Application only · Capped at 250 seats

If you're a People leader…
Stop making $50M people decisions alone.

Your personal board of ~5 vetted CPOs, CHROs, and VPs of People. Bring your hardest problem to your monthly board meeting. Leave with a plan.

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The Board · 250 seatsFounding cohort open
Seat filled Founding seat remaining Future seat

The problem

The People seat is the loneliest seat in the company.

Lonely decisions are expensive. Stop paying that tax.

What People leaders tell us

★★★★★

"Every off-the-record dinner MPL has hosted, I've left with something I couldn't have gotten anywhere else."

CHRO · Enterprise SaaS
★★★★★

"I have a hundred Slack communities. I have zero rooms where I can say the quiet part."

CPO · Healthcare
★★★★★

"The hardest calls of my career, I made alone. I'd have paid anything not to."

VP of People · Fintech

Who's inside

Board members lead People at companies you know.

We can't show you who's inside — or what's discussed. That's the point. What we can show you is the shape of the room.

250–5,000

Employees per member company

100k+

Employees collectively led

0

Direct competitors seated together

250

Seats. Ever.

The seat

What a seat actually gets you.

Less programming, higher quality. If one conversation in a year saves you from botching a layoff or an AI rollout, the seat has paid for itself.

Your monthly board meeting

A standing group of 5–6 peers, matched on your priorities and calendar. The hot seat rotates monthly: 20–30 minutes of questions on your hardest problem, 60 minutes solving it.

The Boardroom

Real-time peer help on the hard stuff, any day of the week. "I have to lay off 20 people this week and I've never done it — how do I handle it?" Answers from people who've done it, within hours.

The Template Vault

HR runs on artifacts: comp bands, layoff comms plans, AI policies, performance frameworks, RTO memos. Real templates from real companies, shared under NDA. Every member contributes one at onboarding — full on day one.

The role pipeline

We plug board members into the most desired open CPO roles — and actual board seats — we hear about across the MPL network. The seat beyond this seat — no other HR community can credibly offer it.

Expert sessions

Monthly, driven by one poll question. We find the expert solving your biggest challenge — often from 300+ former MPL guests — off the record, with office hours after.

A direct line to Daniel

1:1 at onboarding and annually, plus bookable office hours whenever you actually have a problem — and proactive intros based on your priorities.

Flagship + dinners

One flagship gathering per year plus member dinners in key cities, attached to MPL Live.

Two invitations a year

Hand two peers a skip-the-waitlist invitation straight to the interview. A successful invitation earns a renewal discount.

A note from Daniel

Hey there,

Over the last five years I've had off-the-record conversations with hundreds of People leaders — 300+ on The Modern People Leader Podcast alone. And one thing comes up in almost every single one: the People seat is the loneliest seat in the company.

Your team can't see what you see. And the moments that define your career — the layoff, the restructure, the AI mandate, the comp overhaul — arrive without warning, and you're expected to get them right the first time. Alone.

The real risk isn't one bad decision. It's spending years without anyone who challenges you, and waking up to find you've drifted into "good enough."

That's why we built the MPL Board. We hand-pick 5–6 People leaders at your stage — never a direct competitor — and put you in a board meeting every month. It's your personal board of directors for the hardest job in the company.

Nothing's off the table: layoffs, comp, AI rollouts, your CEO, your own next role. Everything under NDA. Every member interviewed by me personally. The Board is capped at 250 seats, ever.

You've spent your career earning a seat at the table. This is where you already have one.

Daniel

Co-host of the Modern People Leader podcast · Co-founder, MPL

Strict vetting

The Board works because every seat is earned.

We interview every applicant personally. Otherwise this becomes another noisy HR community — and there are plenty of those.

Request a seat

Short application: role, company size, LinkedIn, and why you want in.

The interview

If you look like a fit on paper, Daniel gets on a call with you. Not a pitch — a conversation about what you're navigating and what you'd bring to the room.

The competitor check

You list your direct competitors. We never seat competitors in the same room — it's part of why members can actually talk.

Review + invitation

Every application is reviewed and approved personally. Invitations usually go out within days of the interview.

Onboarding

NDA signed. One template contributed to the Vault. Your priorities captured — they power your matches.

Your first board meeting — within 3 weeks

You're placed in a group of 5–6 matched on your priorities and your calendar. No 90-day wait.

Interested?

Here's who gets a seat.

  • CPO, CHRO, or VP of People — the top People role at your company
  • Company of 250–5,000 employees
  • Willing to sign the Board NDA
  • Not a direct competitor of members in your group — we check, you don't have to
Request a Seat

The First Meeting Guarantee

Attend your first board meeting. If it's not for you, full refund.

Attend your onboarding call and your first board meeting. If it's not for you, full refund within 45 days. No hoops.

Fair questions

The FAQs.

A private, application-only board of CPOs, CHROs, and VPs of People at 250–5,000-person companies — capped at 250 seats. The core is your monthly board meeting: a standing group of 5–6 vetted peers working through your hardest problems.

Annual dues, discussed in the interview — most members expense the seat against an L&D or executive-development budget. We've priced it so one conversation covers the seat many times over.

Every member signs an NDA at onboarding, and every expert session is off the record. What's said in the Boardroom stays in the Boardroom.

The working rhythm is virtual on purpose — the best five peers for your exact problem are almost never in your city. In person still matters: one flagship gathering a year plus member dinners in key cities.

See all FAQs →

Think you've earned a seat?

Let's find out.

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