Chief Of Staff And Strategic PMO - S And T
EY · Bengaluru
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Chief of Staff & Strategic PMO
The opportunity
As part of the GDS Strategy & Transformation function, the Chief of Staff & Strategic PMO will work closely with the GDS Strategy & Transformation Leader to translate strategic priorities into a focused and executable leadership agenda. The role will provide structured oversight across strategic priorities, transformation initiatives, leadership commitments and critical decision points, ensuring that the S&T Leader has the information, insights and follow-through required to drive the agenda effectively.
The role
We are looking for a seasoned Associate Director with 15+ years of experience who can operate at the intersection of strategy, executive leadership and execution. This is a senior individual contributor role with no direct people-management responsibility.
The individual will act as a force multiplier to the GDS Strategy & Transformation Leader by bringing structure to complex priorities, anticipating leadership requirements, connecting interdependent initiatives and maintaining visibility of critical decisions, actions and risks. The successful candidate will be expected to understand business issues, challenge and synthesize information, and translate multiple workstreams into a coherent leadership view.
Your key responsibilities
- Partner closely with the GDS Strategy & Transformation Leader to structure and advance the function’s strategic and transformation agenda.
- Serve as a trusted thought partner to the GDS Strategy & Transformation Leader, helping shape leadership narratives, challenge assumptions, evaluate strategic alternatives and prepare for critical leadership discussions and decisions.
- Translate leadership priorities into clear workstreams, milestones, accountabilities, decision points and follow-through mechanisms.
- Maintain an integrated view of strategic priorities, leadership commitments and matters requiring intervention or decision.
- Anticipate upcoming leadership requirements and coordinate the analysis, materials and stakeholder inputs required for effective decision-making.
- Prepare executive briefings, leadership presentations, talking points, meeting materials and decision papers.
- Synthesize complex information from multiple teams into concise, leadership-ready narratives that highlight implications, risks, trade-offs, decisions required and next steps.
- Support preparation for critical leadership forums, ensuring consistency of storyline, facts and messages.
- Design and maintain the operating rhythm for the Strategy & Transformation function, including leadership reviews, portfolio and priority discussions, strategic planning cycles and executive decision forums. Define the purpose, cadence, participants, inputs and expected outcomes for each forum; coordinate agendas and pre-reads; ensure decisions, actions and accountabilities are clearly captured; and monitor follow-through, interdependencies and matters requiring escalation.
- Maintain an integrated portfolio view of strategic and transformation initiatives, including outcomes, milestones, dependencies, risks and decisions.
- Monitor execution against agreed priorities and proactively surface exceptions or areas requiring leadership attention.
- Drive disciplined closure of leadership actions and commitments across stakeholders.
- Identify dependencies and potential conflicts across workstreams and facilitate resolution with the relevant stakeholders.
- Develop concise dashboards and executive reporting focused on outcomes, exceptions and decisions rather than activity tracking.
- Assess whether strategic initiatives are progressing toward intended outcomes and surface emerging execution risks or opportunities.
- Act as a central coordination point across Strategy & Transformation and key GDS stakeholders, connecting teams where priorities are interdependent.
- Build trusted relationships with senior leaders across Service Lines and enabling functions and facilitate alignment where ownership spans multiple teams.
Skills and attributes for success
- Strong strategic and commercial judgement, with the ability to understand enterprise-level priorities and their implications.
- Excellent executive communication and advanced PowerPoint skills, including the ability to convert complex issues into crisp leadership narratives.
- Strong analytical capability and proficiency in Excel, with the ability to interrogate data and identify decision-relevant insights.
- Exceptional ability to connect the dots across multiple priorities, stakeholders and workstreams.
- Ability to distinguish matters requiring leadership attention from those that can be resolved at the working level.
- Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, particularly when working with senior leaders without direct authority.
- Ability to challenge constructively while maintaining trusted relationships.
- High degree of ownership, judgement, discretion and confidentiality.
- Strong organizational discipline and ability to manage competing priorities without losing sight of strategic outcomes.
- Comfort working through ambiguity and changing leadership priorities with limited supervision.
To qualify for the role, you must have
- A minimum of 15 years of relevant professional experience, with significant exposure to strategy, transformation, business management, enterprise PMO, consulting, operations or leadership-office roles.
- An MBA or equivalent postgraduate qualification in business, strategy, finance, management or a related discipline
- Demonstrated experience working directly with or supporting senior executives and leadership teams.
- Experience coordinating complex, cross-functional strategic or transformation agendas.
- Strong experience developing executive presentations, leadership briefings and decision materials.
- Proven ability to drive outcomes through influence across stakeholders without direct reporting relationships.
- Strong analytical capabilities and advanced proficiency in PowerPoint and Excel.
- Experience overseeing governance, leadership actions, risks, dependencies and decision points across a portfolio of priorities.
- Demonstrated ability to move seamlessly between strategic thinking and execution discipline.
Ideally, you will also have
- Prior experience in a Chief of Staff, Strategy, Transformation, CEO/CXO Office, Business Management or enterprise PMO role.
- Experience within a large global professional services, consulting, shared services or global delivery organization.
- Exposure to enterprise transformation, operating-model change, workforce strategy, technology transformation or large-scale strategic programs.
- Experience working across multiple geographies, functions and senior stakeholder groups.
What we look for
A seasoned professional who combines the strategic perspective of a Chief of Staff with the execution discipline of a strong PMO leader. The individual should be comfortable operating behind the scenes while having sufficient executive presence to engage senior stakeholders directly. They should be capable of moving from a leadership discussion to a structured set of priorities, from fragmented updates to an enterprise view, and from a complex issue to a clear articulation of what matters, what requires a decision and what needs to happen next.
What working at EY GDS offers
EY Global Delivery Services (GDS) is a dynamic global delivery network that works with EY teams across service lines, geographies and sectors. The role offers direct exposure to strategic leadership priorities and the opportunity to strengthen the translation of enterprise strategy into coordinated execution.
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