Director, Portfolio Growth & Innovation

Give and Go Prepared Foods•Toronto, ON

About The Position

The Director, Portfolio Growth & Innovation is a senior, enterprise-level leadership role responsible for shaping where we compete, how we win, and how we invest for sustainable growth. This role owns the end-to-end portfolio strategy across categories, driving disciplined innovation, portfolio optimization, and value creation through strong governance, cross-functional alignment, and data-driven decision-making. Acting as a strategic integrator, this leader enables focus through clarity, prioritizing the opportunities that matter most and ensuring the organization consistently executes against the highest-impact growth initiatives.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Commerce, Finance, Economics, Engineering, or a related discipline.
10+ years of progressive leadership experience in strategy, portfolio management, marketing, or general management within a complex, cross-functional organization.
Proven experience influencing and aligning senior leaders (Director, VP, GM) in environments with ambiguity and competing priorities.
Deep expertise in portfolio strategy, innovation governance, and prioritization frameworks.
Strong commercial and financial acumen, including experience building and evaluating business cases and ROI models.
Exceptional executive presence with the ability to communicate clearly, challenge constructively, and drive decisions at the leadership table.
Demonstrated strength in governance design, decision-rights clarity, and enterprise execution.
Highly analytical, structured thinker with the ability to synthesize complex inputs into clear direction.

Nice To Haves

MBA or advanced education in Strategy, Marketing, Finance, or General Management is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Own and lead the 3-5 years portfolio and category strategy, defining clear where-to-play and how-to-win choices grounded in consumer, market, customer, and financial insights.
Establish and govern a disciplined innovation and renovation pipeline, applying “Fewer, Bigger, Better” principles to ensure resources are focused on the highest-value opportunities.
Translate enterprise strategy into clear innovation charters, success metrics, and stage-gate readiness expectations.
Partner closely with Category Marketing, R&D, Sales, Finance, and Operations to enable aligned, executable growth plans.
Lead portfolio simplification and SKU rationalization frameworks to reduce complexity, improve margin, and unlock capacity for growth.
Collaborate cross-functionally to assess SKU profitability, operational complexity, customer impact, and execution risk.
Establish clear guardrails, decision criteria, and tracking mechanisms to ensure benefits realization and disciplined follow-through.
Own the ROI and value-creation logic across innovation, renovation, and capital investment decisions.
Develop simple, repeatable evaluation frameworks and scorecards to enable faster, higher-quality decisions.
Partner with Finance and Operations to ensure investment choices align with long-term strategic priorities and financial objectives.
Drive alignment across senior stakeholders by clarifying priorities, resolving trade-offs, and enforcing resource discipline through effective governance forums.
Act as a trusted advisor to BU and Executive Leadership—bringing structure, insight, and clarity to complex decisions.
Serve as the organization’s “focus champion,” confidently stopping or redirecting initiatives that do not meet strategic or value thresholds.
Lead through influence in a highly matrixed environment, ensuring strong engagement and accountability across functions.
Role-model enterprise leadership behaviors: clarity, decisiveness, collaboration, and ownership.
Foster a culture of strategic thinking, disciplined execution, and continuous improvement.