Achieve
Community Footprint · 2026

Inside the Achieve community: 35,000+ senior HR and People leaders.

A high-level view of who our community is: the leaders, the levels, the industries, the company sizes, and the places they lead from. Built for the partners and sponsors who want to reach them.

Build What's Next. Lead the Shift.
35K+
Qualified senior HR and People practitioners
37%
Sit at Director level and above
110+
Countries represented worldwide
All 50
US states represented
01 / LEADERSHIP MIX

Who leads in this community

This is a senior room. It is anchored by decision makers and senior leaders, with a deep bench of practitioners and emerging leaders coming up behind them.

3,400+
Decision makers you can reach directly
Including 1,400+ CPOs, CHROs, and Chief People Officers setting People strategy at their organizations.

Seniority mix

Share of the community by level

Executive & VPC-suite, SVP, VP, Head of People
13.5%
DirectorDirector and Senior Director
23.9%
ManagerManager and Senior Manager
24.2%
Practitioner & SpecialistHRBP, generalist, specialist
38.4%

Executive & VP and Director levels together make up 37% of the community.

Decision-making tiers

How the community qualifies against fit

Practitioners & Emerging Leaders (Tier 3)68.7%
Senior Leaders (Tier 2)21.9%7,827
Decision Makers (Tier 1)9.4%3,368

11,000+ senior leaders and decision makers (Tiers 1 and 2), roughly one in three of the community.

02 / TITLES AND FUNCTIONS

The titles and specialisms in the room

A People-function community first, with meaningful depth in Learning and Development, Total Rewards, Culture, DEI, and Talent.

Director-level People leaders and VPs of People and HR together make up nearly one in three of the community by title.

Roles, by title family

Title variants grouped into core People and HR roles

People & HR Specialist / Professional
31.7%
Director of People & HR (all functions)
23.7%
People & HR Manager (Senior & line)
23.6%
VP of People & HR
5.0%
HR Business Partner
4.6%
People & HR Generalist
2.5%
Chief People Officer & CHRO
2.3%
Head of People & HR
1.6%
SVP / EVP of People & HR
0.8%
Chief of Staff
0.2%

Title variants (for example Director of HR, People, Talent, and L&D) are grouped into their core role.

Functional focus

Where leaders concentrate their work

General HR / People
73.7%
Learning & Development
7.1%
Total Rewards / Comp & Benefits
3.8%
Culture
2.7%
DEI / Belonging
2.4%
Employee Experience / Engagement
2.4%
Talent Management
2.3%
Operations
1.9%
People Ops / People & Culture
1.8%
Org Effectiveness / OD
1.8%

General HR and People spans generalist and broad-mandate leadership roles.

03 / PERSONAS

The people you would be reaching

Six core personas define the community, from the People Chief setting strategy to the generalists and specialists who run it day to day.

4.0%
The People Chief
C-suite People leaders: CPO, CHRO, Chief People & Culture Officer
1,414 leaders you can reach
9.5%
The VP & Head of People
VP, SVP, EVP, and Head of People / HR
3,407 leaders you can reach
23.9%
The People & HR Director
Director and Senior Director across HR and People functions
8,547 leaders you can reach
24.2%
The People & HR Manager
Manager and Senior Manager, the operational core
Share of community
5.3%
The HR Business Partner
Embedded strategic partners to the business
Share of community
28.5%
The People Generalist & Specialist
Generalists, coordinators, and individual contributors
Share of community
Specialist audiences within the community
7.1%Learning & Development
5.1%Culture, EX & Engagement
3.8%Total Rewards, Comp & Benefits
2.4%DEI & Belonging
2.3%Talent Management
1.8%Org Effectiveness & OD
04 / INDUSTRIES

The industries they come from

A broad, diversified base led by technology, healthcare, and professional services. No single sector dominates, which keeps the community relevant across the market.

Top industries

Share of leaders with a known industry

Software & Technology
16.1%
Healthcare & Wellness
11.2%
Professional & Business Services
10.0%
Financial Services
7.4%
Education
7.3%
Manufacturing
7.2%
Government & Public Sector
6.2%
Nonprofit & Civic
5.2%
Consumer Goods & Retail
4.9%
Construction & Real Estate
4.1%

Based on the 76% of the community with a verified industry. Percentages shown are of known-industry records.

05 / COMPANY SIZE

The organizations they lead

Weighted toward enterprise and upper mid-market employers, with healthy representation across small and mid-sized organizations.

Company size band

Share of leaders with a known company size

1-10
2.8%
11-50
6.2%
51-200
16.2%
201-500
12.1%
501-1,000
8.6%
1,001-5,000
19.4%
5,001-10,000
7.7%
10,001+
27.0%

Based on the 73% of the community with a verified company size.

Market segment

SMB, Mid-Market, and Enterprise split

SMB25.2%
Mid-Market20.8%
Enterprise54.0%

SMB: 1 to 200. Mid-Market: 201 to 1,000. Enterprise: 1,001+. Of leaders with a known size.

06 / GEOGRAPHY

Where they lead from

A US-anchored community with a real international footprint. Concentrated in the major metros where mid-market and enterprise talent decisions get made.

110+
Countries represented
All 50
US states represented
83%
US-based (of known geography)
17%
International reach

Top US states

Share of US-based leaders

California
14.7%
Texas
8.4%
New York
7.4%
Florida
5.3%
Illinois
4.7%
Massachusetts
3.6%
Pennsylvania
3.2%
Colorado
3.2%
Ohio
3.1%
Georgia
3.0%
North Carolina
2.9%
Virginia
2.8%

Of US leaders with a known state.

Top metros

Ranked by number of leaders

1New York
2Chicago
3Los Angeles
4Boston
5San Francisco
6Atlanta
7Toronto
8Austin
9Washington
10Houston
11Denver
12Dallas

Leading countries

Share of leaders with a known country

United States
82.6%
Canada
5.1%
India
1.5%
United Kingdom
1.2%
South Africa
0.8%
Australia
0.8%
Nigeria
0.5%
Mexico
0.4%
Philippines
0.4%
Germany
0.3%

Of leaders with a known country, spanning 110+ nations worldwide.

How this was built

This report reflects the qualified practitioner community: more than 35,000 senior HR and People leaders drawn from the full Achieve contact database. It excludes technology vendors, staffing and recruiting contacts, and roles outside the People function, so the figures represent the audience a partner would actually reach.

Every contact is classified by a consistent method: job titles are normalized, grouped into role families, and tiered by seniority and function; company sizes are mapped to standard bands; and industries are mapped to a fixed set of 20 categories. Geography is normalized from raw location fields.

Where a field is not verified, it is marked Unknown rather than guessed. Industry is known for 76% of the community and company size for 73%; percentages in those sections are shown against the known base and labeled accordingly.

Snapshot generated July 2026. Achieve, d/b/a ACHIEVEE INC. achievenet.org