Manager, Portfolio Strategy

Mars•Chicago, IL

4d•$108,160 - $148,720•Onsite

About The Position

The Manager, Portfolio Strategy is a high-impact strategic orchestrator tasked with identifying, designing, and launching growth initiatives to unlock massive volume and household penetration (HHP) growth across a multi-category portfolio. Supporting the Line Manager directly, this role acts as an agile project leader driving critical, complex initiatives. These include identifying challenger brand strategies, clarifying the role of brands and portfolio architecture, improving innovation performance knowledge, optimizing investment allocation strategies, refining go-to-market (GTM) execution, and establishing best-in-class portfolio practices to secure our long-term competitive advantage.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Strategy, Business Administration, or related field required (MBA preferred).
4+ years of experience in CPG, with a strong background in Brand Strategy, Strategic Planning, Category Management, or Go-To-Market/Trade Strategy.
Hands-on experience leveraging syndicated data, consumer insights, and shopper insights to identify growth opportunities and inform portfolio choices.
Strong stakeholder management
Innovation and pipelining management experience
Strong end-to-end project management capabilities
Comfortability managing high levels of ambiguity
Experience with coordinating complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives under tight timelines.
Strong communication, networking, and presentation skills
Strong knowledge of excel and PowerPoint

Responsibilities

Lead the execution of key strategic initiatives designed to unlock step-change volume, market share, and household penetration (HHP) growth across the entire portfolio.
Analyze and build capability around historical innovation performance, translating past launch learnings into scalable, repeatable best practices that optimize future success rates.
Partner with Sales, Trade Marketing, and Brand Activation to evaluate and improve GTM execution, distribution playbooks, and promotional investment strategies to ensure maximum ROI.
Identify challenger brand strategies and define the role each brand plays within the broader portfolio, ensuring clear choices on where to win, how to compete, and how resources should be prioritized.
Lead agile, multi-disciplinary teams (R&D, Sales, Finance, External Agencies) to rapidly develop, pressure-test, and scale complex projects from concept to commercial execution.
Support the Line Manager on high-priority strategic briefs, business case developments, and executive presentations addressing competitive threats, regulatory shifts, or macroeconomic trends.