Director, Talent Strategy

Location: Chicago / Adams - IL

Director, Talent Strategy & Planning

Reports to: SVP, Head of Talent | Function: Talent | Scope: Global

Position Summary

The Director, Talent Strategy & Planning is responsible for strengthening CDW's ability to make proactive, business-aligned talent decisions that support growth, transformation, and long-term organizational readiness. This leader ensures CDW has the leadership depth, workforce plans, skills visibility, and performance discipline needed to execute the business strategy today and build the capabilities required for the future.

Reporting to the SVP, Head of Talent, this role leads a team focused on building simple, scalable, data-informed talent practices that help leaders understand where the organization is strong, where risk exists, and what actions are needed to close gaps. The Director connects leadership assessment and succession, strategic workforce planning, skills, and performance management into an integrated approach that improves decision-making, strengthens accountability, and prepares CDW for an outcome-obsessed future.

The successful candidate will bring an enterprise talent mindset, strong business acumen, and the ability to translate strategy into simple, practical tools and resources that help HR Business Partners and leaders act. They will use AI fluently in their own work and embed it into how talent work gets done across the function.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership Assessment & Succession

Own the enterprise approach to leadership assessment and succession, ensuring CDW has a clear, differentiated view of leadership strength, readiness, and risk from front-line leader through executive levels.

Elevate the quality and depth of talent review discussions by equipping HR Business Partners and leaders with simple, practical guides, templates, and prompts so discussions meaningfully differentiate talent, surface successors and successor gaps, and result in committed actions rather than ratings alone.

Drive follow-through on succession outcomes in partnership with HR Business Partners, who own the leader relationships and day-to-day execution, working with the Director, Learning Strategy & Design on targeted development for successors and high-potential leaders and with the Sr Director, Talent Acquisition where succession gaps require external pipeline building.

Track and report progress on leadership readiness, bench strength, and completion of agreed talent actions, giving HR Business Partners and leaders easy-to-use views of their own talent picture so accountability for movement is visible over time.

Strategic Workforce Planning

Build strategic workforce planning as a new enterprise capability at CDW, starting simple and maturing the approach over time so it becomes a practical input to business and functional planning rather than an HR exercise.

Translate business priorities and growth plans into a forward view of the roles, skills, and capabilities CDW will need, and the gaps between that future state and today's workforce.

Help leaders understand workforce implications, risks, and tradeoffs earlier through practical planning tools and clear, digestible outputs that support informed decisions on capacity, capability, build-versus-buy, and readiness.

Partner with Talent Acquisition, Learning, Finance, and HR Business Partners so workforce plans connect to hiring plans, development investment, and budget cycles.

Shift CDW to a Skills-Based Talent Organization

Lead the shift toward a skills-based talent organization, giving CDW a real-time view of workforce capability and a common language for skills across talent processes.

Advance the skills framework and taxonomy, organizing priority skills into clear groupings that leaders and coworkers can actually use, including integration with the CDW Way values and commitments.

Progress the multi-year skills infrastructure roadmap and the effective use of supporting technology (for example Workday Skills Cloud) to build skills visibility at scale, while keeping what leaders and coworkers interact with simple and intuitive.

Embed skills into succession, workforce planning, development, and internal mobility so skills data drives decisions rather than sitting in a system.

Performance Management

• Own the enterprise performance management approach, shifting the culture from activity to outcomes and reinforcing accountability for results.
• Ensure performance is evaluated on both the what and the how, anchored in CDW's leadership expectations and values.
• Build the foundation for continuous coaching, regular feedback, and ongoing performance conversations rather than a once-a-year event.
• Equip HR Business Partners and leaders with simple, practical resources that make regular feedback and coaching conversations easy to have well.
• Simplify and standardize performance practices so they are applied consistently across teams and geographies, supported by clear expectations, timing, outputs, and lightweight resources such as conversation guides, feedback prompts, and manager toolkits.

Improve Talent Decision Quality

• Build simple, scalable talent practices and put practical tools, templates, and enablement in the hands of HR Business Partners and leaders so adoption happens without heavy lift or hand-holding.
• Strengthen the quality of talent data and insight, and use it to tell a clear talent story to senior leaders.
• Drive accountability for talent outcomes, including leadership readiness, capability gaps, and progress against actions.
• Use AI personally to work faster and smarter — analyzing talent data, synthesizing insight, drafting materials, and testing ideas — and model that way of working for the team.
• Embed AI into how talent work gets done across the function, applying it to succession, workforce planning, skills, and performance so processes are simpler, insight is faster, and the tools HR Business Partners and leaders use are genuinely easier.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business, Organizational Development, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, or a related field.

10+ years of progressive experience in talent management, talent strategy, succession planning, leadership assessment, strategic workforce planning, performance management, skills strategy, organizational effectiveness, or HR business partnership in a multinational organization.

Experience leading teams, setting strategy, building capability, and driving execution.

Strong business acumen with the ability to connect talent practices to enterprise strategy, growth, transformation, and performance outcomes.

Strong executive communication, facilitation, consulting, and stakeholder management skills, with a track record of making complex talent topics simple and usable for HR Business Partners and business leaders.

Experience using talent data, workforce insights, HR technology, or analytics to inform decisions and shape strategy.

Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity, influence without direct authority, and drive change across a matrixed organization.

Demonstrated personal use of AI tools as a core part of how they work — to accelerate analysis, synthesis, communication, content creation, and decision-making — with a point of view on where AI adds real value and where it does not.

Strong curiosity and commitment to continuous learning in skills-based talent practices, workforce planning, talent transformation, and the future of work.

Success Profile

The ideal candidate is an enterprise talent strategist who can connect business strategy, leadership readiness, workforce planning, skills, and performance into one integrated talent agenda, and who works in an AI-enabled way themselves.

They are comfortable advising executives, leading a team, using data to tell a clear talent story, and ensuring solutions are simple, practical, and supported by tools and resources leaders and HR Business Partners will actually use.

They understand that the value of Talent Strategy & Planning is not in owning separate HR processes. It is in helping the organization make better decisions about the talent needed to execute strategy, strengthen leadership pipelines, close capability gaps, and build a more skills-based, outcome-focused culture.

Must Have

• Experience leading enterprise talent strategy, succession and leadership assessment, performance management, workforce planning, skills strategy, or related HR work.
• Experience operating in a large, complex, matrixed organization.
• Experience leading teams and influencing senior stakeholders.
• Strong business acumen and ability to translate business needs into talent strategies.
• Experience using data and insights to shape talent decisions.
• Demonstrated, hands-on use of AI in their own work, plus evidence of redesigning team processes or deliverables around AI.

Strongly Preferred

• Prior HRBP experience.
• Experience in a multinational organization.
• Experience leading succession, leadership assessment, performance management, talent reviews, skills strategy, or strategic workforce planning.
• Experience with Workday talent tools, Workday Skills Cloud, or related HR technology.
• Experience leading enterprise transformation or adoption at scale.

U.S. range with variable compensation - % bonus

Pay range: $ 184,000 - $ 220,600 depending on experience and skill set

Annual bonus target of 30% subject to terms and conditions of plan

Benefits overview: https://cdw.benefit-info.com/

Salary ranges may be subject to geographic differentials

CDW is committed to being an AI-fluent organization

As a leader, you will champion and be accountable for our vision of becoming an AI-fluent organization. We expect leaders to model curiosity, encourage responsible AI adoption, and foster a culture of continuous learning. You don’t need deep technical expertise, but you should be comfortable exploring how AI can enhance strategy, decision-making, and team performance. Your role includes guiding others in building confidence and capability with AI tools and practices, while promoting openness to experimentation and shared learning.

Additionally, CDW is committed to fostering an equitable, transparent, and respectful hiring process for all applicants. During our application process, our goal is to understand your experience, strengths, skills, and qualifications. As an AI forward company, we see AI not just as a tool, but as a catalyst for new ways of thinking, creating, and communicating. We encourage candidates to embrace an AI mindset, one that’s curious, adaptive, and ready to explore what’s possible. We welcome thoughtful use of AI to expand your perspective and elevate how you share your story, while ensuring your application remains rooted in your own background, judgment, and voice.

About Us

CDW is a Fortune 500 technology solutions provider that helps businesses, government, education, and healthcare organizations achieve what’s possible through technology. What makes CDW different isn’t just what we do—it’s how we do it. At CDW we act as one—building trust, speaking candidly, and working together to achieve more. We play to win—focusing on what matters most and delivering for our customers. And we think forward—staying curious, moving fast, and continuously learning.

We believe meaningful work happens when people feel supported, heard, and empowered to contribute. That’s why we think of ourselves as coworkers, not just employees—working together to solve complex challenges and deliver real impact for our customers and communities.

As a full‑stack, full‑lifecycle technology partner, CDW brings deep expertise, strong relationships, and broad industry knowledge to help turn ideas into outcomes. When you join CDW, you become part of a collaborative environment where your work matters, your growth is supported, and your contributions help shape what’s next.

Together, we deliver the full promise of what technology can do. Together, we Make Amazing Happen.

CDW is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by state and local law.