Lattice promotes Sophie Hurcombe to chief people and operations officer

Lattice Promotes Sophie Hurcombe to Chief People and Operations Officer

Lattice promoted Sophie Hurcombe to Chief People and Operations Officer on June 5, 2026. She moves from her role as Senior Vice President of People to oversee the company's AI transformation, People, Business Systems, and IT teams.

Hurcombe spent five years building Lattice's people infrastructure through periods of rapid growth. She now leads the company's internal AI transformation, developing AI playbooks, evaluating workflows across business functions, and keeping people central to each implementation.

Why This Matters for Operations Leaders

The promotion reflects a shift in how organizations approach AI implementation. Rather than treating AI as a technology problem, Lattice is positioning it as a people and process transformation - a distinction that affects how operations teams approach workflow changes.

Sarah Franklin, Lattice's CEO, said: "AI transformation is fundamentally a people and process transformation, and the leaders who get that right will win."

For operations professionals, this signals that successful AI adoption requires alignment between technology decisions and organizational design. Workflow optimization, a core operations responsibility, now intersects directly with people strategy.

What Hurcombe Brings to the Role

Hurcombe has direct experience adapting organizations during periods of change without losing focus on people. She's now applying that experience to evaluate how Lattice's core business functions operate in a people-plus-AI model.

She said: "As AI transforms every company and role, it's truly HR's moment to lead. We have a strategic seat at the table in figuring out how businesses operate in a People + AI world."

Operations teams working on AI implementation may find relevant frameworks in AI for Operations, which covers workflow optimization and process transformation. Leaders managing organizational change can explore the AI Learning Path for CHROs to understand how people strategy connects to operational outcomes.