Research & Innovation Manager, Governance

About the job

The R&I Manager, Governance is responsible for advancing disciplined, end-to-end governance across the North America Research & Innovation organization. Reporting directly to the Director, R&I Digital, Specs & Governance, this role will create and embed governance standards, simplify and standardize core processes, strengthen compliance and risk visibility, and enable better portfolio performance through data-driven insights. The role is critical to elevating R&I excellence, improving first-time-right delivery, and ensuring that product, pack, process, ingredient, and documentation practices are governed with clarity, rigor, and consistency and based in delivering optimal consumer experiences.

Key Responsibilities

• Governance Standards Development: Create the structural framework and lead rollout of enhanced governance standards, guardrails, and programs across the NORAM R&I organization to improve consistency, technical rigor, and accountability.
• Drive Standardization, Process Simplification, and Compliance: Standardize and simplify ways of working across key R&I systems and processes, including development briefs, risk assessments, consumer action standards, specifications, commercial hand-over documentation, nutritional and artwork creation, and centralized storage systems.
• Portfolio Performance Connections: Create visibility to performance patterns across the portfolio to identify opportunities for greater standardization, simplification, and tool/process improvement.
• Compliance and Risk Management: Harmonize data from multiple sources to enable effective governance and monitoring programs that evaluate R&I delivery against Elevating R&I Excellence programs and first-time-right commitments.
• Audit and Reporting: Provide monthly reporting, dashboards, and insights to support strategic decision-making based on performance trends and risk exposure across product, pack, processing, and ingredients.
• Future-Ready Capability: Coordinate governance- and systems-related capability gap assessments to identify future strategic digital capability unlocks and strengthen the organization's readiness for evolving business needs.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner closely with R&I, Quality & Food Safety, Regulatory, Operations, Packaging, Supply Chain, and Digital teams to align governance expectations, clarify decision rights, and drive adoption of consistent standards.
• Change Management and Adoption: Translate governance requirements into clear guidance, communications, and practical tools that enable teams to adopt new standards and sustain improvements over time.
• Continuous Improvement: Surface recurring gaps, risks, and inefficiencies and convert them into actionable improvement plans that reduce complexity, strengthen compliance, and improve execution quality.

The salary range for this position is $115,000-165,000 USD. The exact salary offered will depend on several factors, including the candidate's relevant experience, geographic location, internal equity, and market conditions. Danone North America additionally offers a performance-based bonus and has a strong benefits package including Medical, Dental, Vision, Prescription Drug Coverage, 401k Plan, Wellness Program, Life Insurance, Tuition Reimbursement, Flexible Time Off, and Paid Parental Bonding Leave, among other benefit plan options. To give our employees flexibility, Danone is a hybrid work environment.

This role is considered a "hybrid" position that allows for flexible work, meaning it is a role where collaboration with key stakeholders in Danone Hubs occurs. While you may have the option to work from home on a schedule as agreed to with your supervisor, you are also expected to regularly report to your assigned office location at least 3 days per week.