Global customer experience company Material has named Sharon Kamra as its first chief people officer. Kamra assumes responsibility for Material’s overall people experience and operations, including recruiting, compensation, benefits, and learning and development. Kamra will report to chief operating officer Laurie MacLaren.

With Kamra’s arrival, Material has renamed its talent team as the People Team. COO MacLaren said, “It signals our commitment to and focus on supporting the whole person and their value beyond the skills they bring to their job.” She continued, “Sharon’s track record shaping values-driven workplaces combined with Material’s strength in continuous learning and actionable human insights are powerful ingredients for delivering a highly relevant and differentiated employment proposition.” 

Kamra built her career at Sapient and its iterations including SapientNitro, SapientRazorfish, and Publicis Sapient as chief people officer, leading recruiting and workforce planning, among other roles. During her tenure, the company grew from 5,000 to 20,000 employees with Kamra focused on creating a nurturing culture and people experience to more powerfully enable its rapid growth. On her watch, turnover rates were consistently lower than the industry average. She started her career at Ultradata as a project manager and went on to hold client-facing roles in the customer experience space for a decade before transitioning into the people function.

Kamra will be based in Chicago. Material is a global strategy, insights, design, and technology partner to companies striving for true customer centricity and ongoing relevance in a digital first, customer-led world. By leveraging proprietary, science-based tools that enable human understanding, Material informs and creates customer-centric business models and experiences plus deploy measurement systems--to build transformational relationships between businesses and the people they serve