Program Manager – Value Leadership

Mars • Chicago, IL

4d • $134,400 - $184,800

About The Position

The Program Manager – Value Leadership serves as the operating hub for the Value Leadership portfolio, ensuring project data, governance routines, savings visibility, risks, escalations, and cross-functional actions are captured accurately and advanced with clear ownership. This role brings structure to ambiguity and enables leaders and project owners to make timely, informed decisions. You will work closely with VL Leadership Director, Portfolio Directors, Project Leads, Finance, R&D, Commercial, Supply, Procurement, Manufacturing, Packaging, Logistics, and other senior stakeholders to maintain a reliable single source of truth for project status, savings, timing, approvals, risks, and decisions. The role supports the recurring VL operating rhythm, including project reviews, prioritization discussions, action tracking, escalation follow-up, reporting, and continuous improvement of portfolio tools and knowledge repositories.

Requirements

• 5-8 years of experience in portfolio management, program management, PMO operations, financial/savings tracking, strategic planning, change management, or similar roles in a complex, matrixed organization.
• Familiarity with Stage Gate, project intake, scoping, and other governance processes, including process discipline, required fields, documentation standards, and consistent application across teams.
• Experience using project data, savings assumptions, timing, risk, and resource inputs to support scenario modeling, prioritization, investment analysis, portfolio trade-off discussions, dashboards, summaries, and leadership-ready materials.
• Strong stakeholder engagement, change management, and communication skills, with the ability to influence across levels, simplify complex portfolio trade-offs, and reinforce follow-through through concise, data-driven storytelling.
• Comfortable working in ambiguity and shifting priorities, with strong organization, ownership, attention to detail, bias for action, and a continuous improvement mindset.
• Experience with portfolio, savings, reporting, and collaboration tools such as Sopheon Accolade/PPM, Sievo, Excel, Power Query, Power BI, SharePoint, Teams, project trackers, and action logs.

Responsibilities

• Lead and support scenario modeling, prioritization views, and portfolio analysis to evaluate Value Leadership pipeline options, including impact, feasibility, savings potential, timing, risk, and resource trade-offs.
• Translate portfolio analytics, project updates, and reporting outputs into clear recommendations and senior leader communications on portfolio health, value delivery, escalation needs, and open decisions.
• Support recurring Value Leadership project reviews, action tracking, decision documentation, escalation follow-up, and consistent use of the portfolio single source of truth.
• Act as a change agent for portfolio processes, including idea management, DVF/project intake, recurring review routines, standard reporting practices, and non-consumer-facing Stage Gate deployment.
• Strengthen portfolio management capability through playbooks, onboarding materials, process guidance, recurring routines, documentation standards, and shared knowledge repositories.
• Identify portfolio tool, reporting, and process gaps; map continuous-improvement opportunities; and partner with technology, data, finance, and functional teams to deliver practical improvements.
• Lead or indirectly guide project managers, workstream owners, coordinating priorities, clarifying ownership, tracking actions, and reinforcing accountability.

Benefits

• company bonus
• Best-in-class learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.
• An industry competitive salary and benefits package
• variable pay
• medical and dental benefits
• participation in 401k plan
• paid time off benefits

What This Job Offers

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