Director, Commercial Excellence & Project Management

Role Summary

Reporting to the SVP, Breakthrough Innovation, Commercial Excellence, the Project Management Director partners with both core and breakthrough innovation teams in Enterprise Oral Care. The role can be based in our NYC or Piscataway, NY office. In this role you will act as the strategic bridge connecting Enterprise/Global Leadership, Divisional Marketing Brand Strategies, and Market Execution. You will drive organizational capability to maximize the success of core and breakthrough innovations, optimize end-to-end speed-to-market, and spearhead portfolio simplification across the division. Additionally, you will oversee resource allocation, financial budget management, and executive governance forums, while championing the "Funding the Growth" (FTG) program and enabling flawless, on-budget delivery of enterprise "Big Bet" initiatives to unlock the company’s 3+ year innovation pipeline.

Responsibilities

• Governance & Commercialization Management: Serve as the ultimate timeline keeper and gatekeeper for active innovation project execution flows, establishing corporate governance structures and facilitating forums like the Strategic Innovation Forum to guide enterprise "Big Bet" initiatives, New Product Developments (NPDs), relaunches, line extensions, and agile breakthrough projects from concept to market on time and on budget.

• Operational Excellence & Process Standardization: Create, align, and automate project steps, tools, and platforms from the ground up to speed up product launches, simplify teamwork across categories, and provide clear visibility and tracking for leadership.

• Financial Oversight & Portfolio Simplification: Direct the enterprise "Funding the Growth" (FTG) cost-optimization program and own the master financial budget and monthly spend tracker, while driving portfolio complexity matrix reviews and SKU harmonization to optimize spend, maximize efficiency, and support commercial strategies (RGM and 4Ps/7Ps).

• Cross-Functional Resource Leadership & Risk Mitigation: Strategically deploy project management resources and partner across global/divisional leadership, Hub execution teams, Supply Chain, R&D, Regulatory, Customer Development, and Artwork teams to secure cross-functional alignment, resolve bottlenecks, and proactively unblock systemic launch risks.

• Capability Building & Change Management: Drive divisional change management regarding ways of working, establish process guidelines and training for cross-functional project teams, and institutionalize post-project reviews to ensure continuous operational improvement.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Project Management, B.A., B.S., or a related field.

• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in Brand Marketing, Commercial Operations, Brand Commercialization, or Project Management within a CPG/FMCG organization.

• 5+ years of experience managing and developing project management/execution teams.

• Experience leading complex, cross-functional initiatives from concept to launch

• Experience leading post-project reviews and continuous improvement cycles

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree or MBA preferred; professional Project Management certification (PMP or Agile) is a plus.

• Demonstrated expertise navigating complex CPG/FMCG matrix structures to influence and align Supply Chain, Regulatory, IT, R&D, and Financial strategies.

• Proven track record in financial management, including capital budget tracking, financial variance analysis, and leading "Funding the Growth" (FTG) cost-optimization programs.

• Hands-on proficiency with project management tools (e.g., Smartsheet, Microsoft Project, Google Suite) and enterprise systems (e.g., SAP, Veeva/CPS).

• Strong capability in leading change management, post-project reviews, end-to-end supply chain assessment, and process harmonization from scratch.

• Running or contributing to stage-gate or similar commercialization processes

• Designing and rolling out new processes, ways of working, and tools

• Ability to present to and influence cross-functional stakeholders