“I am a lifelong learner.”
Dr. Savita Lachman is an accomplished executive human resources leader, organizational strategist, educator, and board contributor whose career spans more than three decades of building people, strengthening organizations, and developing the leaders who move them forward. With experience extending across transportation, financial services, banking, global manufacturing, education, and community organizations, she has established a reputation for connecting human capital strategy with organizational performance. Her leadership philosophy is rooted in a simple but enduring belief: people represent an organization’s greatest competitive advantage. Guided by her personal motto, “I am a lifelong learner,” Dr. Lachman approaches leadership with curiosity, integrity, collaboration, and an unwavering commitment to helping individuals and organizations realize their potential.
Currently serving as Deputy Chief Human Resources Officer – Talent Management at NJ TRANSIT, Dr. Lachman operates at the intersection of workforce strategy, executive leadership, organizational effectiveness, and enterprise transformation. She designed and implemented a comprehensive Talent Management function encompassing employee engagement, learning strategies, professional and leadership development, change management, internships, performance management, retention and succession planning, mentorship, apprenticeship, strategic planning, and workforce development. Her responsibilities require close partnership with executive leadership and stakeholders throughout the organization, enabling her to translate long-term business priorities into practical strategies for developing and sustaining a future-ready workforce.
Among her most significant achievements at NJ TRANSIT is the conception, design, and launch of NJ TRANSIT University, the agency’s first enterprise-wide learning and leadership development framework. Dr. Lachman helped create an integrated learning ecosystem connecting leadership development, mentorship, internships, tuition reimbursement, external training, and instructor-led education. She established strategic partnerships with Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology and developed programs addressing leadership, communication, emotional intelligence, behavioral assessment, and professional development. Her work has helped position Talent Management as a strategic business partner while creating structured opportunities for employees at multiple career stages to develop the capabilities required for organizational and operational success.
Her transformation leadership extends well beyond learning and development. At NJ TRANSIT, Dr. Lachman has overseen enterprise implementations including the Docebo Learning Management System and PerformYard Performance Management System while developing competency frameworks, succession-planning processes, organizational structures, career pathways, employee-engagement initiatives, and data-driven talent strategies. She has led multiple complex projects simultaneously and uses workforce data, 9-box calibration, leadership-development planning, and organizational assessment to inform decisions surrounding retention, promotion, succession, and leadership readiness. This combination of strategic vision and execution enables her to advise leaders not simply on what an organization’s workforce needs today, but on the capabilities it must cultivate for tomorrow.
Before joining NJ TRANSIT, Dr. Lachman served as Director of Talent Management for SKF Group in the United States. In that role, she helped drive the North American Employee Experience strategy while managing complex organizational-effectiveness initiatives and partnering with business leaders to incorporate employee insights into organizational decision-making. Her portfolio encompassed talent and performance management, career development, culture and engagement, succession planning, organizational assessment, diversity and inclusion, and organizational change. The role further strengthened her ability to operate across functional and geographic boundaries while translating broad enterprise objectives into human-capital programs capable of influencing culture and performance.
Dr. Lachman’s executive perspective is also grounded in extensive financial-services and banking leadership. During seven years as a Vice President with Fulton Bank, she led employee development and empowerment initiatives for managers, supported approximately $250 million in annual revenue, managed 15 direct reports, and previously oversaw regional sales operations involving eight Branch Managers and 40 indirect reports. Her responsibilities blended talent strategy with commercial performance, customer experience, coaching, compensation, culture, community engagement, and business development. This experience provided her with an important operating perspective: human-capital decisions cannot exist separately from financial objectives, customer outcomes, accountability, and organizational performance.
Earlier, as Vice President of Santander at Work, Dr. Lachman led the program across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, developing relationships with businesses and educational institutions while delivering financial education, employee training, webinars, and business-development initiatives. She was selected for the Mundo Santander leadership development program, an international assignment through which she spent four months working and training with Santander’s Private Banking Team in Spain. The experience expanded her international perspective by exposing her to different organizational cultures, leadership practices, and approaches to business. She also brings earlier financial-services leadership experience from PNC Bank, DKB Financial Products, and Merrill Lynch, creating a career foundation that combines human resources, operations, business development, customer experience, and financial-services leadership.
Education and continuous development have remained defining threads throughout Dr. Lachman’s career. Her advanced studies at Drexel University focused on organizational leadership and human resource development, complemented by a Master of Arts in Teaching and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a Marketing minor from The College of New Jersey. Her professional credentials include SPHR, succession-planning, DiSC, and emotional-intelligence certifications, among other professional development. The intersection of business, education, and organizational leadership gives her a distinctive ability to bridge scholarship and practice, translating leadership theories and assessment frameworks into approaches that can function within the complexities of real organizations.
That commitment to learning naturally extends into teaching, mentorship, and public speaking. Throughout her career, Dr. Lachman has presented to audiences ranging from employees and managers to senior executives, business leaders, students, and large professional groups. Her approach emphasizes learning as a partnership rather than a one-directional transfer of information. Drawing upon decades of practical experience, she connects concepts such as succession planning, emotional intelligence, organizational effectiveness, change management, competency development, and leadership assessment with the realities executives and practitioners encounter inside complex organizations. As both an executive and educator, she seeks to create environments where people can challenge assumptions, develop confidence, learn from setbacks, and become increasingly capable leaders.
Board and community service represent another important dimension of Dr. Lachman’s leadership. She has served as a Board Member of Mercer County Community College since 2017 and has maintained involvement with organizations and initiatives including the Trenton Area Family YMCA, BAPS Charities, the American Red Cross, the Princeton Mercer Regional Chamber of Commerce, Girl Scouts of America, and diversity-focused committees. These experiences complement her executive background by providing exposure to governance, education, community engagement, fundraising, institutional stewardship, and stakeholder interests.
As she expands her board and advisory involvement, Dr. Lachman brings particular relevance to organizations operating within healthcare, finance, banking, transportation, and other people-intensive or transformation-oriented industries. She has worked with organizations ranging from local institutions to Fortune 500 global companies and understands the different leadership challenges created by organizational scale, maturity, culture, regulation, and workforce complexity. Her experience engaging executive leadership, presenting to large audiences, leading cross-functional transformation, and participating in governance environments equips her to contribute thoughtful perspectives on executive succession, organizational effectiveness, workforce risk, leadership capability, employee engagement, culture, and long-term human-capital strategy.
For Dr. Lachman, board service is both an opportunity to contribute and another chapter in a lifelong process of learning. She is motivated by the opportunity to give back, share lessons accumulated across more than three decades of leadership, and help organizations address increasingly complex questions surrounding people, performance, transformation, and the future of work. At the same time, she views governance as an opportunity to continue broadening her own perspective by learning alongside executives, directors, and stakeholders from different disciplines. That reciprocal philosophy—contributing experience while remaining open to new knowledge—captures the leadership mindset that has shaped her career.
Beyond her professional responsibilities, Dr. Lachman values travel, culture, and reading, interests that reflect the curiosity at the center of her personal philosophy. Her international experience in Spain and enthusiasm for exploring different cultures reinforce an appreciation for diverse perspectives, while her intermediate Spanish adds another dimension to her cross-cultural outlook. Whether developing an emerging leader, advising executives, transforming a talent system, teaching students, or contributing in the boardroom, she approaches each opportunity with the conviction that meaningful leadership requires both the confidence to share what one knows and the humility to continue learning.
Dr. Lachman’s career ultimately tells a consistent story: she builds environments in which people and organizations can become stronger together. From financial-services operations and business development to enterprise talent transformation, executive HR leadership, education, and governance, she has repeatedly focused on developing leadership capacity and creating sustainable organizational capability. Her combination of human-capital expertise, business acumen, board exposure, teaching experience, and transformational leadership gives her a multidimensional perspective particularly valuable to organizations navigating growth, workforce change, succession, cultural transformation, or organizational renewal.
Character:
Dr. Lachman leads with integrity, curiosity, empathy, and a genuine commitment to developing others, viewing leadership as both a responsibility and an opportunity to create lasting positive impact. Her lifelong-learning philosophy enables her to bring confidence to difficult decisions while remaining receptive to new perspectives, experiences, and ideas.
Knowledge:
She brings deep expertise in human resources transformation, talent assessment, organizational effectiveness, succession planning, leadership development, performance management, employee engagement, workforce strategy, and change management. Her combination of executive practice, advanced academic study, financial-services experience, and teaching gives her the ability to connect sophisticated organizational concepts with practical business realities.
Strategic:
Dr. Lachman sees human capital as an enterprise asset and consistently connects workforce decisions to organizational priorities, operational performance, leadership continuity, and long-term readiness. Her experience designing enterprise talent functions, launching organization-wide systems and development programs, and advising senior leadership allows her to identify both immediate organizational needs and the capabilities required for sustainable future performance.
Communication:
A seasoned presenter, educator, mentor, and executive partner, Dr. Lachman is comfortable communicating complex ideas to employees, managers, executives, students, stakeholders, and board-level audiences. She builds trust through open communication and collaboration, adapting her message to the audience while creating environments in which differing perspectives can contribute to stronger decisions.
