Director of People, Advisory Function

CrossBoundary Group is a mission‑driven investment and advisory firm that unlocks the power of capital for sustainable growth and strong returns in underserved markets. CrossBoundary Advisory provides transaction and investment advisory services, having developed a specialized expertise in unleashing investment across all sectors in these markets. Our advisory clients include governments, development finance institutions, private equity firms, Fortune 100 companies, and research institutions.

CrossBoundary Advisory is hiring a Director of People for its Advisory business. The role is broad by design: talent strategy, recruiting, performance, culture, organisational development, with real proximity to senior leadership and genuine room to shape how the people function operates. It suits someone who thinks carefully about systems and people, can move between strategic work and the detail without losing pace, and who finds that kind of challenge genuinely exciting.

Who you are

• A strategic partner to business leaders with a strong voice and technical expertise to influence how the People function impacts firm‑level goals.
• An executor who can work backwards from a business need, translating it into a clearly defined goal and working with colleagues across all levels to turn plans into reality.
• An agile player as comfortable with ambiguous ideas as they are with rolling up their sleeves to execute on tasks where necessary.
• An operational system builder who is comfortable in the ‘messy middle’ between perfect systems and imperfect human users and can deliver efficient, simple, user‑friendly processes with minimal bureaucracy.
• A custodian of our culture and values.

Responsibilities you’ll own

• Strategy and goals for People domain: Serve as the strategic People partner to the executive team of CrossBoundary Advisory, with a deep, real‑time understanding of the business, its strategic goals, and evolving priorities. Shape and implement clear, impactful goals (OKRs) for the People domain that directly support Advisory’s strategic objectives.
• Design recruiting systems and provide direct support for senior hires: Shape the recruiting strategy for Advisory, ensuring we attract exceptional talent aligned with our mission, values, and performance standards.
• Be responsible for the systems, processes and supervision of staffing operations: Iterate on staffing process as necessary. Supervise a junior resource to reliably execute on this.
• Talent Development and Performance: Work with the Group People team to design and deliver Advisory‑specific onboarding journeys that set our new joiners up for success from day one.
• Culture and Employee Relations: Run and refine our pulse check approach, regularly gauging morale, soliciting feedback, and identifying and driving change initiatives to keep our culture thriving.
• Organisational Development and Health: Provide thought partnership to leaders seeking input on team structure.

Your Background

• At least 8 years of leading people functions at a senior level.
• Background in professional services or consulting strongly preferred.
• Proven ability to advise and influence at the executive level.
• Has built and refined people systems in lean, high‑growth environments.
• Comfortable holding strategic leadership and hands‑on execution simultaneously.
• Has led or developed others, and is invested in doing so.
• Nontraditional backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

Locations

You are based either in Nairobi, Johannesburg, or London.

Equal Opportunity Employer

CrossBoundary is an equal opportunity employer. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to human.resources@crossboundary.com.