Ramona Agrela
Senior Vice President & Chancellor - Human Resources University of California Irvine
Ramona Agrela is a dynamic and strategic human resources executive with extensive experience leading HR functions in complex, fast-paced environments. As the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at UC Irvine, she is responsible for shaping and executing the organization’s people strategy, driving organizational culture, and fostering an inclusive and high-performance workplace.
With a passion for helping organizational leaders achieve their strategic goals through progressive talent management strategies, Ramona truly believes that HR’s role is to empower people to drive a culture of innovation, learning and service.
Ramona is involved in her community both professionally and personally. She is active with the, the Southern California Chapter of the College and University Personnel Association, Society for Human Resources Professionals, WorldatWork, and the Professional in Human Resources Association.
Ramona holds a bachelor of arts in economics and a master of public administration degree, both from California State University, Fullerton. She is a SHRM certified senior professional, a WorldatWork certified compensation professional, and a Human Capital Institute Strategic HR Business Partner.
Seminars
- Redesigning HR service delivery across a highly decentralized university in response to sustained budget pressure by using opportunistic centralization, shared service pilots, and vacancy controls to reduce duplication, improve governance, and stabilize HR operations without top-down mandates.
- Delivering early, tangible financial impact by identifying extreme redundancy within units, including 17 HR FTEs in a single division, and projecting the elimination of at least three roles, representing an estimated $300k+ in annual cost savings once fully implemented, while preventing replacement hiring through targeted freezes and structural reviews.
- Building a more scalable and lower risk HR operating model through tiered service levels that centralize transactional work such as onboarding and payroll, retain light touch HR support within units, and escalate compliance and risk heavy issues to central HR, improving service quality, consistency, and workforce sustainability amid ongoing fiscal constraint.
- How can higher education HR teams pursue opportunistic centralization and shared services in environments where schools and units are accustomed to autonomy?
- What criteria help determine which HR activities should be centralized, which should remain embedded in units, and which should escalate to central HR due to risk or compliance?
- How can vacancy controls, structural reviews, and shared service pilots be used as levers for change without relying on top‑down mandates?
- What measures best demonstrate that a tiered operating model is improving governance, service quality, and sustainability rather than just cutting cost?
