Portland Human Resources Director Serilda Summers-McGee Is Leaving for Private Sector Next Month

"The time has come for me to devote all my efforts to running my own business—Workplace Change, LLC," Summers-McGee wrote in a July 22 email.

Portland City Council meeting. (Thomas Teal)
By Rachel Monahan

The City of Portland's human resources director, Serilda Summers-McGee, is leaving her job for private employment.

Summers-McGee has been the city's chief human resources officer since 2017. She joined the HR bureau two years ago from Prosper Portland, the city's economic development agency.

"The time has come for me to devote all my efforts to running my own business—Workplace Change, LLC," Summers-McGee wrote in a July 22 email to all city employees.

In the email, she described her role at the city as, in part, "a secret mission: to re-imagine and reframe Human Resources within the City of Portland, embedding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into every traditional HR function; develop a healthy workplace culture and celebrate our individual complexities while balancing them against the risk of a litigious world."

She says she will concentrate on similar efforts in the private sector at Workplace Change, LCC. It's a human resources consultancy firm.

Summers-McGee is the wife of Charles McGee, who was acquitted in a sexual assault trial in March.

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