Head of People

About Ascend

Ascend empowers entrepreneurial CPAs to reach their goals with an innovative growth model that brings their firms into the new age. Backed by private equity from people-focused Alpine Investors, Ascend is building a modern platform for regional accounting firms that enables them to stay independent while accessing the resources of a large CPA firm to help them grow. Ascend provides access to growth capital, robust talent acquisition, best-of-breed technology, a catalytic leadership system, shared back-office services, and modernized equity incentives so that firms can surmount today’s industry challenges and reach their full potential. Founded in January 2023, the company attained revenues sufficient to qualify it as a Top 100 U.S. accounting firm within six months of operations.

For more information, visit ascendtogether.com.

About Alpine Investors

Alpine Investors is a people-driven private equity firm that is committed to building great companies by working with, learning from, and developing exceptional people. Alpine prides itself on fostering cultures where people value empowerment, diversity, fairness, integrity, and intellectual honesty. Founded in 2001, Alpine specializes in investments in companies in the software and services industries. Alpine has over $17 billion in AUM and has offices in San Francisco, New York, and Salt Lake City.

For more information on the firm, visit www.alpineinvestors.com

Position Summary

Ascend is seeking a Head of People to serve as the senior talent strategist for one of our partner firms. As a member of the firm’s Executive Leadership Team (ELT), the Head of People will shape the decisions that determine how the firm grows: where to invest in talent, how to organize for scale, how to compete for scarce accounting talent, and how to bring newly acquired firms into the fold.

This is a strategy and leadership role, not an HR administration role. Day-to-day People Operations, including payroll, benefits, HR compliance, and HR systems, are delivered through Ascend’s centralized shared services. The Head of People sets direction for that work and holds it to a high standard, keeping their own time focused on the issues that move the business.

The Head of People will report to the partner firm’s CEO and work closely with Ascend’s corporate People leadership.

Why This Role

• A real seat at the table. The Head of People is a full member of the ELT, with a direct voice in growth planning, organizational design, integrations, and investment decisions where talent is the deciding factor.
• The industry’s defining problem. The accounting profession faces a structural talent shortage, and the firms that solve it will win their markets. The Head of People owns the firm’s answer.
• Strategy, not administration. With transactional HR handled centrally, the role is built around the highest-value work: diagnosing problems, setting priorities, and driving decisions through to results.
• Platform leverage. The Head of People builds with Ascend’s playbooks, data, centralized talent acquisition and development resources, and a peer network of People leaders across our partner firms, backed by Alpine Investors’ people-first approach to building great companies.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Advisor to the Executive Leadership Team

• Serve as a trusted advisor to the CEO and ELT, bringing a fact-based, hypothesis-driven perspective to the decisions that shape the firm’s growth trajectory.
• Translate the firm’s strategic plan into a multi-year talent strategy, defining the capabilities, roles, and leadership bench required to deliver on growth targets.
• Lead organizational design decisions, including structure, spans and layers, role architecture, and succession, to position the firm for scale and future acquisitions.
• Build the business case for major talent investments (e.g., new leadership roles, compensation changes, onshore/offshore team mix), quantifying expected returns and trade-offs to inform ELT decisions.
• Bring an outside-in view of the competitive talent landscape, using market data and benchmarks to anticipate risks and opportunities before they show up in results.

Talent as a Growth Lever

• Partner with the CEO and Chief Growth Officer to align talent strategy with the Ascend Growth Model, ensuring the firm has the capacity and capabilities to execute its organic and inorganic growth plans.
• Lead the people workstream of add-on acquisitions, from assessing leadership and talent risk during diligence through post-close integration, key-talent retention, and cultural alignment.
• Shape compensation and incentive strategy that is market-competitive and tied to firm performance, using data to help the firm attract and keep top talent.
• Ensure the firm has A players in all key roles by owning the talent review process and driving decisive action on hiring, development, and succession.

Leadership & Culture

• Champion a high-performance, Best Place to Work culture, using engagement data to pinpoint what drives retention and where leadership needs to act.
• Raise the firm’s leadership capability by coaching partners and managers on performance management, feedback, and people leadership.
• Own a scorecard-based performance management cycle that makes evaluations, development, and rewards rigorous, consistent, and tied to outcomes.
• Partner with Ascend’s Professional Development leadership to deploy learning pathways and leadership programs that build the firm’s next generation of leaders.

Directing People Operations

• Direct the People Operations services delivered by Ascend’s central team (payroll, benefits, HR compliance, HR systems, and employee services), setting priorities, holding service levels to a high standard, and escalating issues that affect the firm’s people.
• Define and monitor the firm’s People KPIs, using leading indicators to surface risks early and inform ELT decisions.
• Guide communications on significant People matters so that change is explained clearly and credibly across the firm.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university; MBA strongly preferred
• Exceptional analytical rigor and structured problem-solving, honed in management consulting, private equity, corporate strategy, or a strategic People leadership role in a high-growth or PE-backed environment
• Proven ability to build a fact base, synthesize it into a clear recommendation, and drive it to a decision with senior executives
• Demonstrated credibility advising CEOs and executive teams; influences through insight rather than authority
• Working knowledge of core People disciplines (compensation, performance management, organizational design, employee relations) sufficient to direct expert teams and make sound judgment calls; deep hands-on HR operations experience is not required
• Superior EQ and influencing skills paired with outstanding oral and written communication abilities
• Bias for action and comfort with ambiguity; thrives in an entrepreneurial, build-mode environment
• Experience in professional services, accounting, or M&A integration a plus

At Ascend, we provide a fair and equal employment opportunity for all candidates regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, age, marital status, disability, or any other legally protected characteristic. Ascend hires and promotes individuals solely based on qualifications for the position to be filled and business needs.