Director – Employee Experience & Culture

Department Overview

The OHSU Knight Cancer Institute is an internationally recognized leader in cancer research and care, powered by a historic $2 billion gift from Phil and Penny Knight. With a bold mission to revolutionize cancer prevention, detection, and treatment, we offer an environment where innovation thrives, collaboration is central, and your work can have a lasting impact. The institute cultivates a welcoming and supportive environment for caregivers, researchers, and support personnel. Knight affiliates subscribe to three guiding principles: we are bold, we are supportive, and we work as a connected team in our fight to end cancer as we know it. We¿d love for you to join us!

Every Knight Cancer employee is expected to embody our guiding principles:

• We act BOLDLY—Breakthroughs require pushing the boundaries of science, exploring new frontiers, and thinking differently
• We SUPPORT each other—Respect leads to trust, which leads to excellence
• We work as a CONNECTED team—We must leverage our collective brain power to conquer cancer because no one individual can do it alone

Function/Duties of Position

The Director, Employee Experience & Culture provides strategic leadership for the development of an exceptional workforce experience and high-performance culture across the Knight Cancer Institute (KCI). Reporting to the Chief Human Resources Officer (or designee), this leader partners closely with the Chief Experience Officer, Human Resources leadership, executive leaders, and clinical and operational partners.

The Director shapes an integrated employee experience strategy that enables caregivers, researchers, faculty, and staff to thrive while advancing KCI’s mission and commitment to exceptional patient care.  This role translates organizational strategy and culture priorities into organization-wide experiences, programs, and practices that strengthen engagement, belonging, leadership effectiveness, retention, and organizational performance.

This position partners with Human Resources Business Partners to advance organization-wide employee experience and culture priorities into workforce and organizational strategies. Through strategic planning, workforce insights, culture transformation, and change leadership, this role shapes the employee experience and organizational culture to position KCI as an exceptional place to work while advancing patient, employee, and business outcomes.

Duties Include:

• Lead the Employee Experience Strategy: Develop and execute an enterprise-wide employee experience strategy aligned with the Cancer Center’s strategic priorities, workforce strategy, and experience goals.
• Shape Culture: Define, strengthen, and operationalize the desired culture through leadership practices, employee programs, recognition, communication, and organizational initiatives.
• Drive Workforce Engagement: Use employee listening, engagement data, workforce insights, and qualitative feedback to identify opportunities and lead targeted strategies that improve engagement, connection, trust, and retention.
• Design the Employee Journey: Establish a consistent, differentiated employee experience across key moments that matter—from recruitment and onboarding through career development, recognition, leadership transitions, and departure.
• Translate Insights Into Action: Integrate engagement, workforce, and experience data to identify trends, diagnose organizational challenges, and develop measurable interventions and recommendations for senior leadership.
• Advance Leadership Effectiveness: Partner with organizational development and HR leaders to embed culture and employee experience expectations into leadership practices, talent processes, and leader development.
• Lead Enterprise-Wide Initiatives: Design and lead cross-functional initiatives that strengthen culture, employee engagement, inclusion, collaboration, recognition, and organizational effectiveness
• Connect Employee and Patient Experience: Ensure the workforce experience supports the Cancer Center’s broader experience strategy and reinforces the connection between how employees experience the organization and how patients experience their care
• Build Organizational Capability: Partner with HR, Communications, Learning & Development, and operational leaders to build the capabilities, systems, and practices required to sustain the desired culture.
• Measure Impact: Establish meaningful employee experience and culture metrics, dashboards, and success measures and regularly communicate insights and progress to executive leadership.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree
• 6 + years of progressive experience in employee experience, organizational development, culture, engagement, human resources, organizational effectiveness, or a related field
• Experience partnering with senior leaders to align workforce and culture strategies with organizational goals
• Experience working in a large, complex healthcare, academic, research, or similarly matrixed organization
• Proven ability to use employee feedback, engagement data, and workforce insights to drive improvements
• Experience leading organization-wide initiatives and influencing across teams without direct authority
• Organizational culture, change management, and strategic planning
• Employee engagement, experience measurement, and culture assessment
• Healthcare and academic medical center operations
• Data analysis and turning insights into action
• Relationship building, collaboration, and executive communication
• Project management, stakeholder engagement, facilitation, and conflict resolution
• Develop and implement enterprise-wide strategies to enhance employee experience and organizational culture
• Improve employee engagement, retention, leadership effectiveness, and organizational performance
• Build alignment and influence decision-making across diverse stakeholder groups
• Lead cross-functional initiatives that support organizational priorities and culture goals

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in organizational development, human resources, business, healthcare administration, or a related field preferred
• 7-10+ years of progressive experience  including 3–5+ years of experience leading enterprise-wide strategic initiatives involving employee experience, culture transformation, workforce engagement, or organizational effectiveness

Additional Details

Apply online. Please be sure to upload a Cover Letter and Resume/CV.

We offer a variety of benefits on top of joining a thriving organization:

• Medical, dental and vision coverage at no or low cost to employees
  • Covered 100% for full-time employees and 88% for dependents
• Several retirement plans to choose from with contributions from OHSU
• 208 hours of PTO per year
• 8 days of sick time off
• 9 paid holidays per year
• Commuter subsidies
• Tuition reimbursement
• Access to group life insurance, disability insurance and other supplemental benefits
• Annual Merit Increase
• Growth/Development Opportunities
• Employee discounts to local and major businesses

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Why apply to OHSU?

We are Oregon's only public academic health center. In addition to caring for patients, we lead groundbreaking research. We also train the next generation of health care professionals. As Portland's largest employer, we give you opportunities to learn and advance in a system of hospitals and clinics across Oregon and Southwest Washington. All are welcome. OHSU welcomes people of all ages, ethnicities, genders, national origins, religions and sexual orientations. We are striving to build an anti-racist, multicultural institution and encourage people with diverse backgrounds to apply. To request reasonable accommodation, contact [email protected]