VP, Head of Enterprise Program Management Office

pacificlife; Newport Beach (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Pacific Life in Newport Beach, CA seeks a VP, Head of Enterprise PMO to build and lead a new enterprise center of excellence driving how strategic initiatives are prioritized, governed, and delivered.

The role requires an enterprise mindset, executive influence, and the ability to translate strategy into measurable outcomes within a highly matrixed global financial services environment.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive leadership experience in enterprise portfolio management, transformation, strategy execution, or related discipline.
• Demonstrated success building and leading complex enterprise initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Build the Enterprise PMO and Center of Excellence.
• Create the ePMO vision, mandate, operating model, roadmap, and service portfolio.
• Lead a high-performing team with portfolio, program, change, analytics, and governance capabilities.
• Establish the ePMO as a practical center of excellence with standards, tools, and coaching.
• Define roles, decision rights, and escalation paths across hub-and-spoke model.

Skills

Enterprise PMO

Leadership

Stakeholder management

Governance

Change management

Job description

We are actively seeking a talented VP, Head of Enterprise Program Management Office (ePMO) to join Pacific Life in Newport Beach, CA reporting to the EVP, Chief Financial Officer. In this role, you will build and lead a new enterprise center of excellence that strengthens how Pacific Life prioritizes, governs, and delivers its most important strategic initiatives.

This leader will establish enterprise-wide portfolio and program management standards through a hub-and-spoke model, serving as the enterprise Hub while enabling divisions and functions to retain the agility and subject-matter expertise needed to execute within their businesses. The division and function PMOs will maintain direct alignment to their respective leaders and operate as the spokes of the model, with a dotted-line relationship to the ePMO.

Success will require an enterprise mindset, strong executive influence, practical transformation leadership, and the ability to create commitment across a highly matrixed international organization. This leader will build the ePMO team, operating model, governance forums, capabilities, and performance discipline needed to translate strategy into measurable outcomes.

How you'll help move us forward:

• Build the Enterprise PMO and Center of Excellence
• Create the ePMO vision, mandate, operating model, roadmap, and service portfolio in alignment with enterprise strategy and business priorities.
• Build and lead a high-performing team with the portfolio, program, change, analytics, and governance capabilities required to support enterprise priorities.
• Establish the ePMO as a practical center of excellence that provides standards, tools, expertise, coaching, and decision support without adding unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Define clear roles, decision rights, engagement models, and escalation paths across the hub-and-spoke model, with direct accountability for executing the enterprise Hub and enabling effective coordination with division/function PMOs.

Enterprise Portfolio Governance and Prioritization

• Establish an enterprise-wide portfolio governance framework that connects strategic priorities, investments, capacity, risks, dependencies, and expected business value.
• Partner with executive leaders to evaluate, sequence, and prioritize initiatives using transparent criteria and enterprise-level tradeoffs.
• Design and facilitate executive governance forums that enable timely decisions, resolve cross-enterprise constraints, and maintain accountability for outcomes.
• Create a consistent approach for initiative intake, business cases, stage gates, health assessments, benefits realization, and closure.

Standards, Methods, and Delivery Excellence

• Develop scalable standards, playbooks, templates, and minimum controls for portfolio, program, and project management across the organization.
• Establish common definitions and reporting practices for scope, milestones, financials, resources, risks, issues, dependencies, and value realization.
• Implement an appropriate mix of agile, hybrid, and traditional delivery disciplines based on initiative complexity, risk, and business need.
• Lead independent health reviews and recovery planning for strategically important initiatives when greater enterprise support or intervention is needed.

Matrixed Global Leadership and Partnership

• Create a strong ePMO community across the enterprise by leading the Hub and connecting division/functional PMOs as spokes through a consistent dotted-line model.
• Influence senior leaders without direct authority and build shared ownership for enterprise standards, portfolio transparency, and delivery outcomes.
• Balance enterprise consistency with regional, regulatory, business, and functional requirements across a complex global financial services environment.
• Partner closely with Strategy, Finance, Risk, Technology, Data, Operations, People Experience, and business leaders to connect strategic intent to execution.
• Partner with People Experience to encourage ways of working and leadership practices that enable Execution Excellence across the enterprise.

Insights, Technology, and Continuous Improvement

• Develop executive dashboards and concise portfolio narratives that surface progress, decisions, interdependencies, risk, capacity, and value.
• Use portfolio data and scenario analysis to improve investment decisions, resource allocation, and sequencing of enterprise work.
• Advance the use of modern project portfolio management platforms, workflow automation, data, and AI-enabled tools to improve visibility and execution.
• Build enterprise program management capability through assessment, learning, communities of practice, coaching, and talent development.

The experience you bring:

• 15+ years of progressive leadership experience in enterprise portfolio management, transformation, strategy execution, program management, or a related discipline, including significant experience leading complex enterprise initiatives.
• Demonstrated success building,