Innovation Brand Manager

Summary

The Innovation Brand Manager will play a critical role in advancing Sartori’s platform innovation pipeline, turning enterprise strategy into actionable growth across Ingredient & Foodservice (I&FS), Global, and Retail channels. This role is responsible for the front end of innovation—identifying whitespace, shaping scalable platforms, and advancing concepts with pace, rigor, and clear commercial outcomes aligned to Sartori’s strategic and financial priorities.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Translates enterprise strategy into omni-channel innovation platforms by partnering with Marketing and Sales leaders across I&FS, Global, and Retail to develop multi-year platform roadmaps that deliver against revenue and profit targets.

• Drives platform development from insight to proof of concept, leading ideations and creative exploration, as well as writing concepts and creating images for research.

• Partners with R&D and cross-functional experts to define learning objectives, success criteria, and decision inputs for early concepts.

• Responsible for early-stage incubation and decision-making rigor, leading cross-functional incubation teams to create and rapidly vet opportunities, assess risk and feasibility, and provide clear recommendations on how and where ideas should advance with stage-gate rigor.

• Identifies and prioritizes whitespace opportunities by synthesizing portfolio needs, market trends, customer dynamics, and consumer segmentation to shape scalable, high-impact innovation platforms.

• Builds sound business cases for innovation platforms and concepts, modeling revenue, margin, and long-term strategic value to inform prioritization, investment decisions, and go/hold/kill recommendations.

• Acts as a cross-functional integrator and communicator, translating insights and strategy into clear, compelling narratives that align cross-functional partners and drive confident decisions and coordinated execution.

• Transforms the voice of the customer and consumer into action, working closely with Sales and Marketing to build a deep understanding of customer situations, challenges, and motivations that inform platform strategy and concept development.

• Works closely with cross-functional partners, seeks to improve innovation discipline through tools, methods, and processes, seeking best-in-class approaches to elevate how Sartori identifies, evaluates, and develops new opportunities.

• Leverages knowledge of Sartori’s end-to-end capabilities, from milk through cheesemaking and converting, as well as technical sales and supplier networks, to develop differentiated and scalable solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, or a related field required; MBA preferred

• Minimum of 8 years of experience in marketing or brand management with increasing scope and impact is required

• Minimum of 3 years of experience in marketing innovation and new product commercialization is preferred

• Experience with syndicated data & research insights, R&D, packaging, and operations is strongly preferred