About this role
Company Description
About AbbVie
AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com . Follow @abbvie on LinkedIn, Facebook , Instagram , X and YouTube.
Job Description
Position Summary
The Global HR Portfolio Lead is a critical role within AbbVie's People Strategy & Transformation team, responsible for creating and sustaining an enterprise-wide view of the work delivered by HR. The role will establish the global HR portfolio across three connected categories: annual strategic priorities, ongoing run-the-business programs and services, and locally managed programs and services across affiliates and regions.
Reporting to the leader of People Strategy & Transformation, this role connects people strategy to execution by building the portfolio, governance, technology, integrated roadmap, and decision forums required to improve prioritization and portfolio value. The portfolio will provide the CHRO and HR Leadership Team (HRLT) with a clear view of commitments, timing, dependencies, capacity, risks, and outcomes, enabling disciplined trade-offs across global and local work.
This role is for a pragmatic portfolio leader who can operate in ambiguity, create clarity across a complex global HR ecosystem, and translate strategy into simple, sustainable processes. Success will be defined not by producing project summaries, but by enabling higher-quality decisions, reducing activation friction, strengthening accountability, and increasing the impact of HR investments on employees and the business.
Key Responsibilities
Global HR Portfolio Strategy & Design
- Create and maintain a comprehensive global HR portfolio that provides visibility into strategic initiatives, run-the-business programs and services, and local or regional HR programs and services.
- Define a practical portfolio taxonomy, minimum data standards, ownership expectations, and governance model that create a consistent view of HR work across Centers of Excellence (COEs), Business HR (BHR), regions, and affiliates.
- Connect the portfolio to the People Strategy & Transformation team's broader mandate for HR strategy, annual prioritization, planning, budgeting, technology strategy, and transformation, ensuring portfolio insights translate into action.
- Ensure the portfolio reflects strategic alignment, clear outcomes, realistic delivery commitments, dependencies, resource requirements, risks, and expected employee and business value.
Portfolio Technology & Information Architecture
- Lead the evaluation and recommendation of the right technology platform to house the global HR portfolio, in partnership with HR Technology, BTS/IT, and key stakeholders.
- Define business and user requirements for a solution that allows program teams to manage detailed project information while enabling leaders to access concise, decision-ready portfolio views.
- Establish the information architecture, data standards, reporting requirements, role-based access, and integration needs required for a trusted global source of portfolio information.
- Guide implementation and adoption of the selected solution, balancing enterprise visibility with simple, low-burden maintenance for project and program teams.
Integrated Roadmap & Activation Management
- Create and maintain an integrated, multi-horizon roadmap as the executive-level output of the global HR portfolio.
- Provide the CHRO and HRLT with visibility into major HR activations, business moments, dependencies, decision points, and periods of concentrated change.
- Identify friction points created by overlapping HR activations, conflicts with critical business moments, and cumulative demand on employees, managers, and HR teams.
- Enable fact-based sequencing and trade-off decisions that account for both HR delivery capacity and the capacity of the business and employees to absorb and metabolize change.
Portfolio Intake, Governance & Maintenance
- Design and implement clear portfolio intake processes with central HR teams, including COEs and BHR, and with global, regional, and local HR teams.
- Define the minimum project and service information required to support enterprise transparency, prioritization, sequencing, risk management, and decision making.
- Establish ownership, validation, update, and escalation processes so portfolio information remains current, complete, and reliable.
- Create an operating rhythm for ongoing maintenance, including scheduled data reviews, exception management, quality controls, and accountability for timely updates.
- Continuously simplify portfolio processes and standards based on stakeholder feedback, data quality, adoption, and decision usefulness.
Quarterly Business Reviews & Decision Forums
- Establish and help manage quarterly portfolio reviews (QBRs) that elevate the conversation from project status reporting to impact, risk, value, capacity, and future decisions.
- Design forums, pre-reads, analytics, and decision agendas that enable productive dialogue among central HR teams, global and local HR leaders, and HRLT.
- Facilitate alignment on what should be supported globally, what should be managed or driven locally, and where common solutions, sequencing changes, or trade-offs are required.
- Surface portfolio-level dependencies, delivery risks, capacity constraints, and decisions requiring HRLT sponsorship or intervention.
- Track decisions, owners, and follow-through from QBRs to ensure governance produces measurable action and stronger portfolio outcomes.
Measurement, Value & Portfolio Insights
- Partner with People Analytics & Insights to help program teams define meaningful outcome measures, leading indicators, and value-realization metrics for HR programs and services.
- Build portfolio views that connect investment, delivery health, adoption, employee or business impact, and strategic contribution.
- Increase accountability among program teams and leaders for demonstrating the value of HR investments and using evidence to inform continuation, acceleration, redesign, scaling, or retirement decisions.
- Translate portfolio data into concise executive insights, recommendations, and narratives for the CHRO, HRLT, and other senior stakeholders.
Stakeholder Partnership & Capability Building
- Build trusted partnerships across COEs, BHR, People Experience, HR Technology, People Analytics & Insights, Finance, BTS/IT, and regional and affiliate HR teams.
- Influence senior HR leaders to adopt common portfolio practices, make transparent trade-offs, and use portfolio insights in planning and prioritization decisions.
- Coach program owners and teams on portfolio standards, outcome definition, executive storytelling, and preparation for business reviews.
- Build a sustainable portfolio-management capability that can scale globally without creating unnecessary administrative burden.
Qualifications
Required
- Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Development, Project or Portfolio Management, or a related field.
- 5-10 years of progressive HR experience, including meaningful responsibility for HR strategy, portfolio management, program governance, transformation, HR operations, or a related discipline.
- Demonstrated experience establishing, managing, and using an HR portfolio to support prioritization, sequencing, governance, and leadership decision making.
- Experience designing and running business or program reviews focused on outcomes, value, risk, capacity, and forward-looking decisions rather than basic status updates.
- Proven ability to operate in ambiguity, structure complex problems, and build clarity and alignment around new enterprise capabilities.
- Strong experience influencing senior HR leaders and stakeholders in a complex, matrixed, global organization without relying on direct authority.
- Ability to translate strategy into simple processes, governance, decision frameworks, and actionable outcomes.
- Experience partnering with analytics teams and program leaders to define metrics for HR programs and services and use evidence to improve accountability and investment decisions.
- Strong written, verbal, facilitation, and executive communication skills, with the ability to synthesize complex portfolio information into decision-ready insights.
Preferred
- Advanced degree in business, human resources, organizational development, or a related field.
- Experience in the pharmaceutical, biotech, life sciences, or another highly matrixed and regulated global industry.
- Experience selecting, implementing, or administering enterprise portfolio, project, work-management, or strategic-planning technology.
- Familiarity with portfolio and program management methodologies, including Agile, SAFe, stage-gate governance, capacity planning, benefits realization, or change-portfolio management.
- Professional certification in project, program, portfolio, change, process improvement, or Agile disciplines.
Competencies
- Enterprise Portfolio Strategy & Governance
- Strategic Prioritization & Systems Thinking
- Executive Influence & Stakeholder Alignment
- Decision Facilitation & Business Review Leadership
- Technology Evaluation & Information Design
- Data-Driven Insight & Value Realization
- Global Mindset & Cross-Cultural Collaboration
- Operational Discipline, Simplicity & Continuous Improvement
Why People Experience at AbbVie
The People Experience team is at the heart of how AbbVie attracts, develops, and retains the world-class talent needed to deliver on its mission. As Global HR Portfolio Lead, you will build the enterprise capability that connects AbbVie's people strategy to the full body of work delivered across HR, giving leaders the clarity to prioritize, sequence, and invest with greater discipline. Working within People Strategy & Transformation, you will help shape how HR turns strategy into coordinated execution, balances global scale with local relevance, and delivers meaningful, measurable value for employees and the business.
Additional Information
Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law:
- The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future.
- We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick), medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.
- This job is eligible to participate in our long-term incentive programs.
Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law.
AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community. Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.
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