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.

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.

About You Qualifications and Experience Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Food Science, Supply Chain Management, Packaging Engineering, or a related discipline. 5-7 years of progressive relevant experience in governance, product development, packaging development, Quality & Food Safety, Regulatory, Manufacturing, or related areas.

5+ years of related CPG experience across product and/or packaging development, Quality & Food Safety, Regulatory, or Manufacturing.

Demonstrated knowledge of multiple digital and PLM platforms, along with CPG data concepts related to material management, recipe management, and specification governance.

Deep understanding of stage-gate processes and demonstrated ability to lead across complex cross-functional stakeholder environments. Experience applying structured risk management approaches to identify, assess, monitor, and mitigate technical and compliance risk.

Core Skills and Capabilities Strong governance mindset with the ability to design standards that improve clarity, accountability, and execution quality, while serving as an accelerator for growth.

Ability to simplify complex processes and translate them into practical, scalable ways of working. Strong analytical capability, including experience harmonizing data from multiple systems to generate actionable insights and performance reporting.

Highly skilled in digital platforms including Excel, Power BI, and Microsoft collaboration tools. Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex topics into clear, actionable insights for a range of stakeholders.

Demonstrated strength in stakeholder management, influence, and cross-functional collaboration. Passion for change management and building aligned standards that reduce risk, improve clarity, and drive measurable impact across the organization.

Ability to balance strategic thinking with disciplined execution in a fast-paced, matrixed environment. Role Impact This role will help build a more disciplined, simplified, and future-ready R&I organization by embedding governance-by-design into core ways of working, processes and systems.

The successful candidate will bring structure to complexity, improve compliance and risk visibility, and enable stronger, faster, and more consistent delivery across the North America portfolio.

About Us, We offer and What's next Life at Danone With approximately 5,000 employees and 13 production locations across the U.S., our vibrant culture and endless growth opportunities are just a couple of the reasons our employees call themselves "Proud Danoners." Learn more about Life at Danone Our Brands When you join us, you'll work with some of the best-known food and beverage brands in the world, including Activia, DanActive, Danimals, Dannon, evian, Follow Your Heart, Happy Family Organics, International Delight, Light + Fit, Nutricia , Oikos, Silk, So Delicious Dairy Free, STōK Cold Brew Coffee , Too Good & Co, and YoCrunch.

Family Care: We offer caretaker benefits, 18 weeks of parental bonding, fertility, surrogacy, adoptio