Chief Talent Officer

About Proliferate Inc.

Proliferate Inc. is a Canadian contract manufacturer of clean cosmetic and personal care products, headquartered in Morden, Manitoba. The company specializes in natural and certified organic formulations, working with purpose‑driven beauty brands to create safer, healthier alternatives to conventional cosmetics. From formulation and production through to dispensing and packaging, Proliferate partners with entrepreneurs and established brands alike to bring high‑quality clean beauty products to market in Canada and globally.

Founded in the philosophy of authentic, natural formulation, Proliferate has earned a strong reputation for uncompromising product quality, responsiveness to clients, and a collaborative, people‑first approach to manufacturing. The company is known for offering some of the lowest minimum order quantities in the industry—making clean beauty accessible to emerging brands—while maintaining rigorous production standards and consistency at scale.

At the heart of Proliferate’s success is its culture. The organization has built a genuinely inclusive, community‑anchored workplace that provides meaningful employment to people from diverse backgrounds. This people‑centered philosophy is not incidental to the business—it is core to how Proliferate operates and grows.

About The Opportunity

Proliferate does not yet have a formal HR or talent function. What it has instead is something many larger organizations struggle to build: an authentic, people‑centered culture where employees are known by name, respected as whole people, and trusted to do meaningful work in a genuinely safe environment.

As the company enters its most significant growth phase to date—targeting approximately three‑fold growth within the next 12 months—the need to intentionally preserve and strengthen this culture while building the talent infrastructure to support scale has become a critical priority. The Chief Talent Officer will play a foundational role in this next chapter, serving as the architect of Proliferate’s people strategy and ensuring that growth is achieved without losing what makes the organization exceptional.

About The Chief Talent Officer Position

The Chief Talent Officer (CTO) will be a foundational member of Proliferate’s leadership team, responsible for building the company’s talent and people function from the ground up. Reporting directly to the Owners, the CTO will design and implement the people systems, hiring frameworks, onboarding practices, and leadership development pathways required to support rapid growth in a disciplined, values‑aligned, and culturally coherent way.

This is a true founding role, offering direct strategic influence on the future of the organization. The CTO will act as both architect and steward of Proliferate’s people strategy—ensuring that as the company scales, its culture, values, and commitment to people remain a defining strength rather than a casualty of growth.

Operating in close partnership with ownership and the executive team, the CTO will translate Proliferate’s people‑first philosophy into scalable practices that attract, develop, and retain talent at every level of the organization. This role is ideal for a senior talent leader who thrives in build environments and sees culture, capability, and performance as inseparable.

Key Leadership Accountabilities

Leadership

• Serve as a core member of the leadership team and a trusted operational partner to the Owners during a period of rapid growth and transformation.
• Provide visible, values‑driven leadership across the organization, modelling Proliferate’s commitment to respect, safety, accountability, and people‑first culture.
• Foster strong communication and alignment across functions, ensuring teams remain engaged, informed, and focused as the organization scales.

Human Resources Management

• Design and lead Proliferate’s end‑to‑end talent acquisition strategy to support rapid growth, spanning production and hourly roles, logistics, operations leadership, and senior leadership roles.
• Build the company’s foundational people infrastructure, including employment policies, onboarding frameworks, performance management practices, compensation structures, and total rewards—right‑sized for a scaling manufacturing organization.
• Serve as the primary steward of Proliferate’s culture, ensuring that hiring, onboarding, leadership practices, and people systems consistently reinforce the company’s values: Passion, Engage and Enroll, Decisiveness, Execution, and Compassionate Connection.
• Partner closely with the Owners and the Chief Operating Officer on organizational design, defining roles, reporting structures, leadership capacity, and team models that will scale with the business.
• Develop and implement a sustainable talent pipeline strategy for production staffing, including labour market analysis, community and workforce partnerships, and retention initiatives.
• Ensure full compliance with Canadian employment standards, occupational health and safety requirements, and all applicable workplace legislation.
• Establish HR metrics, reporting, and people analytics to enable data‑informed talent and workforce decisions.
• Champion and strengthen Proliferate’s employer brand, ensuring its authentic, people‑first culture is clearly articulated and compelling across all talent markets.

Education And Experience Requirements

The ideal candidate is a senior talent leader with a proven track record of building HR and people functions from the ground up in growth environments. They combine strong technical grounding in talent acquisition, employment practices, and compliance with a deeply held belief that culture is created through daily leadership and lived experience. This individual is comfortable operating in ambiguity, earns trust across all levels of the organization, and is energized by the opportunity to scale a values‑driven workforce without losing the human qualities that make the organization distinct.

Experience

• 8–15 years of progressive leadership experience in human resources, talent, or people functions, including time spent building or formalizing HR capabilities in a growth or greenfield environment.
• Demonstrated track record designing and implementing HR and talent functions to support scaling organizations—ideally within manufacturing, CPG, beauty, food production, or similarly complex operating environments.
• Deep expertise in talent acquisition across a broad workforce mix, including production and hourly roles as well as professional, managerial, and senior leadership positions.
• Strong grounding in Canadian employment standards, occupational health and safety requirements, and provincial HR compliance; experience within Manitoba is an asset.
• Experience serving as the first or founding HR leader in an organization is strongly preferred, with demonstrated success translating values into scalable people practices.

Leadership and Cultural Fit

• Holds a deeply held belief that culture is the business—shaped daily through people’s lived experience, not programs or statements.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity, with the ability to design and implement systems while simultaneously running them in a fast‑moving environment.
• A natural relationship‑builder who earns trust quickly and credibly across all levels of the organization, from the production floor to ownership and senior leadership.
• Demonstrates high personal integrity and sound judgment, with the discretion and professionalism required to handle sensitive people matters.
• Energized by growth, resilient in the face of complexity, and genuinely committed to building environments where people can do their best work.

If you wish to explore this opportunity, please contact or submit your resume to:

LILLIAN WONG, Director, Executive Search and Recruitment Email: ***email_hidden***