Your personal board of vetted CPOs, CHROs, and VPs of People. Bring your hardest problem to your monthly board meeting. Leave with a plan.
Request a Seat Explore the Seat →The problem
Every CPO we talk to is being asked to rebuild something — with no precedent and no margin for getting it wrong. Some of them are figuring it out. Most of them are guessing. The difference is usually who they have access to.
What we're hearing
"A lot of the stuff I need collaboration on is super confidential. I'm not going to put out there, ‘hey, we're thinking about transitioning this executive.’ I save that for the people in my network that I trust."
CPO · 1,500 employees, post-IPO"The reason I left all the ones I've ever joined is because I felt like I was teaching everybody versus actually learning. When you're at the top you're really lonely, and you miss learning from great HR talent."
CHRO · PE-backed, global"Nobody knows what this function looks like in two years. I don't want to be in a room commiserating about that. I want to be in the room figuring it out."
CPO · 2,000 employees, PE-backedThe seat
Not more. Better. Six things, each built for the problems you can't take anywhere else.
Candid peer help on the stuff you can't put in writing.
The same 5–6 vetted peers, every month.
You'll change jobs again. This is how the next one finds you.
Off-the-record rooms with the people who actually have the answer.
You're never posting into the void.
Dinners and a yearly flagship with people in the same seat.
The board meeting
75 minutes a month with the same small group, facilitated by MPL. Some months the whole board works one specific problem. Some months the focus is quarterly planning. Some months everyone gets time in the hot seat. And some months it's about you, not the function.
Same group every month, so you never re-explain your company.
Restructures where the politics are harder than the math. An AI mandate from a CEO who hasn't defined the outcome. A board that wants a metric you don't believe in. Your own next move. If it's keeping you up, it belongs in the meeting.
We don't throw people together. Every group is deliberately built from your onboarding data:
Hard constraint: never a direct competitor in your group.
The system
Most peer groups die the same way. One person talks for forty minutes, three people go off camera, and nobody comes back. We built against that.
Why this one is different
We talked to thirty People leaders before we built this. Almost none of them wanted another community. Here's what they told us, and what we did about it.
"It got too big and too noisy."
Capped at 350 seats. Permanently.
"I ended up answering junior people's questions."
Top People seat only, 200+ employees, every applicant interviewed.
"It started strong and died by month six."
Formats that rotate every quarter, a facilitator in every session, a fixed date, and a survey after every meeting.
"I couldn't say the things I actually needed help with."
NDA at onboarding. You name who can't be in your room. Nothing is recorded.
"Every session was a vendor pitch."
No vendors, no sponsors, no fractionals selling into the room. Ever.
"I never knew what I was paying for."
Full refund after your first board meeting. Details below.
If there's a reason you quit that isn't on this list, tell the MPL Team in the interview. We'd rather hear it now.
Built by MPL
The Board isn't a startup community. It's the private layer on top of Modern People Leader — People leaders already tell us the things they can't say anywhere else. The Board is the room we built for those conversations.
Podcast conversations with People leaders
Podcast listeners
Newsletter subscribers
LinkedIn followers
A note from Daniel
Hey there,
Over the last five years we'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."
Nothing's off the table: layoffs, comp, AI rollouts, your CEO, your own next role. Everything under NDA. Every member interviewed by me personally.
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
We interview every applicant personally. Otherwise this becomes another noisy HR community — and there are plenty of those.
Short application: role, company size, LinkedIn, and why you want in.
If you look like a fit on paper, the MPL Team gets on a call with you. Not a pitch — a conversation about what you're navigating and what you'd bring to the room. Invitations usually go out within days.
You tell us which companies are a problem for you. Some members have a long list. Some say it doesn't matter. Either answer is fine — we just need it before we build your group.
NDA signed. Your priorities and challenges captured — they power your board matching and everything else.
You're placed in a group of 5–6 matched on your priorities and your calendar. No 90-day wait.
Interested?
This isn't the right room if…
You're a consultant, a fractional People leader, an HR tech vendor, an agency, or a recruiter. We keep the room to people in the seat — full-time, in-house, carrying the decisions. It's how the candor stays real.
Attend your onboarding call and your first board meeting. If it's not for you, full refund within 45 days. No hoops.
Questions about The Board
Annual dues, discussed in the interview. Some members expense the seat against an L&D or executive-development budget — we'll give you a one-page breakdown of what the seat returns, written for whoever has to approve it. Plenty of members fund it themselves, on purpose: the seat is yours, not your company's, and it follows you to your next role.
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.