Director, Portfolio Strategy

Philip Morris International U.S.•Stamford, CT

9h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director Multi-category Portfolio Strategy and Performance leads enterprise portfolio strategy and performance governance across categories and brands. Ensures disciplined prioritization, resource allocation, and execution of transparency aligned to enterprise growth, profitability, and long-term value creation. Serves as the strategic integrator across Oral and Inhalable portfolios, ensuring a holistic multi-category perspective that reflects the realities of the US nicotine environment; characterized by intense poly-usage, overlapping consumer journeys, and dynamic category substitution and complementarity patterns. Elevates portfolio strategy beyond single category optimization, shaping an integrated multi-category agenda that maximizes enterprise value across growth, migration, and retention pathways. Acts as the enterprise orchestrator between Oral and Inhalable Directors, inspiring cohesion, alignment, and discipline trade-offs while preserving category specific strengths and needs. Translates strategic intent into clear portfolio choices, performance standards, and capital efficiency. Provides forward-looking perspective on portfolio design informed by performance in a multi-category environment where consumer behavior, regulation and competitive intensity evolve rapidly. Partners closely with Finance, Corporate Comms, and Global teams to ensure strategic category narratives, investment logic, and transformative roadmaps are coherent, credible, and strategically aligned to short and long-term growth agendas.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree required; MBA/advanced degree is strongly preferred.
12+ years of progressive experience in portfolio strategy, category strategy, corporate strategy, or senior brand leadership roles with portfolio responsibility.
Experience with regulated, compliance-intensive, and/or commercially dynamic consumer sectors.
Demonstrated experience shaping multi-brand and multi-category investment strategies.
Exposure to both growth-stage and mature/declining portfolio segments with interdependent consumer dynamics.
Strong analytical toolkit (market sizing, financial modeling, scenario planning) and ability to translate insights into recommendations.
Business & financial acumen
Experience working in matrixed organizations with cross-functional interdependencies and influencing senior stakeholders.
Program/project management and change agility.
Excellent communication skills; ability to simplify complex topics.
Data visualization & storytelling
Multi-Category Consumer Ecosystem & Interdependencies: Understands how categries interact within a broader consumer ecosystem. Anticipates cross-category effects, substitution patterns, and portfolio interdependencies based on consumer needs and occasions.
Portfolio Architecture and Category Foresight: able to design and evolve a multi-category portfolio with clear roles. Understands category maturity curves, competitive dynamics, and whitespace opportunities. Anticipates where growth will structurally emerge – and where decline is inevitable – and shapes investment logic accordingly.
Brand Economics and Marketing ROI Acumen: deep understanding of marketing investment effectiveness, brand equity drivers, and activation return thresholds. Interprets performance through both financial and brand health lenses. Balances long-term equity build with short-term commercial productivity.
Poly-usage & Journeys Intelligence: Interprets complex consumer journeys spanning multiple nicotine formats. Translates behavioral insights into portfolio startegy.
Strategic Trade-Offs Leadership: able to provide independent perspective and structured pushback to peer groups and leaders while maintaining strong working relationships. Comfortably facilitating enterprise-level trade-offs between categories, brands, and initiatives.
Growth Thinking: understands how brand strategy, innovation pipeline, channel activation, and pricing architecture interact within brands portfolio. Identifies interdependence and avoids fragmented investment patterns.
Performance Signals Intelligence: distinguishes between temporary volatility and structural performance shifts. Reads early indicators of growth inflection, saturation, or erosion – and acts before lagging metrics forces reactive decisions.
Influence with Marketing Credibility: engages Brand Directos as strategic peer, not as a compliance gatekeeper. Speaks the language of equity, positioning, and consumer relevance while grounding conversations in portfolio productivity.
Decision Integrity and Objectivity: maintains independent judgement when evaluating performance and investment cases. Separates brand passion from portfolio logic and ensures enterprise value creation remains an anchor.
Legally authorized to work in the US without sponsorship now and in the future

Responsibilities

Define and continuously evolve an integrated multi-category portfolio framework across Oral and Inhalable. Shape clear roles for categories within a poly-usage ecosystem (e.g., acquisition, migration, retention, premiunization). Anticipate structural shifts in consumer journeys, switching dynamics, and cross-category interactions. Together with ID&A, establishes clear segmentation of growth, core, and optimization plays across categories, informed by performance and foresights. Define portfolio gaps, overlaps, and rationalization opportunities across brands and categories to prevent cannibalization, fragmentation, or investment dilution.
Develop enterprise understanding of poly-usage behaviors and overlapping category journeys in the US. Ensure portfolio decisions reflect real consumer pathways, including substitution, dual usage, and stepwise migration patterns (within categories, brands, and products). Integrates insights from Oral and Inhalable into a cohesive PMI US portfolio adoption and retention framework, whilst supporting the development of specific brand building led by the Oral and Inhalable teams. Translate complex cross-category behaviors into actionable portfolio strategy and investment priorities.
Oversee consolidated portfolio performance tracking across revenue, margin, brand health, and ROI metrics. Identify systematic performance trends and escalate risk or opportunity signals early. Distinguish between category-specific volatility and structural multi-category shifts, ensuring protective recalibration before erosion becomes entrenched. Own portfolio performance management (volume, share, margin, mix, brand health); identify gaps/opportunities and recommend corrective actions. Leverage portfolio pricing and revenue growth management in partnership with relevant enabling/ commercial teams.
Provide evaluation of investment level across categories. Establish cross-category ROI frameworks informed by performance to enable disciplined investment allocation. Ensure total PMI portfolio value creation remains the anchor in brand level debates. Partner with Finance to align portfolio ambition with financial guardrails and targets.
Ensure portfolio-level coherence across Oral and Inhalable strategic roadmaps, preventing duplication, cannibalization, or fragmented investment. Facilitate trade-offs discussions with Brand/Commercial teams when capacity or capital constraints require prioritization. Ensure portfolio strategy is reflected consistently in activation intensity, innovation prioritization, and deployment logic, all informed by consumer insight and performance evaluation.
Own the integration of portfolio strategy into annual and long-range planning cycles. Ensure portfolio decisions support the transformation toward new categories while managing legacy business realities. Lead alignment between Oral and Inhalable brand-level plans and overall portfolio performance expectations. In collaboration with Brand and Innovation, lead business case development for major initiatives, including investments and capability builds.
Lead portfolio strategy and performance management teams, building strong analytical, financial, and governance capabilities. Foster a culture of data-informed decision-making, constructive challenges, and disciplined follow-through