Coca-Cola Creates Chief Growth Officer Role
The Coca-Cola Co. is making a number of senior leadership appointments to aid its continuing transformation into a growth-oriented, consumer-centered, total beverage company. The appointments will take effect when President and COO James Quincey becomes CEO on May 1, and come in the wake of changes he made to the Atlanta-based company’s international operations leadership team last year.
The reorganization “is another building block in our company’s transformational journey,” said Quincey. “We are moving quickly to structure our organization for faster growth and to ensure we can respond to the fast-changing needs of our consumers, customers, system and associates around the world.”
Chief among these appointments is naming Francisco Crespo, currently president of the Mexico business unit, to the newly created position of chief growth officer, which combines global marketing, customer and commercial leadership, and strategy into a single function under his leadership to drive growth across five strategic beverage categories: juice/dairy/plant-based, tea and coffee, water and enhanced waters and energy. Chief Customer and Commercial Leadership Officer Julie Hamilton and the corporate strategy and planning and global marketing leadership teams will report to Crespo.
Robert Long, currently VP, research and development, become chief innovation officer, reporting directly to the CEO, in line with Coca-Cola’s heightened focus on accelerating the growth of its consumer-centric brand portfolio with hundreds of new products and ongoing innovation in beverages, packaging, ingredients and other areas of the business globally.
SVP and Chief Information Officer (CIO) Barry Simpson will remain in his role but now report directly to the CEO to boost visibility and focus on efforts to digitize all aspects of Coca-Cola’s business. Simpson, who became CIO last fall, oversees all of the company’s global information technology strategy, services and operations.
EVP and CFO Kathy Waller will take on expanded responsibility for the company’s strategic governance areas, adding president, enabling services to her titles as well as the global finance organization, the global technical team headed by Dr. Ed Hays, a newly created integrated services team, led by Robin Moore, currently chief of internal audit, and a new business transformation team, led by Mark Eppert, currently chief financial and supply chain officer for Coca-Cola North America, will report to Waller. The integrated services team will deal with financial, procurement and associate shared services, while the business transformation team will drive the changes necessary to implement the Coca-Cola’s new operating model, including productivity and zero-based work.
Eppert will be succeeded by Brent Hastie, currently SVP, corporate strategy and planning, who will report to Sandy Douglas, EVP and president, Coca-Cola North America.
Additionally, Jennifer Mann, currently Quincey’s chief of staff, will also become chief people officer, leading efforts to effect cultural change throughout the organization. Bea Perez, now VP and chief sustainability officer, will take on the new role chief public affairs, communications and sustainability officer, in which capacity she will leverage the external stakeholder work done in public affairs and communications, sustainability, and partnerships in a more strategic, integrated and holistic way.
Retiring from the company are Ann Taylor, president of global business services (who will be replaced by Moore); Marcos de Quinto, EVP and chief marketing officer; Ceree Eberly, SVP and chief people officer; and Clyde Tuggle, SVP and chief public affairs and communications officer.
Coca-Cola offers more than 500 sparkling and still brands and almost 3,900 beverage choices.