What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Director, Leadership Development position at BNY External Career Site?
We’re seeking a future team member for the role of Senior Director, Leadership Development to join our Corporate Affairs team. This role is located in New York City.
Job Summary: Lead and advance firmwide leadership development and transformation strategy, with a particular focus on strengthening the Managing Director (MD) leadership system as a critical component of the broader leadership pipeline. This role will shape leadership development and transformation approaches across senior talent populations, ensuring the firm has strong, future-ready leaders equipped to drive business, cultural, and strategic outcomes.
The role serves as a central leader in defining leadership expectations, advancing senior leader development, strengthening promotion and succession disciplines, and developing and delivering programs that drive workforce transformation by leveraging tools such as AI to enhance leadership effectiveness, capability building, and organizational impact across the firm.
In this role, you’ll make any impact in the following ways:
- Lead the enterprise approach for leadership development, with a focus on building leadership capability, strengthening the senior leadership pipeline, and aligning development approaches to the firm’s long-term business and talent priorities.
- Design and drive differentiated leadership development pathways and experiences for senior talent, including coaching, sponsorship, stretch assignments, firmwide exposure, and other targeted interventions aligned to business priorities.
- Partner with senior business leaders, PBPs, and Talent teams to identify leadership capability gaps, succession priorities, and development needs across critical talent segments.
- Lead the development of the MD leadership pipeline, including readiness criteria, targeted development experiences, and support across the full MD lifecycle (pre-MD, newly promoted, and tenured MDs).
- Own and evolve MD promotion processes and governance, ensuring clear standards, rigorous assessment, and consistent decision-making aligned to enterprise leadership expectations.
- Generate executive insights on leadership pipeline health, bench strength, succession readiness, talent risks, and leadership capability trends to inform talent decisions.
- Lead AI enablement from a Talent perspective, defining strategies to build AI fluency, confidence, and practical adoption across leadership and employee populations.
- Develop and deliver leadership and talent programs that drive transformation by leveraging tools such as AI to strengthen capability, adoption, and organizational effectiveness.
- Design and scale AI-enabled development experiences and interventions that enable leaders and teams to adopt AI effectively, responsibly, and in ways that improve productivity, decision-making, innovation, and transformation outcomes.
- Lead transformation-focused development initiatives that embed AI fluency, confidence, and practical application across leadership and employee populations.
- Assess and monitor AI readiness across the workforce, using data and insights to identify gaps, inform priorities, and guide enterprise interventions.
- Promote responsible AI adoption, ensuring enablement approaches reflect strong judgment, effective change leadership, and alignment with enterprise values.
To be successful in this role, we’re seeking the following:
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting Managing Director or executive promotion processes, or equivalent senior leadership governance.
- Background in leadership assessment, succession planning, and enterprise talent reviews.
- Experience in a highly matrixed financial services or similarly regulated environment.
- Experience designing or implementing AI literacy, digital upskilling, future-of-work, or workforce transformation programs.
- Familiarity with responsible AI adoption, change management, and capability-building in large enterprises.
Core Competencies
- Executive talent strategy
- Leadership assessment and succession
- Promotion governance
- Stakeholder influence
- Data-driven decision-making
- Change management
- Communication and executive presence
- Program leadership and operational rigor
- AI enablement and workforce transformation
- Talent strategy and capability building
- Digital fluency and future-ready leadership
- Responsible AI adoption