Elaina Gillule is a senior human capital and organizational transformation executive with more than 25 years of experience helping organizations translate business strategy into the leadership, organizational capabilities, talent, and operating models required to deliver results. Her career spans biopharmaceuticals, healthcare, medical technology, manufacturing, and consumer environments, with deep experience navigating complex global organizations, large-scale transformation, and periods of significant business change.
Over more than two decades at Bristol Myers Squibb, Elaina held increasingly senior leadership roles across Human Resources, organizational effectiveness, talent, and enterprise strategy. Most recently, she served as Global HR Business Partner for Global Drug Development, partnering with senior R&D leaders and leading a team of HR Business Partners supporting a highly matrixed global organization across the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Canada.
In this capacity, Elaina advised senior executives on organization and operating model design, workforce strategy, executive talent and succession, leadership effectiveness, culture, organizational capability, and large-scale transformation. Her work required connecting scientific and business priorities with the organizational capabilities needed to accelerate drug development and bring medicines to patients faster.
Elaina played a leadership role in major R&D transformations involving organizational redesign, new operating models, streamlined decision-making, automation, capability centers, and new ways of working. She led the people, organization, culture, and change components of transformation efforts designed to accelerate clinical development and improve organizational performance, including a broader transformation that generated approximately $600 million in savings.
She has also worked at the intersection of technology, talent, and organizational change. Elaina helped advance AI-enabled and skills-based workforce initiatives, including efforts to increase adoption of talent technology and create greater visibility into employee skills and capabilities. This experience gives her a practical perspective on one of the most important issues facing boards today: how organizations capture the value of AI and emerging technology while evolving workforce capabilities, leadership, culture, and ways of working.
Earlier in her career, Elaina served as Chief of Staff to the Chief Human Resources Officer at Bristol Myers Squibb. In this enterprise role, she co-led development of the company’s People Strategy, supported executive talent and succession processes, facilitated CEO and senior leadership objective setting, and gained significant exposure to executive leadership and Board-level talent and governance matters. She also established a Global HR Program Management Office to strengthen governance, prioritization, execution, and measurement across the HR function and helped launch a Global HR Learning Academy to build critical capabilities across the organization.
Across her career, Elaina has developed particular expertise in organizational diagnosis and design. She is known for identifying the organizational issues underlying business challenges and translating those insights into practical solutions involving structure, roles, decision rights, leadership, talent, culture, capabilities, and ways of working. Her approach combines systems thinking with pragmatic execution and a strong understanding of how organizational decisions affect business performance.
Today, Elaina is Founder of BEL Consulting, LLC, an organizational and leadership advisory firm. She works with organizations and executive teams on organizational diagnostics and design, leadership and team effectiveness, workforce capability, change and transformation, and executive coaching. Her consulting work has expanded her perspective beyond large enterprise environments and strengthened her ability to advise organizations at different stages of growth, transformation, and organizational maturity.
Elaina is an ICF-accredited Executive Coach and an experienced facilitator and advisor to senior leaders and executive teams. She holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Wagner College. She also brings extensive experience working across global and culturally diverse organizations.
Board Value Proposition
As a board member or advisor, Elaina brings a distinctive human capital and organizational lens to enterprise strategy and governance. She is particularly well positioned to contribute to discussions involving:
- CEO and executive succession, leadership pipelines, and executive talent
- Human capital and workforce strategy
- Organization design, operating models, and enterprise transformation
- Culture, employee engagement, and organizational health
- AI adoption, skills transformation, and the future of work
- M&A integration and organizational change
- Executive leadership and team effectiveness
- Organizational risk, resilience, and change readiness
- Human capital implications of growth, restructuring, and business transformation
Elaina brings a global enterprise perspective coupled with a practical understanding of how strategy is translated into organizational execution. Having spent her career advising senior executives through complex business and organizational decisions, she understands the importance of asking the right questions, challenging assumptions constructively, and balancing near-term performance with the leadership and organizational capabilities required for sustainable growth.
Character:
Elaina leads with integrity, sound judgment, curiosity, and a strong sense of accountability. She builds trust quickly while remaining willing to challenge thinking and ask difficult questions when needed. Her leadership style combines empathy and humility with a strong focus on business outcomes.
Knowledge:
Elaina brings deep expertise in human capital strategy, organizational transformation, executive succession and talent, organizational design, leadership effectiveness, culture, workforce strategy, and change. Her experience within global biopharmaceutical R&D also provides insight into complex, highly regulated, science-driven organizations and the organizational challenges associated with innovation and growth.
Strategic:
Elaina approaches business challenges through a systems lens, connecting enterprise strategy with the organization, leadership, talent, capabilities, culture, and operating model required to execute it. She is particularly skilled at diagnosing organizational barriers and translating complex challenges into practical actions that improve performance.
Communication:
An experienced executive coach, facilitator, and trusted advisor, Elaina communicates complex issues with clarity and candor. She is skilled at facilitating productive dialogue among senior leaders, building alignment across differing perspectives, and helping leadership teams move from discussion to decision and action.
