Company

The Wonderful Company LLC

Location

Los Angeles, CA

The Role

Join this exciting, high-growth, global company and help us on our journey to ever higher heights. Known for our iconic brands such as FIJI Water, POM Wonderful, Halos Mandarins, Wonderful Pistachios, Justin Wine, and Teleflora, among many others, we strive to make the world a healthier and happier place. As a privately-held, vertically-integrated company with over a dozen businesses in our portfolio, we enjoy a significant competitive advantage in a set of unique market spaces -- particularly in food and beverage, where as a farm-to-table producer, we are a leader in nuts, citrus, pomegranates, wine, and water. As a value-driven company, we strive to achieve the highest standard of quality, integrity and success -- and as a major philanthropic donor, by also giving back to the communities where we live and work. Over the last five years, Wonderful has doubled in size to $4B in revenue and we are on pace to continue this trajectory. The Strategy Group members are essential partners in this success.

The Wonderful Company is currently looking for a Vice President of Strategy. The VP of Strategy is a key member of the Wonderful Company leadership team and will have complete responsibility for and provide outstanding leadership to a +25 person internal consulting group. Team members are located at the corporate office in Los Angeles, a satellite location in Bakersfield, CA, and elsewhere in Central California, Texas, Mexico, and Fiji. The Vice President of Strategy also works as a consultant/senior advisor to the Wonderful Company business unit leaders and corporate leadership--in particular, working closely with the CEO/Chairman to drive the overall strategic agenda.

The Strategy Group plays an essential role within the Wonderful Company leading a wide variety of strategic initiatives, M&A, change management efforts, risk management, and transitional operational efforts. The Group plays key roles in high profile projects, typically associated with driving acceleration of roughly 10% of company EBITDA annually. The Group works on projects across all of our BUs, within the broader corporate entity, and with our philanthropic arms in Education, Health and Wellness, and Community Development. Additionally, the group plays an important M&A function--driving multiple completed M&A transactions annually, as well as screening almost all potential new M&A deals on a regular basis. Importantly, the Strategy Group also plays a strategic role in the overall talent development for the Wonderful Company overall, as the group has historically been a key source of high potential talent. The group has a long history of recruiting top talent to the company and placing them in strong operational roles, including the VP of Strategy, who has historically been promoted from this position into a variety of high profile leadership roles.

This is a unique opportunity to join a vibrant and high-growth entrepreneurial company and help us create the next horizon of growth.

The Wonderful Company Strategy group pursues several objectives:

1. Lead and support the most important strategic, tactical, and operational initiatives for the Wonderful Company's seven (7) business units and also the broader corporate entity with the objective to grow revenue, reduce costs, and improve operations and efficiency.

2. Lead new business growth and development at the holding company level, including M&A, post-acquisition integration, product development, and other new opportunities.

3. Incubate new businesses, new capabilities, new offerings, or other strategic initiatives for the overall Wonderful Company

4. Develop team members to be ready for leadership roles in the business and support their transition into management roles for the operating companies. Roughly 30-40% of the group is promoted into operating roles each year.

Here's what you'll do:

Responsibilities are critically important and extremely visible:

• Work closely with the CEO/Chairman/owners and the BU Presidents to identify key areas of focus for the overall company, and the individual businesses
• Coordinate and manage a complex portfolio of strategic projects across the broader entity (roughly between 10-15 at any one time), and ensure successful delivery
• Play a lead role in developing practical solutions to challenging issues across the company
• Interface directly with the owners, BU presidents and their senior management, and other corporate executives, partnering on key strategic initiatives
• Act as a driving force behind critical strategic, operational, and organizational changes
• Reports to the former leader of the group, and current President of POM Wonderful
• Travel approximately ~40%, mostly within California--but also depending on projects to other locations, including our operations in Texas, Mexico and Fiji

Here's what you'll bring to the table:

Required Experience:

• MBA from a leading institution preferred
• Minimum of 15 years total work experience
• REQUIRED, a minimum of +6 years experience in management consulting at the Principal level or above from a top firm (McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte/Monitor, etc.)
• Ideally, minimum of 3 years experience in a line management role at a relatively senior role (operations; sales; distribution; or product line, divisional, or geographic general management, etc.), preferably with P&L responsibility
• Ratio of consulting to line experience can vary for right candidate and right experience, but strong consulting experience is a must
• Strong problem-solving skills, project management experience, and strategic acumen -- in combination with a practical, action-based mindset
• Supervisory / management responsibility for multiple staff
• Experience in the food, agricultural, or consumer products industries desirable but not required

Required Skills:

• Outstanding leadership and executive presence
• History of working on complex projects and with senior executives
• Experience hiring, training, developing, motivating, and retaining high-performing consultants and future executives
• Experience with a wide variety of critical business skill sets (Finance, Valuation, LEAN operations, Market Assessment, Capital Deployment, etc)
• Superior problem solving and analytical skills (both quantitative and qualitative)
• Academic smarts in combinations with street smarts -- must have practical, action-oriented mindset
• Ability to execute and follow through on group commitments

Perks

Here's what we'll bring to the table:

• An opportunity to shape and guide a dynamic company at a critical period of growth -- with likely opportunities to assume a greater leadership role within the company over time
• An opportunity to join the senior leadership team and build close working relationships with the owners, BU presidents, and other senior company leadership
• A competitive salary and benefit package including a comprehensive suite of executive-level health and retirement benefits
• Wonderful Giving (

) -- a program where the company gives money to causes of your choice, both in pure donations and in matching grants * A fun and health-focused environment, including an onsite farm-to-table café, yoga and wellness classes, healthy snacks, bike programs, and subsidized benefits to local gyms, museums, athletic competitions, and other opportunities

Headquartered in Los Angeles, The Wonderful Company is a privately held $4 billion global company dedicated to harvesting health and happiness around the world through its iconic consumer brands. The company's 9,000 employees worldwide are dedicated to bringing consumers everywhere the freshest, most wholesome pistachios, almonds, citrus and pomegranates; bottling the finest water and wines; and creating colorful bouquets that are sure to touch the heart. This commitment is reflected in the company's market share: Wonderful Pistachios is America's No. 1 tree nut brand and one of the top-selling salty snacks; Wonderful Halos is the No. 1 mandarin orange in America; POM Wonderful is the No. 1 100% pomegranate brand in America; FIJI Water is America's No. 1 premium bottled water brand; Teleflora is the No. 1 floral delivery service through local florists; and JUSTIN Wine has the No. 1 Cabernet Sauvignon in California. A 2016 Nielsen study evaluating the familiarity, quality, and momentum of more than 2,500 leading brands revealed that Wonderful Company products dominated the top 10 lists of consumers across all generations, more than any other consumer goods company.

The Wonderful Company's connection to consumers has health at its heart and giving back in its DNA. The company has a long-standing commitment to corporate social responsibility, including more than $120 million invested in environmental technologies and sustainability research, $45 million in charitable giving and education initiatives every year, $30 million toward the construction of a new charter school campus in California's Central Valley, and innovative health and wellness programs, including two new, free primary care clinics for employees and their dependents.

To learn more about The Wonderful Company, its products and core values, visit , or follow us on , and .

The Wonderful Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer and with opportunities for advancement. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected categories.