Senior Director, Public Affairs and Strategy

The Coca-Cola Company•Washington, DC

About The Position

This senior leadership role is responsible for developing the holistic state and local legislative strategy for the U.S. Public Affairs team while providing direct leadership to a multi-regional team. The role ensures that state and local policymaking efforts align with the company’s business objectives and priorities. The individual will also serve as a key liaison to the North American Government Affairs team, ensuring seamless collaboration and alignment on legislative priorities and advocacy across all levels of government. Location Washington DC, ATLANTA, or within 55 miles of state capital in east, central or South region

Requirements

Legislative Strategy Leadership: Strong experience in leading legislative advocacy efforts across multiple U.S. states, with the ability to develop, implement, and oversee comprehensive strategies that align with business objectives.
Team Leadership: Proven track record of leading and managing a multi-regional team of public affairs professionals, fostering collaboration, high performance, and measurable results in legislative engagement.
Stakeholder Relationship Building: Exceptional ability to build and sustain relationships with public officials, legislative staff, regulatory stakeholders, and advocacy coalitions across all levels of government.
Policy Expertise: Robust knowledge of public policy issues affecting The Coca-Cola Company and the beverage/consumer goods industry.
Communication and Advocacy: Skilled in developing and delivering effective messaging to external stakeholders. Internally, demonstrates ease in navigating a matrix system and continually develops and nurtures partnerships that facilitate the successful endorsement and execution of our strategies especially with Franchise Operations and bottlers.
Data-Driven Insights: Ability to analyze legislative trends and regulatory proposals to create proactive, forward-looking solutions.
10 - 15 years of relevant experience, ideally in senior roles with responsibility for state and local government affairs, including state legislation, state policy development, and/or political and issue campaigns, as well as communications, stakeholder management and sustainability.
Proven track record of building and leading high-performing teams, and successfully collaborating with colleagues from across a broad spectrum, including team members, those in other parts of the organization, industry peers and political stakeholders.
Ability to analyze complex business and regulatory issues, manage divergent stakeholders and bring together multiple concepts across functions to define and lead the public affairs and government relations strategy for the business across U.S. states in partnership with peers.
The role leads communication on a regular basis with key internal and/or external parties, and has the responsibility for sharing information, influencing and negotiating with key parties and stakeholders with both shared and opposing interests.
Mastery of (REQUIRED) PUBLIC POLICY & GOVERNMENT RELATIONS STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS INCIDENT MANAGEMENT & CRISIS RESOLUTION SUSTAINABILITY