Senior Director, Category Leadership – Central Large Store Retail

Job Description Summary:

• Lead and inspire a geographically dispersed Category Leadership organization, driving a culture of collaboration, curiosity, and customer focus.
• Recruit, develop, and elevate top talent while building capability in analytics, commercial strategy, and customer engagement.
• Provide leadership for direct reports, including leader-of-leaders responsibilities, ensuring accountability, succession planning, and ongoing development frameworks.
• Serve as the senior Category Leadership partner for a portfolio of Central Large Store retailers, shaping category growth strategies and delivering annual and multi-year planning recommendations.
• Build trusted relationships with senior retail decision makers and act as a thought partner to Sales leadership on both immediate and long-range planning.
• Translate customer, shopper, and marketplace insights into actionable frameworks, category blueprints, and growth recommendations tailored by priority account.
• Coordinate with Sales, Bottling partners, and Commercial teams to execute customer growth strategies integrated across enterprise capabilities.
• Balance near-term business imperatives with long-range category vision, aligning resources to unlock the highest-value opportunities for Coca‑Cola and its retail partners.
• Collaborate with insights, space, digital commerce, revenue growth, and segmentation teams to deliver connected solutions grounded in shopper needs and performance analytics.
• Scale best practices and standardized methodologies for Category Leadership excellence across multiple accounts and the broader organization.
• Represent the customer voice to influence enterprise innovation, commercial planning, and growth strategies that reflect evolving retail dynamics.

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Finance, or related field required; MBA preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive experience across Category Leadership, Category Management, Customer Sales, or Commercial Strategy roles within CPG or retail environments.
• Proven ability to lead diverse teams and build organizational capability through strong talent management practices and inclusive leadership behaviors.
• Exceptional strategic agility with experience linking long-range commercial priorities to actionable category programs.
• Expertise in interpreting complex analytics and distilling insights into recommendations that influence senior stakeholders and customer decision makers.
• Advanced proficiency with relevant platforms and tools, including space planning software, assortment solutions, MS Office, Power BI, and syndicated data sources (NielsenIQ, Circana).
• Experience managing relationships with customer-specific data platforms such as 84.51, dunnhumby, or similar resources.
• Skilled in customer engagement and negotiation with a proven record of delivering successful commercial outcomes through collaborative strategies.
• Demonstrated capability to lead through change, creating clarity and alignment around a shared vision while maintaining pace toward measurable goals.
• Strong planning skills and prioritization discipline to manage overlapping deliverables across both near-term execution and long-range strategic frameworks.

• Provide an opportunity to shape Coca‑Cola’s category growth strategy across some of the most strategically important customer relationships in North America.
• Enable leadership impact at both enterprise and customer levels, advancing methodologies and frameworks that strengthen commercial decision-making.
• Support professional growth through access to enterprise tools, insights, and peer collaboration that expand future-ready capabilities in analytics and shopper strategy.
• Deliver a platform to influence transformation projects that unify digital engagement, data-driven insights, and strategic planning for customer success.

The Coca-Cola Company will not offer sponsorship for employment status (including, but not limited to, H1-B visa status and other employment-based nonimmigrant visas) for this position. Accordingly, all applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis and must not require The Coca-Cola Company's sponsorship to continue to work legally in the United States.

Skills:

Pay Range:

Base pay offered may vary depending on geography, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. A full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the position, is offered.

Annual Incentive Reference Value Percentage:

Annual Incentive reference value is a market-based competitive value for your role. It falls in the middle of the range for your role, indicating performance at target.

Long-term Incentive Reference Value Percentage:

Long-term Incentive reference value is a market-based competitive value for your role.

Location(s):

City/Cities:

Travel Required:

Relocation Provided:

Job Posting End Date:

Our Purpose and Growth Culture:

We are taking deliberate action to nurture an inclusive culture that is grounded in our company purpose, to refresh the world and make a difference. We act with a growth mindset, take an expansive approach to what’s possible and believe in continuous learning to improve our business and ourselves. We focus on four key behaviors – curious, empowered, inclusive and agile – and value how we work as much as what we achieve. We believe that our culture is one of the reasons our company continues to thrive after 130+ years. Visit Our Purpose and Vision to learn more about these behaviors and how you can bring them to life in your next role at Coca-Cola.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class. When we collect your personal information as part of a job application or offer of employment, we do so in accordance with industry standards and best practices and in compliance with applicable privacy laws.