Job Title

Vice President, Category Management

Job Description Summary

The Vice President, Category Management is a senior enterprise leadership role within Cushman & Wakefield’s global Procurement organization, reporting directly to the Chief Procurement Officer. This role provides leadership to the global Category Management function and ensures strong visibility and engagement with executives across the organization to advocate for procurement objectives and critical procurement-related initiatives.

The role leads and develops a global category management organization of 30+ professionals and is responsible for the development and execution of category strategies across major spend areas, including Integrated Facilities Management (IFM), corporate services, Information Technology, professional services, staff augmentation, fleet, and other indirect categories.

The Vice President partners closely with business unit leaders, functional stakeholders, and regional Procurement leadership to drive operating margin improvement, service quality and consistency, risk mitigation, and value creation for both Cushman & Wakefield and its clients.

Job Description

Leadership

• Lead category management teams by establishing and communicating the vision and strategic direction of the category management function within the enterprise-wide procurement strategy; provide coaching and direction to drive performance and staff development.
• Foster a working environment that promotes high performance, accountability, and innovation.
• Remove roadblocks to enable delivery of procurement objectives and client account goals.
• Promote compliance with Cushman & Wakefield’s Code of Conduct.

Category Management Excellence

• Lead and inspire Category Management teams to develop and execute global and regional category strategies across IFM (mechanical, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, janitorial, security, landscaping, MRO), corporate services, IT, staff augmentation, fleet, and professional services, utilizing advanced category management methodologies including spend analytics, supply market intelligence, benchmarking, and should-cost analysis, as applicable.
• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing global category management organization by defining operating rhythms, decision frameworks, and capability development for category leaders.
• Promote a culture of collaboration, accountability, and commercial rigor, serving as a visible and credible advisor across corporate and field organizations to drive portfolio-level cost optimization.
• Partner across Procurement to advance category analytics, Agentic AI initiatives, sustainability, and other enterprise priorities.
• Align category management strategy with service line and procurement priorities in partnership with procurement business partners and service line leadership, balancing margin targets, client commitments, and category excellence outcomes, and collaborating with account-facing procurement to realize client value.
• Own and evolve the enterprise Preferred Supplier Program to meet business and client needs; monitor utilization and performance, strengthen supplier rosters, and collaborate with suppliers to drive performance consistency, cost predictability, process efficiency, and innovation.
• Establish governance, compliance, and performance management models across categories and suppliers, partnering with Legal to develop scalable and enforceable contracting frameworks that protect Cushman & Wakefield and client interests.
• Implement and track KPIs related to savings realization, service levels, safety, and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Engage externally to exchange industry insights, best practices, and emerging trends.

Business Influence

• Develops and maintains strong relationships with business units and on account procurement teams; infuses preferred supplier relationships into account delivery. 
• Creates a unified team environment and team goals and ensures all business units and vendor stakeholders understand the connection between account goals objectives and preferred supplier program.
• Drives for results by consistently achieving goals in a timely manner.
• Develops and delivers communications with clarity and impact, ensuring consistent messaging at multiple levels.
• Leads a team that reinforces and maintains standards, processes and templates that enable sourcing delivery.
• Encourages creation and brings new best in class ideas and approaches to the table for developing and executing category strategies and working within the supply market to ensure Cushman & Wakefield meets or exceeds their objectives.
• Working