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Chief People Officer
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Chief People Officer
About London Business School
London Business School (LBS) is one of the world’s pre-eminent centres for business education and research. With an alumni community of more than 58,000 leaders across over 160 countries, an MBA ranked #4 in the world by the Financial Times and Executive Education programmes ranked #1 worldwide, LBS is a truly global institution, founded on a clear and ambitious purpose: to have a profound impact on the way the world does business, and the way that business impacts the world.
Role Overview
London Business School is now seeking to appoint a Chief People Officer (CPO).
Responsibilities
Reporting directly to the Chief Operating Officer (COO), the Chief People Officer is a member of the Professional Services Leadership Team. This is a transformation mandate rather than a brief to maintain the status quo: to build the People function and the organisational capability that LBS needs for its next chapter. The successful candidate will inherit a newly structured function of 25 colleagues, led through three HR Directors covering People Operations; Talent, Performance & Capability; and Data & Systems, and will develop that leadership team into an integrated, high-performing function that is excellent at the fundamentals while becoming a far stronger strategic partner to the School.
The CPO will own the employee journey end to end, from workforce planning, attraction and recruitment through onboarding, performance, development, reward and engagement to succession and exit, ensuring that the experience of the School’s people and the performance of the organisation reinforce one another. Central to the appointment is a culture of high support and high expectations: an organisation that treats people with empathy and respect and invests in their development, while remaining equally clear about accountability, contribution and performance. A significant part of that ambition sits beyond the People function itself, in building stronger management and leadership capability across the School.
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As a trusted adviser and enterprise leader on people, organisation, leadership and culture, the CPO will translate LBS strategy into the workforce, organisational and capability priorities required to deliver it, bringing commercial judgement and constructive challenge to the COO and senior colleagues. The role also calls for an informed, forward-looking view of what artificial intelligence and evolving ways of working mean for the roles, skills and workforce models the School will need.
Candidate Profile
Candidates will be proven senior People leaders who have built, transformed or materially upgraded a People function or organisational capability, rather than simply operated an established model. They will bring broad CPO or CHRO-level experience across the employee lifecycle, evidence of building performance, talent and leadership capability in a complex and demanding organisation, and a track record of developing strong People leaders and high-performing teams.
Commercially and organisationally astute, with the ability to connect People decisions to strategy, performance and financial outcomes, candidates must demonstrate experience of significant organisational change, workforce planning and organisational effectiveness, alongside confidence in using data, technology and insight to improve People decisions and organisational performance. Experience outside higher education is strongly preferred: the School is particularly interested in leaders from sophisticated, high-performance, people-intensive organisations who will bring external thinking, practices and expectations into LBS.
Above all, London Business School is seeking someone human and demanding, courageous, pragmatic and low ego: a builder, energised by creating capability rather than inheriting it, who takes genuine satisfaction from making good leaders and talented people exceptional, and who is ambitious about what people can achieve and what London Business School can become.
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Application Process
Application is by submission of a full curriculum vitae (CV) and a covering letter of application.
For details of the appointment, including further information about the job description, person specification and how to apply, please visit https://PLusPortal.PerrettLaver.com quoting reference 8624.
For informal inquiries please contact Caitlin Vopni at Caitlin.Vopni@perrettlaver.com.
Application Deadline
The closing date for applications is 11:59pm BST on Wednesday 30th September 2026.
Selection Process Timeline
- The longlist of candidates will be determined on 5 October 2026.
- Longlisted candidates will subsequently be invited to interview with Perrett Laver.
- Shortlisted candidates will be determined in the week commencing 12 October 2026.
- First stage interviews will take place on 19 and 20 October 2026.
- Second-round interviews will take place on 5 November 2026.
- Final stage interviews will take place on 11 and 12 November 2026.
Data Protection
Protecting your personal data is of the utmost importance to Perrett Laver and we take this responsibility very seriously. Any information obtained by our trading divisions is held and processed in accordance with the relevant data protection legislation. The data you provide us with is securely stored on our computerised database and transferred to our clients for the purposes of presenting you as a candidate and/or considering your suitability for a role you have registered interest in.
As defined under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Perrett Laver is a Data Controller and a Data Processor, and our legal basis for processing your personal data is ‘Legitimate Interests’. You have the right to object to us processing your data in this way.
For more information about this, your rights, and our approach to Data Protection and Privacy, please visit our website: http://www.perrettlaver.com/information/privacy/.
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