Senior Director, Research and Development – Adult & Feminine Care North America

Senior Director, Research and Development – Adult & Feminine Care North America

Job Description

About Us

Kleenex®. Cottonelle®. Scott®. Huggies®. Kotex®. Poise®. Depend®. Kimberly-Clark Professional®. You already know our legendary brands—and so does the rest of the world. In fact, millions of people use Kimberly-Clark products every day. We know these amazing Kimberly-Clark products wouldn’t exist without talented professionals, like you.
 

At Kimberly-Clark, you’ll be part of the best team committed to driving innovation, growth and impact. We’re founded on more than 150 years of market leadership, and we’re always looking for new and better ways to perform – so there’s your open door of opportunity. It’s all here for you at Kimberly-Clark.

Led by Purpose. Driven by You.

We’re out to create Better Care for a Better World, and that takes leaders and teams who care about making a difference. In your Senior Director, Research and Development – Adult & Feminine Care North America role, you’ll apply your professional expertise, talent, and drive to building and managing our portfolio of iconic, ground-breaking brands to help us deliver better care for billions of people around the world. It starts with YOU.

What You’ll Do (Role Purpose)

The Senior Director, Research and Development – Adult & Feminine Care North America (AFC, NA) provides leadership for Adult and Feminine Care development and commercialization teams in support of the Personal Care business. The incumbent is accountable for leading and directing R&D teams to develop innovation strategies and a pipeline of high performing and consumer-preferred products. This includes front-end-innovation through development and commercialization, quality, asset strategy, and some life-cycle-maximization efforts. They will partner closely with cross-functional peers managing Central Research, International Personal Care, GMs, Brand Growth & Innovation (BG&I), Supply Chain and Regional and Global Procurement teams to achieve business objectives.

This leader is the Personal Care R&D representative on the AFC President’s Business Unit Senior Leadership Team and champions bringing the right resources from the Personal Care Front End Innovation and BizCon teams, as well as the OneR&D organization in support of the Kimberly-Clark North America (KCNA) AFC business.
 

The Senior Director, Research and Development – AFC NA will direct highly collaborative, cohesive, and high-performing R&D teams and inspire and energize teams to raise the bar on performance, develop new skills and turn-around declining market share and product acceptance relative to competition.
 

This role reports to the VP, R&D NA Personal Care and Global Sustainability Technology Development.
 

The Impact You Can Make

The Senior Director, R&D – AFC NA will/is:

• Lead the development of the AFC category technology and IP strategies, based on a deep understanding of the competitive advantages and gaps of KC relative to branded and unbranded competitors.  Fully leverages KCNA, Global and enterprise-wide capabilities and learning to outperform competition.

• Guide technical leaders and managers to develop and execute robust technology development and consumer learning plans to achieve innovation goals.

• Develop deep understanding of consumer needs, insights, and opportunities to develop consumer-winning concepts and products.

• Develop aggressive new technology learning plans, with appropriate use of technical fundamentals, modeling and rapid screening tests balanced with good technical judgment.

• Lead short through long-term personal care Materials innovation strategies, working closely with KC Global and external partners.

• Develop new products that meet consumer performance and financial targets based on deep understanding of category dynamics, market and customer needs and opportunities.

• Create and execute strategies, partnering with key stakeholders to take action that will advance shared interests and business goals.    

• Obtain information and identify key issues and relationships relevant to achieving a long-range goal or visions; committing to a course of action to accomplish a long-range goal or visions after developing alternatives based on logical assumptions, facts, available resources, constraints, and organizational values. 

• Partner with Strategy & Innovation, BG&I and Marketing colleagues to help create product portfolios and new concepts to deliver brand strategies and deliver market share growth.

• Partner with both the Regional and Global Supply Chain teams to support asset strategies, and technolo