Significant investment has been made by PepsiCo Foods R&D in Culinary and New Product Development capabilities to enable our transformation of the organization to a stronger position of category leadership and growth by building a Better Food Culture. The success of this initiative requires a leader with not only Culinary foundational knowledge, but also proven strategic program management skills. This includes experienced leadership in capability building, bringing a vision to life and driving cultural shifts. This role will lead the program creation, senior leadership buy-in, and execution of these capabilities and establish a culture where “food is first”. Capabilities include tools, methodologies, best practices, training and development, vendor/expert relations, facility related capabilities and establishing new mindsets and behaviors within the organization. This leader will direct and manage teams to execute new and established workstreams to progress our Better Food Culture journey and commitments over the next 3-5 years. The job is located in Plano, Texas.
Accountabilities include:
- Lead the Culinary Capabilities pillar of the team to create proposals, gain support, program manage and execute functional capabilities and Better Food Culture workstreams.
- Mastery of program management practices including chartering work, establishing measures of success, tracking progress vs. deliverables, communicating status, requesting/justifying funding, and driving engagement with partners.
- Lead a team of local direct reports as well as indirect resources which are geographically dispersed.
- End-to-end capability tool creation, evolution, promotion, sr. leadership alignment and best-in-class execution.
- Partner with external experts/providers to leverage outside perspectives and best practices to ensure PepsiCo’s approaches are industry leading.
- Develop bench skills to transform our talent to become high-value “Chefs of the future” who are strategic partners and not just cooks. This includes defining critical skill sets, developing roadmaps & training and implementing within organization.
Key Skills/Experience Required:
- Professional Culinary education preferred, at minimum a culinary certification (i.e. RCA CCS).
- Highly creative, passionate, motivated, decisive thought leader with excellent project and people managerial skills.
- 10+ years of professional NPD and/or Culinary experience including leading multi-disciplinary teams and projects. Experience in CPG companies preferred.
- Demonstrated experience in strategy development, project management and bringing a business vision to life.
- Able to communicate new ideas and disruptive concepts to a variety of audiences.
- Strong collaboration/ team management.
- Able to present projects and enroll people in all levels of the organization to a vision.
- Proven coach and mentor to develop others.
- Results oriented people leader with strong verbal and written communication skills to influence senior leaders, ability to create vision and articulate fact-based information into simple actions.
- Flexible and comfortable with change; ability to balance need to deliver aggressive business innovation goals with scientific excellence.
- Highly creative and collaborative working style with a global perspective and cultural appreciation.
- Ability to operationalize long term strategies into short term capabilities – balance between local requirements and global reapplication.
- Has a solid network of academic and industry specialists.
- Proven talent development skills with a strong sense of engagement while fostering diversity, inclusion and belonging within the organization.
Differentiating Competencies
- Supplemental Food Science and/or Business degree.
- Creating a Better Food Culture is a new developing capability to PEP. This requires an individual with existing deep food and consumer centric understanding to quickly accelerate delivery of results to inspire and catalyze the movement for the company.
- Skilled at understanding consumer foresights and identifying new business possibilities.
- Passion for creativity and innovation within a commercially driven environment.
- Experienced thought leader with ability to seamless lead cross-functional teams through iterative divergent and convergent work processes.
- Strives for high standards, seeks innovative solutions, drives continuous improvement of products and processes and demonstrates a high degree of intellectual curiosity.
- Cultural sensitivity/flexibility.
- Self-starter, self-motivating – able to deal with uncertainty and complexity.
- The ability to build, lead and direct a team with a diverse and wide range of specialist skills with a truly global outlook.
- Proven record of building effective partnerships with other R&D leaders and cross-functional partners to ensure relevant, high impact global agendas.
Please submit inquiries and resumes to: Carol.a.mccall@pepsico.com
