Director, Franchise Strategy - Independent Bottlers

Role Type: Individual Contributor

Reports into: Vice President, Integrated Ops - Independent Bottlers

This leadership role is accountable for supporting and constructively challenging the Franchise organization to translate enterprise and OU commercial strategy into market-level, executable actions across Independent Bottlers. The role acts as a strategic integrator across Franchise, Integrated Operations (IB), Bottlers, and OU Leadership, ensuring end-to-end alignment, disciplined execution, and continuous learning to drive sustainable growth.

What You’ll Do For Us

Strategic Integration & Execution

Partner closely with Integrated Operations (IB) teams to co-define, calibrate, and refine execution strategies based on market realities and bottler capabilities.Work with Franchise leadership to lead system-wide end-to-end alignment with Independent Bottlers at the local and market level.Act as a thought partner to Franchise Leads—alignment ownership remains with the Franchise Lead, while this role stewards rigor, clarity, and pace.

Insights-Led Commercial Strategy

Pull together data, analytics, and market insights to identify granular growth opportunities across channels, customers, and geographies.Translate insights into clear, actionable commercial levers that can be executed at the bottler and frontline levels.Use a fact-based, hypothesis-driven approach to challenge assumptions and sharpen local commercial strategies.

Strategic Project Leadership

Identify, frame, and conduct preliminary evaluation of strategic initiatives that support Franchise and system growth objectives.Own and manage the Franchise strategic project portfolio, partnering with Franchise teams, IB, and OU functions to drive outcomes.Ensure disciplined project governance—clear objectives, success metrics, timelines, and accountability.

Performance Measurement & Learning

Objectively assess successes and failures of strategic initiatives.Capture learnings and systematically feed insights back into future strategies and projects, strengthening institutional capability over time.Build mechanisms to network best practices, importing and exporting scalable ideas across markets and bottlers.

Enterprise Contribution

Partner with the OU Leadership Team (OULT) on business-critical, enterprise-level initiatives, bringing a system lens and execution rigor.

Work Focus / Leadership Expectations

Mastery in developing compelling, actionable consumer and commercial insights at market level.Ability to convert strategy into clear execution roadmaps with measurable commercial impact.Strong capability to manage ambiguity, complexity, and multiple senior stakeholders across the KO System.Demonstrated ability to influence without authority, particularly in bottler-facing environments.Role-model “Leadership in the Network”—collaborative, inclusive, enterprise-first mindset.

Qualifications & Requirements

8+ years of progressive experience in Operations, Commercial Strategy, Franchise, or related business roles.Proven leadership track record, including leading teams and influencing senior leadership forums.Experience working in complex, matrixed, and culturally diverse environments.Strong analytical orientation combined with practical, execution-focused thinking.

Communication & Stakeholder Management

Extensive engagement with senior leaders across the KO System, including high-stakes discussions and negotiations with bottlers.Exceptional storytelling, presentation, and influencing skills—able to align diverse stakeholders around shared outcomes.Demonstrated ability to tailor messaging to different audiences, balancing strategic depth with operational clarity.Comfortable navigating sensitive, high-context situations with maturity and commercial acumen.

What can help you be successful in this role?

Growth Behavior

Growth Mindset: Demonstrates Curiosity. Welcomes failure as a learning opportunity.Smart Risk: Makes bold decisions/recommendations.Externally Focused: Understands the upstream and downstream implications of his/her work.Performance Driven & Accountable: Has high-performance standards. Outperforms her/his peers.Fast/Agile: Removes barriers to move faster. Experiments and adapts. Thrives under pressure and at a fast pace.Empowered: Brings solutions instead of problems. Challenges the status quo. Has the courage to take an unpopular stance.

Leadership Behavior

Act Like an Owner: Deliver results, creating value for our brands, our System, our customers and key stakeholders.Collaborate with the System, Customers and Key StakeholdersDevelops Self and Others: Develop self and support others' development to achieve their full potential.Drive Innovation: Generate new or unique solutions and embrace new ideas that help sustain our business.

What We Can Do For You

Career growth and development: Leveraging our boundaryless network, we provide access to educational platforms and provide coaching, mentoring and feedback, as a part of our Leadership & Development process.Diverse and inclusive culture: You’ll be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs. We want to make our culture inevitable.International Experience: Become part of international projects and work along multicultural teams, through our global network.