Department Background – Workforce Services

Workforce Services is a department within the Enterprise Technology & Services (ETS) organization at Morgan Stanley. Workforce Services (WS) supports the needs of Morgan Stanley’s global workforce, with a focus on reliable delivery of scaled, secure and flexible technology solutions. The organization brings together Business Experience Management, Production Assurance, Asset Operations, Executive Support, Projects & Organizational Management, and Vendor Oversight to form a unified team. Within WS, the Transformation, Performance and Optimization Office partners with functional leaders to drive operational effectiveness by overseeing transformation priorities, ensuring disciplined execution, and enabling performance delivery through clear accountability, financial and headcount visibility and strong leadership communication.

Position Overview

The WS Chief Performance Officer and Transformation Lead serves as a strategic partner to WS functional areas responsible for driving operational effectiveness, execution discipline, and transformation outcomes across Workplace Services. This role plays a central leadership function in pulling together, understanding, and aligning the overall WS transformation strategy—ensuring clarity on our goals, how we are delivering against them, and how progress is tracked and communicated across the organization.

In addition, this role serves as the AI, Automation & Observability Tower Lead, accountable for shaping, coordinating, and advancing this critical pillar of the WS transformation. In this capacity, the role brings together all AI, automation, and observability-related initiatives occurring across WS, aligns them to a cohesive strategy, sets objectives, convenes key stakeholders, and ensures measurable progress against defined outcomes.

The role provides leadership with clear structure, disciplined execution, and transparency across the full portfolio of work, including transformation tower initiatives. By establishing strong governance, cadence, and accountability, this role ensures commitments are delivered, progress is visible, and outcomes are clearly articulated. Acting as a trusted advisor to functional leadership, the role maintains oversight of headcount and financial targets, supports performance delivery, and drives strong leadership communication and organization-wide engagement.

Key Responsibilities

WS Transformation Strategy & Enterprise Alignment

• Own and maintain a holistic view of the WS transformation strategy, ensuring alignment across all pillars, towers, and functional initiatives.
• Synthesize how transformation goals are being delivered across WS, providing a clear and integrated narrative of progress, risks, dependencies, and outcomes.
• Track advancement of the transformation strategy against defined objectives and milestones, identifying gaps and driving course correction as needed.
• Partner with senior leaders to ensure transformation priorities are clearly understood, sequenced appropriately, and resourced to deliver impact.

AI, Automation & Observability Transformation Tower (Orchestration Focus)

• Serve as the WS AI, Automation & Observability Tower Lead, accountable for orchestrating this transformation pillar across the WS organization.
• Maintain an integrated view of all AI, automation, and observability-related initiatives underway across functions, ensuring alignment to the broader WS transformation strategy and defined objectives.
• Bring together key stakeholders across WS to align priorities, clarify ownership, and drive coordinated execution—without duplicating or fragmenting efforts.
• Establish clear objectives, success measures, and milestones for the tower, and track progress against them.
• Provide regular, transparent reporting on progress, dependencies, risks, and outcomes to senior leadership.
• Ensure this pillar advances with appropriate governance, cadence, and momentum, and that progress and impact are clearly articulated and understood.

Strategic Partnership & Operational Effectiveness

• Serve as a strategic partner to senior functional leadership, enabling effective execution of business priorities and operational objectives.
• Translate functional and transformation strategy into an actionable portfolio of initiatives aligned to broader WS and firm-wide goals.
• Provide ongoing insight, analysis, and perspective to support informed decision-making and sustained performance delivery.

Portfolio & Initiative Management

• Oversee the end-to-end portfolio / book of work for supported functions, including transformation tower initiatives and cross-functional efforts.
• Track progress against commitments, milestones, and deliverables, proactively identifying risks, dependencies, and opportunities for intervention.
• Partner closely with project managers to ensure initiatives move forward with appropriate prioritization, resourcing, and momentum.

Governance, Cadence & Accountability

• Establish and maintain governance structures, operating rhythms, and execution cadences that promote discipline, clarity, and accountability.
• Drive consistent tracking and reporting of progress, outcomes, and impacts across the portfolio and transformation pillars.
• Ensure leaders have timely, accurate, and actionable information to support decision-making and prioritization.

Performance, Financial & Headcount Visibility

• Act as a strategic partner to functional leadership by maintaining visibility into headcount, financial targets, and resource allocation.
• Support performance delivery through insights into capacity, spend, and alignment to strategic priorities.
• Partner with finance, workforce strategy, and other stakeholders to ensure alignment with approved plans and targets.

Communication & Engagement

• Capture, synthesize, and socialize accomplishments, progress, and measurable impact across WS.
• Enable strong leadership communication by translating complex strategies and initiatives into clear, compelling narratives.
• Drive organization-wide engagement, ensuring teams understand priorities, progress, and how their work contributes to broader WS transformation objectives.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in strategic operations, business management, transformation, or organizational effectiveness within a complex, matrixed environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-wide transformation, portfolio, or program initiatives with multiple concurrent workstreams.
• Strong strategic thinking combined with hands-on execution and follow-through.
• Excellent organizational, prioritization, and portfolio management skills.
• Proven ability to establish structure, cadence, and governance in complex environments.
• Strong executive communication skills, including storytelling, synthesis, and progress reporting.
• Financial and workforce acumen, with the ability to interpret and communicate performance drivers.
• Proven ability to influence and partner with senior leaders across functions.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity while driving clarity, alignment, and outcomes.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM MORGAN STANLEY:

At Morgan Stanley, we raise, manage and allocate capital for our clients – helping them reach their goals. We do it in a way that’s differentiated – and we’ve done that for 90 years. Our values - putting clients first, doing the right thing, leading with exceptional ideas, committing to diversity and inclusion, and giving back - aren’t just beliefs, they guide the decisions we make every day to do what's best for our clients, communities and more than 80,000 employees in 1,200 offices across 42 countries. At Morgan Stanley, you’ll find an opportunity to work alongside the best and the brightest, in an environment where you are supported and empowered. Our teams are relentless collaborators and creative thinkers, fueled by their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are proud to support our employees and their families at every point along their work-life journey, offering some of the most attractive and comprehensive employee benefits and perks in the industry. There’s also ample opportunity to move about the business for those who show passion and grit in their work.

To learn more about our offices across the globe, please copy and paste https://www.morganstanley.com/about-us/global-offices​ into your browser.

Expected base pay rates for the role will be between $150,000 and $210,000 per year at the commencement of employment. However, base pay if hired will be determined on an individualized basis and is only part of the total compensation package, which, depending on the position, may also include commission earnings, incentive compensation, discretionary bonuses, other short and long-term incentive packages, and other Morgan Stanley sponsored benefit programs.

Morgan Stanley is an equal opportunity employer committed to building and maintaining a workforce that is diverse in experience and background. Our recruiting efforts reflect our strong commitment to a culture of inclusion, where individuals are hired, developed, and advanced based on their skills and talents.

Our workforce reflects a broad cross-section of the global communities in which we operate, bringing a variety of backgrounds, talents, perspectives, and experiences.

For more information, please visit: https://www.morganstanley.com/people-opportunities/eeo.