Executive Director, GKFF Leadership Team, and other senior leaders across the GKFF and TCF Networks, helping navigate organizational, workforce, succession, and other complex people-related decisions.
• Partner with executive leaders on organizational design and workforce planning as organizations evolve, priorities shift, and significant organizational changes occur.
• Develop and continuously strengthen policies, programs, and decision-making frameworks that promote consistent People practices while supporting the distinct needs of organizations across the GKFF and TCF Networks.
• Build the job architecture the Networks need, including consistent job descriptions, competencies, job levels, and compensation structures, and establish clear guidelines for performance assessment, merit increases, and bonuses so staff understand how decisions are made.
• Lead and contribute to enterprise priorities and other responsibilities consistent with serving as a member of the GKFF Leadership Team.

Leadership, Culture & Organizational Capability

• Steward and strengthen GKFF’s culture by partnering with leaders to institutionalize GKFF’s Approach in Action through leadership behaviors, management practices, organizational decisions, and the employee experience.
• Establish a consistent approach across the GKFF and TCF Networks to identifying critical roles, assessing leadership and succession needs, developing internal talent, and helping senior leaders make informed decisions about the future bench.
• Design and launch executive and leadership development that prepares the next generation of senior leaders through stretch assignments, mentoring, candid feedback, and programming, building on bench assessment work already underway.
• Strengthen manager capability across both Networks through clear expectations, practical development, coaching, performance management, and other approaches that help managers build healthy, high-performing teams.
• Champion a strong employee experience across the GKFF and TCF Networks, from recruitment and onboarding through development, recognition, career growth, and retention, ensuring employees feel supported, valued, and equipped to do their best work.
• Establish practical ways to understand whether People strategies, manager development, and employee support are working, and adjust approaches based on evidence and impact.

People Team Leadership & Operating Model

• Establish and continually improve a centralized and federated People operating model across the GKFF and TCF Networks that clarifies which services, standards, and decisions should be shared; where organizations need appropriate flexibility; and how the People Team, organizational leaders, managers, and local HR resources work together.
• Build a network of People liaisons, drawing on executives and senior staff who support leadership and people development across the Networks, to coordinate practices and share learning.
• Lead and develop an integrated, high-performing People Team serving the GKFF and TCF Networks, with core capabilities in HR partnership, Learning & Development, Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, and related People operations. Establish clear roles, accountability, service expectations, and development pathways across the team.
• Own the vision for how leaders, managers, and employees experience and use HRIS and other People and leadership systems, tools, and platforms. Set priorities for workflows, usability, and adoption, and partner with central technical teams to translate those needs into a coordinated technology roadmap and implementation plan.
• Cultivate trusted partnerships with leaders across the GKFF and TCF Networks, developing a deep understanding of each organization’s needs and ensuring People Team services are responsive while building approaches that can scale across the Networks.

Qualifications

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and executive leadership experience required. An advanced degree is preferred. A background in organizational psychology or organizational development is valued; HR certification is not required.
• Fifteen or more years of progressive senior leadership experience leading People, Talent, Organizational Development, or related enterprise functions within complex organizations.
• Senior executive experience (e.g., Vice President, SVP, Chief, or Executive Director), ideally with leadership experience spanning multiple functions, including direct program or operational leadership and central or shared services. Brings a broader organizational perspective, including operational and financial judgment beyond the People function and firsthand experience partnering with and relying on a People function to support organizational success. Experience serving as a trusted advisor to senior executives on leadership, organizational, workforce, and talent-related decisions.
• Demonstrated success building and scaling enterprise People capabilities, including Talent Acquisition, leadership development, organizational health, or related functions, that significantly improved organizational effectiveness.
• Experience leading complex organizational change, including periods of growth, restructuring, cultural evolution, or operating model transformation.
• Demonstrated success developing leaders and managers through coaching, leadership development, performance management, succession planning, and organizational capability building that promotes fair, inclusive, and high-performing workplaces.
• Experience leveraging technology, data, analytics, and AI to improve People services, strengthen enterprise decision-making, or increase organizational effectiveness.
• Experience establishing or continuously improving a centralized, federated, or shared service model, and adapting that model based on lessons, organizational needs, and results, highly preferred.
• Experience leading within mission-driven organizations or partnering closely with nonprofit, philanthropic, education, healthcare, public sector, or similarly purpose-driven organizations is preferred.
• Experience serving young children, women, and families, or expanding opportunity for people experiencing poverty, is a strong plus, as is an understanding of the systemic inequities and interconnected systems that shape opportunity for families.
• Demonstrated commitment to GKFF’s mission and genuine interest in building the relationships, understanding, and long-term connection to Tulsa required to lead effectively in this context.

Leadership & Characteristics

The successful candidate will demonstrate the ability to:

• Lead through authentic partnership. Builds trust through humility, active listening, genuine partnership, and consistent follow-through. Brings people together around shared purpose and believes lasting organizational change is built through relationships rather than authority.
• Think and lead as a strategist. Brings rigorous strategic thinking to complex organizational questions, holds their own with highly strategic leaders, and connects People practices directly to organizational performance and results.
• Understand before changing. Takes time to learn GKFF’s culture and leadership style before driving change, tailors practices to fit the organization rather than applying a checklist of industry standards, decides what to standardize, preserve, or stop, and makes a compelling case for why People work matters, building influence where it is not automatic.
• Communicates with clarity, confidence, candor, and empathy across diverse audiences. Synthesizes complex information quickly and cuts through noise. Delivers difficult truths, facilitates difficult conversations, earns credibility with leaders at every level, and inspires confidence through thoughtful communication and professional presence.
• Exercise sound judgment and steady leadership. Brings thoughtful perspective to complex organizational decisions, balances competing priorities, and responds to uncertainty with composure, discernment, and a focus on the long-term success of both Networks.
• Lead with curiosity, evidence, and continuous learning. Seeks diverse perspectives, tests assumptions, embraces feedback and data, and adjusts course when better information or ideas emerge.
• Create clarity and drive execution. Brings structure to ambiguous organizational challenges, translates strategy into practical solutions, prioritizes effectively, and delivers meaningful, measurable progress. Acts as a hands-on doer and a disciplined steward of resources.
• Build organizational capability. Strengthens leaders, teams, systems, and practices that enable the GKFF and TCF Networks to grow, adapt, and thrive long after their direct involvement. Focuses on building capacity rather than dependence.
• Lead with self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Understands the impact of their leadership, adapts their approach to different people and situations, and creates environments where people feel respected, heard, and able to contribute.

Hours & Location

• This position is based at 7030 S. Yale Ave., Suite 600, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74136.
• A typical work week is Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• This role occasionally requires flexibility to support meetings, events, or organizational priorities outside of standard business hours, including evenings or weekends.
• Occasional domestic travel is required, including an annual Leadership Team off-site, professional development, conferences, and learning visits to peer foundations and communities.
• Reliable transportation required.
• This is a Tulsa-based executive role requiring a meaningful and consistent in-person presence with GKFF leaders, teams, and Network partners. This is not a remote position, and the Chief must live in or relocate to the Tulsa area. A strong in-person presence is expected, and ad-hoc remote work is allowed on an as needed occasional basis. 

Life In Tulsa

Tulsa offers a high quality of life at a cost of living well below the national average, with housing costs roughly a third lower. Through programs such as Tulsa Remote, thousands of professionals who could live anywhere have chosen Tulsa, and most have stayed. Learn more about the city at experiencetulsa.org, one of GKFF’s affiliated programs!

Benefits & Compensation

GKFF offers a competitive total rewards package designed to support the health, well-being, and financial security of our employees and their families. The Chief of People & Performance will receive a competitive base salary and is eligible for an annual performance-based bonus of up to 10% of base salary. Relocation assistance is available for candidates currently residing outside the Tulsa area. Benefits include:

• 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and long-term disability coverage for full-time employees, with options to add vision and dependent coverage.
• 401(k) employee and employer contributions.
• Paid time off and holidays.
• Employer-paid AD&D and life insurance, with the option to add supplemental life insurance.