Associate Vice President of Program & Project Management

About the Role

Employment Type: Full time

Become a part of our caring community and help us put health first. The AVP of Program & Project Management will design and lead an evolved program and project management (PM) function for Humana. This function will improve project outcomes across the enterprise by maturing PM skills, tools, and processes. This role will report to the VP of Strategy and Transformation in IT and be responsible both for leading an enterprise Center of Excellence (CoE) as well as managing a PM organization within IT.

Center of Excellence (CoE) Responsibilities

The CoE, while not responsible for direct delivery of projects, is responsible for ensuring business units have high-quality project management practices and staffing. The AVP will:

• Design enterprise-wide PM role definitions and standards.
• Design intake and portfolio reviews.
• Oversee the roll-out of a centralized initiative-tracking platform.

Key internal partners in this work are senior leaders and executives, portfolio management teams, and our Agile center of excellence.

IT PM Organization Responsibilities

The AVP will also lead a centralized IT PM function, overseeing an organization of ~200 IT project and program managers. In that role, the AVP will:

• Ensure IT initiatives are managed against their stated outcomes.
• Drive IT ‘top-of-house’ investment governance with executive leadership.
• Guide organizational change related to improving project management in IT.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive initiative review and governance across Humana. Standardize review timelines and processes, formalize how initiatives are valued and tracked, and oversee adoption.
• Work with business leadership to ensure their project managers are equipped to drive initiatives to outcomes, and that their PM teams are meeting enterprise standards.
• Working with HR, design standards for skills, talent, and experience required for both full-time and contracted PM roles across the enterprise. Drive guidance for training, career pathing, and role reviews in line with those standards.
• Plan enterprise-wide adoption of Jira Align as an initiative-tracking platform.
• Staff, develop, and lead a centralized PM function within IT, driving initiative governance for IT and enabling IT PMs in line with enterprise standards.

Use your skills to make an impact.

Required Qualifications

Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in economics, business management, or related field; or equivalent experience.
• 10 years of experience in initiative, program, or project management, with at least 5 years in a leadership role working with executives and managing teams.
• Experience working within a large matrixed organization, as well as with IT, of leading strategic initiatives that deliver valuable outcomes.

Skills

• Understanding of technical domains (e.g., digital, automation, AI, software development lifecycle, security, infrastructure) related to IT projects.
• Proficiency in related software and tools (e.g., Jira Align, Azure DevOps, ServiceNow PPM, Anaplan, or similar).
• Strategic thinking, problem-solving, and familiarity with analysis frameworks and approaches (e.g., root-cause analysis, hypothesis-based thinking).
• Proficiency in Waterfall project management and Agile methodologies.
• Executive stakeholder engagement, cross-enterprise collaboration, presentation, and communication.
• Financial acumen, including initiative cost and value tracking.
• Readiness to work East Coast hours and in an environment of transformation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Project Management Professional (PMP), Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), or comparable Waterfall/Agile certifications.
• Master’s or other post-secondary degree.
• Health insurance, provider, and/or