Regional VP of Food Safety & Quality, North America

About Kerry

Kerry is the world's leading taste and nutrition company for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Every day we partner with customers to create healthier, tastier and more sustainable products that are consumed by billions of people across the world. Our vision is to be our customers' most valued partner, creating a world of sustainable nutrition. A career with Kerry offers you an opportunity to shape the future of food while providing you opportunities to explore and grow in a truly global environment.

About the role

The VP Food Safety and Quality position is a critical senior leadership role with broad scope and responsibility. This role has ownership for Food Safety and Quality across the North America region, supporting Kerry’s blue-chip customers. Working with the IO (Integrated Operations) leadership team, the VP, FSQ will ensure end to end food safety and quality is embedded in our way of working and we deliver products and services that delight our customers and add value to our organization. The VP, FSQ leads the successful development and the embedding of a Quality Culture to achieve excellence, with a focus on strategy, policies, food safety programs, sustainability and risk mitigation, allied to strong external and internal in stakeholder management & communication. The role will report directly to the North America COO who has a strong background in this discipline, is an active sponsor of the importance of this function and views quality as one of Kerry’s key differentiators with Customers.

Key responsibilities

•  Lead the regional Food Safety & Quality function with a focus on Customers, Strategy, Policies, Food Safety Programs and Risk Mitigation
•  Guide and support the businesses within the region to ensure that Kerry Taste & Nutrition products and services continuously achieve and exceed customer (and other external, e.g., regulatory, academic) expectations in order to develop profitable (and sustainable) partnerships.
•  Target and have your teams target meaningful participation in regulatory, governance, academic, technical and trade association bodies / committees.
•  Lead the standardization of best-practice methodologies / global standards of working across the regional sites and over realistic time scales. Work with and through various legacy organizations and cultural diversity to create the momentum, pace and buy-in needed to ensure a focus on Safety and Quality Excellence.
•  During development and improvement of FSQ processes, ensure that product quality, health and safety are not compromised or negatively impacted.
•  Act as the FSQ subject matter expert in M&A situations. Given the acquisitive nature of the organization, integration of newly and previously acquired businesses into the new QSHE operating model will be central to success.
•  Lead a measurable and continuously improving FSQ excellence culture across the region - ensuring a ‘Zero’ mind-set towards defects and accidents while delivering global customer satisfaction and aligning FSQ business objectives and KPI’s in Manufacturing and Operations.
•  Encourage a culture of recognitions by acknowledging individual site achievements within the region through various Excellence awards.
•  Deliver front-line engagement of FSQ as a function, with compelling & meaningful communication and visible and authentic leadership.
•  A key measure of success will be the consistent development of FSQ talent for the future, setting objectives and leading performance reviews of FSQ leaders / managers. Have strong ownership for talent management and development programs, succession planning etc. in order to build a world class, customer focused function.

Qualifications and skills

•  Bachelor’s degree is required. Degree in quality, food science or other technical degree is preferred. Advanced degree also preferred. Deep knowledge of food and beverage regulations and latest customer / consumer expectations. This technical credibility & very specific career history - from both an internal and external customer / regulatory / representative body perspectives - will be critical.
•  Strong mix of strategic and operational experience at a leadership level within best practice, global food / beverage organizations, ideally on a regional basis where there has been a breadth of process technologies.
•  Experience across numerous technical functional roles such as: supply quality, quality systems, regulatory, R&D, manufacturing, laboratory management and sustainability would be an advantage, allied to a strong background in food chemistry, raw materials, sensory, microbiology, food packaging systems & food engineering.
•  Experience with creating and implementing FSQ training programs and strategies across a multi-site and multi-technology manufacturing business.
•  Knowledge of best practice FSQ crisis management process and experience in implementing them. Experience in running internal and customer FSQ audits.
•  Proven track records of identifying and driving continuous improvement and change management initiatives to develop a customer focused, high performing function.
•  Clear customer focus with specific evidence around building strong relationships based on trust and inspiring confidence in customers. Prior experience dealing with Global FMCG customers is highly desirable.
•  Strong evidence that he/she has managed talent for a global organization and built winning teams.