Mark Paulek

Chief Human Resources Officer Kyndryl

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Mark Paulek is Chief Human Resources Officer of Kyndryl, the IT infrastructure services company that separated from IBM in 2021, a role he took up on 1 April 2026. He is the company’s second CHRO and an internal appointment: he had run human resources for Kyndryl’s commercial organization since 2022, through the period in which the business had to convert itself from a captive IBM services division into a company that wins its own work. His career before that was built almost entirely in large industrial and financial organizations - fifteen years at Honeywell, then the CHRO seat at Fiserv, an interim CHRO assignment at Chamberlain Group and global HR leadership at Aptiv - which is a background in workforce scale and transformation rather than in technology-sector talent wars, and is the more relevant preparation for a company of Kyndryl’s shape.

Career Highlights

• Chief Human Resources Officer of Kyndryl since 1 April 2026, succeeding Maryjo Charbonnier, the company’s only previous CHRO.
• Senior Vice President, Global Human Resources for Kyndryl’s commercial organization from 2022 to 2026, covering its Countries, Practices, Kyndryl Consult and Delivery operations.
• Chief Human Resources Officer of Fiserv from September 2017.
• Global HR leader for Aptiv’s Advanced Safety & User Experience division.
• Interim Chief Human Resources Officer at Chamberlain Group.
• Fifteen years at Honeywell International, including Vice President of Human Resources and Communications for the Automation & Control Solutions group, a business of roughly $17 billion in revenue and more than 70,000 employees.
• Earlier human resources roles at CNH Industrial and General Electric, and consulting at Andersen Consulting.
• Bachelor’s degree in psychology, University of Northern Iowa.

Professional Journey

Paulek began in consulting at Andersen Consulting before moving into human resources, where he has spent the rest of his career - by his own account roughly 25 years of it by 2017, which places the start around the early 1990s. The early part was in large industrials: human resources roles at General Electric and CNH Industrial, and then fifteen years at Honeywell International. The Honeywell period is the formative one. He rose to Vice President of Human Resources and Communications for Automation & Control Solutions, a group carrying something like $17 billion of revenue and more than 70,000 employees across dozens of countries, which is an HR job about systems and scale rather than about individual hires.

He left to take an interim Chief Human Resources Officer assignment at Chamberlain Group, the Illinois garage-door and access-control manufacturer, and from there moved to Fiserv in September 2017 as Chief Human Resources Officer - his first permanent CHRO seat, at a payments and financial technology company then in the middle of a long acquisition-driven expansion. He subsequently took global HR leadership for Aptiv’s Advanced Safety & User Experience division, the part of the automotive supplier building autonomous-driving and cockpit software, and therefore the part competing hardest for engineering talent.

Kyndryl recruited him in 2022, shortly after its separation from IBM, as Senior Vice President of Global Human Resources for the commercial organization. The brief covered Kyndryl’s Countries, Practices, Kyndryl Consult and Delivery operations - in effect the revenue-generating side of a company that had to learn to sell. The spinoff had left Kyndryl with tens of thousands of employees whose careers had been built inside IBM, and the human capital problem was less about recruitment than about converting an existing workforce to a different commercial posture and a much broader set of technology partners.

In January 2026 Kyndryl announced that Maryjo Charbonnier, its first and until then only CHRO, would retire on 31 March and remain as Executive Advisor through August, with Paulek succeeding her from 1 April. Chairman and chief executive Martin Schroeter framed the appointment as evidence of the strength of the company’s leadership bench - an internal promotion at a company whose whole recent history has been about proving it can stand on its own people.

Education

University of Northern Iowa

Bachelor’s degree, Psychology