Dr. Sydney M. Savion

Sydney M. Savion, Ed.D. is Vanderbilt University’s first Vice Chancellor for People, Culture and Belonging. Appointed in 2024, she leads the university’s enterprise workforce strategy in service of Vanderbilt’s ambition to define and be the great university of the 21st century.

A behavioral scientist and workforce strategist, Savion treats human capital as enterprise infrastructure: measurable, predictive, and central to institutional performance. Her portfolio spans organizational design, talent and capability development, total rewards, employee relations, health and wellbeing, belonging, workforce intelligence, and the human implications of artificial intelligence. She brings a distinctive point of view to the work: empathy, applied with rigor, is not sentiment; it is a leadership method.

Savion’s scholarship and practice focus on how people and organizations move through transition, particularly when the conditions of work change. That perspective shapes her approach to the AI era, which she frames not simply as a technology shift, but as a human transition event with implications for trust, capability, governance, and institutional risk.

Her career spans the military, technology, aviation, health care, and consulting. Before joining Vanderbilt, Savion held executive workforce, learning, and talent roles at Google, Cityblock Health, Air New Zealand, Dell Technologies, and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Savion is the author of Camouflage to Pinstripes: Learning to Thrive in a Civilian Culture, a book on the psychological transition veterans navigate as they rebuild identity after military service. She retired as an aerospace officer from the United States Air Force after more than two decades of service. She was named Chief Learning Officer of the Year by Human Capital Media in 2020 and received a Silver Stevie Award for Chief Human Resources Officer of the Year in 2025. She serves on the board of directors of United Way of Greater Nashville.

Savion earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental health from Old Dominion University and a Doctor of Education in human and organizational learning from George Washington University