How AI Is Reshaping the C-Suite—and the CHRO Role

Why it matters: The AI disruption conversation has focused almost entirely on entry-level workers. A new HBR analysis by Russell Reynolds Chief Science Officer Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argues the C-suite is being restructured just as profoundly—and CHROs are at the center of it.

Deep dive: Professor Chamorro-Premuzic found that AI affects senior leadership in three ways.

1. It forces strategic decisions about where to automate, how to govern data, and how to capture value from AI rather than just deploy it.

2. It commoditizes expertise. When models can analyze scenarios faster than any individual, the differentiating qualities shift to empathy, curiosity, and learning agility.

3. It changes the organization itself—flattening hierarchies, expanding spans of control, and enabling real-time decision-making.

The C-suite is consolidating around technology: Russell Reynolds analyzed more than 5,000 open executive roles from 2019 to 2025. Chief information and technology officers, chief transformation officers, and chief digital and information officers all surged. Chief digital officers and chief diversity officers declined sharply—the former absorbed into broader tech leadership, the latter a casualty of shifting political and corporate priorities.

What's trending for the CHRO role:

• Up: Workforce analytics, AI-enabled talent assessment, skills architecture, human-AI collaboration design, and ethical AI governance.

• Down: HR operations, compliance, traditional performance management, and training delivery— increasingly automated or outsourced.

The CHRO is moving from overseeing people to human-machine systems, according to Chamorro-Premuzic. The function once called “People and Culture" could reasonably be renamed “People, Machines, and Culture.”

What comes next:

• Chamorro-Premuzic predicts a thinner, more hybrid C-suite where executives function as curators of machine-generated insight rather than decision-owners.

• New titles on the horizon include Chief Augmentation Officer, Chief AI Governance Officer, Chief Resilience Officer—and most notably—Chief Humanist Officer, tasked with preserving meaning and culture as organizations optimize for efficiency.

C-Suite and Board Roles Are Being Reshaped Around AI: AI is not just changing the bottom of the org chart; it’s also reshaping the top. Senior leadership, executive, C-suite, and board roles are being redefined just as profoundly as entry-level roles.