Vice President- Food Safety & Quality Assurance (FSQA)

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and execute a company-wide FSQA strategy aligned with business growth, M&A activity, and operational excellence.
• Serve as the executive owner of food safety and quality governance across all facilities, ensuring consistent standards across the enterprise.
• Lead, mentor, and develop FSQA leaders and teams, building a strong bench of technical and people leadership capability.
• Act as a trusted advisor to executive leadership on food safety risk, regulatory exposure, and Grandma Quality performance.
• Ensure full compliance with USDA, FDA, FSMA, SQF/BRC (as applicable), and customer audit requirements.
• Own readiness for all regulatory inspections, customer audits, and third-party certifications, including corrective action planning and execution.
• With a primary focus on preventative actions, serve as the primary escalation point for food safety incidents, recalls, regulatory actions, or customer quality issues.
• Maintain enterprise-level policies, SOPs, and documentation related to food safety, sanitation, allergen control, HACCP, preventive controls, and GMPs.
• Standardize FSQA processes, metrics, and reporting across all sites to ensure consistency, visibility, and accountability.
• Partner with Operations and OpEx/CI leaders to drive root cause analysis (RCA), corrective and preventive actions (CAPA), and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Ensure quality systems scale appropriately with production growth, new products, and new facilities.
• Drive a proactive, preventive approach to quality, reducing rework, waste, and customer complaints.
• Collaborate with Operations leadership to balance production efficiency with uncompromised food safety and Grandma quality standards.
• Partner with People Operations to ensure FSQA training, accountability, and leadership behaviors are embedded into onboarding, performance management, and leadership development.
• Work with Supply Chain and Procurement to ensure supplier qualification, audits, and quality standards meet enterprise expectations.
• Support R&D and NPD teams on new product development, formulation changes, and process validations.
• Establish and oversee the enterprise laboratory testing strategy, ensuring appropriate microbiological, chemical, and environmental testing programs across all facilities, driving for standardization on insource vs outsourced testing.
• Ensure all internal and third-party laboratory testing meets regulatory, customer, and certification requirements, including validation, verification, and documentation standards.
• Provide executive oversight of environmental monitoring programs (EMP), finished product testing, and raw material testing, including trend analysis and risk-based adjustments.
• Review and act on testing results, trends, and deviations, ensuring timely escalation, root cause analysis, and corrective and preventive actions.
• Ensure laboratory practices, data integrity, and recordkeeping support audit readiness and regulatory inspections at all times.
• Lead FSQA diligence, risk assessment, and integration for acquisitions and new facilities.
• Ensure newly acquired operations are rapidly aligned to Mama’s FSQA standards, culture, and expectations.
• Build scalable systems that support long-term growth without increasing food safety or regulatory risk.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Food Science, Microbiology, Chemistry, or related field (advanced degree preferred).
• 15+ years of progressive leadership experience in FSQA within food manufacturing, including multi-site responsibility.
• Hold and maintain active, industry-appropriate certifications.
• Deep working knowledge of USDA/FDA regulations, FSMA, HACCP, preventive controls, and audit frameworks.
• Proven experience leading teams, managing audits, and driving culture change in manufacturing environments.
• Experience supporting or leading FSQA integration during M&A strongly preferred.