Manager, Strategic Projects & Initiatives

Manulife • Waterloo, ON

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Manager, Strategic Projects & Initiatives is responsible for owning and delivering high-priority, cross-functional initiatives that advance Sales Enablement strategy and improve sales effectiveness across Retail Distribution. This role serves as a Projects & Initiatives Leader — translating strategic priorities into structured programs, driving disciplined delivery, and ensuring initiatives produce measurable business outcomes. The role provides direct people leadership and acts as a center of expertise for strategic execution & project delivery within the Sales Enablement organization.

Requirements

• 5+ years experience in strategy, sales enablement, transformation, or program leadership
• Demonstrated success leading multi-stakeholder initiatives with measurable outcomes, and a sharp attention to detail.
• Strong understanding of sales operations and distribution models
• Proven ability to influence and lead through complexity
• Ability to build relationships and support a culture of autonomy and trust with a people first mindset.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex, cross-functional sales enablement initiatives from business case through execution and optimization
• Translate strategic priorities into clear plans, milestones, success measures, and governance as well as formulate initiatives back into how they support our overall strategy.
• Own sequencing, dependency management, and risk mitigation for assigned initiatives
• Serve as the business execution lead within Sales, collaborating with Marketing, Product, AI & Analytics, Training, New Business & Operations.
• Facilitate working groups where needed to, resolve trade-offs, and build alignment across teams
• Ensure sales realities and timelines are embedded into initiatives
• Directly manage a small team (1 direct report initially, expanding to 3)
• Set priorities, coach performance, and build execution discipline and strategic capability
• Establish repeatable frameworks and best practices for initiative delivery
• Track initiative outcomes, adoption, and performance metrics
• Provide executive-ready updates, insights, and recommendations
• Drive post-implementation evaluation and continuous improvement

Benefits

• health
• dental
• mental health
• vision
• short- and long-term disability
• life and AD&D insurance coverage
• adoption/surrogacy
• wellness benefits
• employee/family assistance plans
• pension
• global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions
• financial education and counseling resources
• holidays
• vacation
• personal
• sick days
• full range of statutory leaves of absence

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed