Senior Director, Legal Counsel - Human Rights

Location(s):

United States of America

City/Cities:

Atlanta

Travel Required:

26% - 50%

Relocation Provided:

Job Posting End Date:

April 18, 2025

Shift:

Job Description Summary:

The Senior Legal Counsel, Human Rights will report directly to the Associate General Counsel, Global Strategic Partnerships, and will lead the Company’s Global Human Rights Compliance Strategy and related Human Rights programs. The successful candidate will be an experienced lawyer, a Global Human Rights regulatory subject matter expert, and will have executive presence, the ability to influence, and will provide dynamic advocacy, within our system and with external stakeholders, to ensure alignment with the Company’s Human Rights Compliance Strategy and to protect our license to operate.  They will also work cross functionally across our legal networks, as well as with Global Procurement, Technical Innovation & Supply Chain, Public Affairs, Communications & Sustainability, and our Operating Units and System Bottlers to identify, evaluate, mitigate, remediate and report, as appropriate, human rights risks in our supply chain.  The role also engages in multi-stakeholder forums and drives industry collaboration.  

Responsibilities include:

Legal Compliance:

• Maintain an ongoing and deep level understanding of all relevant laws and regulations including any and all Transparency laws (ex. California Transparency in Supply Act and the UK Modern Slavery Act); Due Diligence laws (ex. The EU’s CSDDD); Trade Restrictions (ex. Forced Labor regulations in Mexico, the EU and Canada); and other relevant forms of liability (ex. TVPRA and SEC material disclosure standards).
• Collaborate with colleagues in the Global Legal Function and particularly, operating unit lawyers, and provide leadership and trainings to same to increase awareness of relevant Human Rights Laws and Regulations, and to support their local compliance efforts.
• Establish routines with sourcing colleagues in Technical & Supply Chain, and Global Procurement, to ensure inclusion of the latest standards regarding Human Rights Compliance in our contracts, including ongoing transparency, access to data and other information, and continuing audit rights.
• Participate as a regulatory SME in supply negotiations.
• Provide ongoing advice and guidance to legal colleagues supporting our manufacturing plants and warehouses. 
• Support the Human Rights Team’s reporting obligations to internal and external stakeholders including the Operating Unit Presidents, Executive Leadership Team and any report outs to the Board of Directors.
• Support the Human Rights Team’s reporting obligations to regulatory agencies around the world.

Due Diligence:

• Support our internal and cross-functional Global Human Rights Committee and establish relationships across the Network (Global Procurement, Public Affairs, Communications & Sustainability, Technical Innovation & Supply Chain, Legal and Human Resources).  Establish routines and processes to raise issues for review and approval by the Committee.  
• Continuously monitor Global Human Rights risks and trends, and maintain a dashboard that organizes risk, mitigations, remediations, and reporting.  Conduct ongoing evaluation of tools to support this responsibility. 
• Work with Global Procurement to ensure that the Supplier Guiding Principles are up to date and embedded appropriately in our supply agreements, including routine industry benchmarking as well as working with Global Procurement and our ingredient suppliers to develop and implement programs mitigating human rights risks beyond the Tier 1 level.
• Support the development and assist in updating audit program materials to ensure global consistency and rigor for audit firms, suppliers, bottlers and relevant The Coca-Cola Company’s functions. Program materials include audit protocol materials, audit toolkits, program guidance, FAQs and documentation for KORE, The Coca-Cola Company’s Operating Requirements.
• Support the development of materials to build bottler and supplier capabilities to cascade respect for human rights through their operations and supply chain. Provide support, subject matter expertise and governance on topics related to human rights for global procurement functions and our networked procurement program (the Cross Enterprise Procurement Group or “CEPG”), which include The Coca-Cola Company’s functions and bottling partners.
• Work collaboratively with Operating Unit counsel to manage global customer agreements related to human rights and respond to global customer inquiries, including global stewardship reporting with large