Director, Portfolio & Innovation

Job Overview

The Director, Portfolio Growth & Innovation is a senior, enterprise-level leadership role responsible for shaping where we compete, how we win, and how we invest for sustainable growth. This role owns the end-to-end portfolio strategy across categories, driving disciplined innovation, portfolio optimization, and value creation through strong governance, cross-functional alignment, and data-driven decision-making.

Acting as a strategic integrator, this leader enables focus through clarity, prioritizing the opportunities that matter most and ensuring the organization consistently executes against the highest-impact growth initiatives.

• Own and lead the 3‑5 years portfolio and category strategy, defining clear where‑to‑play and how‑to‑win choices grounded in consumer, market, customer, and financial insights.
• Establish and govern a disciplined innovation and renovation pipeline, applying “Fewer, Bigger, Better” principles to ensure resources are focused on the highest‑value opportunities.
• Translate enterprise strategy into clear innovation charters, success metrics, and stage‑gate readiness expectations.
• Partner closely with Category Marketing, R&D, Sales, Finance, and Operations to enable aligned, executable growth plans.
• Lead portfolio simplification and SKU rationalization frameworks to reduce complexity, improve margin, and unlock capacity for growth.
• Collaborate cross‑functionally to assess SKU profitability, operational complexity, customer impact, and execution risk.
• Establish clear guardrails, decision criteria, and tracking mechanisms to ensure benefits realization and disciplined follow‑through.

• Own the ROI and value‑creation logic across innovation, renovation, and capital investment decisions.
• Develop simple, repeatable evaluation frameworks and scorecards to enable faster, higher‑quality decisions.
• Partner with Finance and Operations to ensure investment choices align with long‑term strategic priorities and financial objectives.

• Drive alignment across senior stakeholders by clarifying priorities, resolving trade‑offs, and enforcing resource discipline through effective governance forums.
• Act as a trusted advisor to BU and Executive Leadership—bringing structure, insight, and clarity to complex decisions.
• Serve as the organization’s “focus champion,” confidently stopping or redirecting initiatives that do not meet strategic or value thresholds.

• Lead through influence in a highly matrixed environment, ensuring strong engagement and accountability across functions.
• Role‑model enterprise leadership behaviors: clarity, decisiveness, collaboration, and ownership.
• Foster a culture of strategic thinking, disciplined execution, and continuous improvement.

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Commerce, Finance, Economics, Engineering, or a related discipline.
• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in strategy, portfolio management, marketing, or general management within a complex, cross‑functional organization.
• Proven experience influencing and aligning senior leaders (Director, VP, GM) in environments with ambiguity and competing priorities.
• MBA or advanced education in Strategy, Marketing, Finance, or General Management is strongly preferred.

• Deep expertise in portfolio strategy, innovation governance, and prioritization frameworks.
• Strong commercial and financial acumen, including experience building and evaluating business cases and ROI models.
• Exceptional executive presence with the ability to communicate clearly, challenge constructively, and drive decisions at the leadership table.
• Demonstrated strength in governance design, decision‑rights clarity, and enterprise execution.
• Highly analytical, structured thinker with the ability to synthesize complex inputs into clear direction.

• Strategic thinking and enterprise mindset
• Influence without authority
• Sound judgment and decisive leadership
• Change leadership and stakeholder management
• Integrity, resilience, and…