Manager, KOlab North America Collaboration Center

At Coca-Cola, our vision is to create loved brands, done sustainably, for a better shared future. We strive to provide marketing leading excellence in ingredients, innovation, design, and marketing. We are currently seeking a Manager for Coca-Cola's North America Collaboration Center.

The Coca-Cola North America Collaboration Center (also known as the KOlab) is one of three global collaboration centers across the world. The North America Collaboration Center serves as an incubator of differentiated ideas, best practices, and critical insights to advance key business priorities of our top customers and stakeholders. The North America Collaboration Center / KOlab rolls into the Customer Value & Growth Organization in Foodservice & On-Premise Organization (FSOP). In addition to FSOP and Retail customers, Internal Partners, Franchise, Innovation and Community stakeholders across Coca-Cola leverage this differentiated capability.

The KOlab Manager will partner closely with the KOlab leaders who guide the vision, purpose and strategies of the KOlab. Key responsibilities include leading day-to-day management of details that deliver successful execution of customer engagements with top customers and stakeholders of The Coca-Cola Company. The KOlab Manager is also responsible for the delivery of critical, end-to-end strategic projects which shape the current and future state of the KOlab.

This role is in-person at the KOlab facility in Atlanta. The role requires in-person, face-to-face work in a highly interactive environment with customers, internal teams and external stakeholders on a daily basis.

What Role Will Entail:

Project Leadership

• Lead key processes, timelines and critical details associated with customer session planning. This will include organizing, prioritizing and collaborating with customer / stakeholder teams to align on key details required for successful collaboration sessions. This will include booking sessions and routines to ensure successful outcomes.
• Develop detailed work plans, schedules, and logistics to meet deadlines for customer / stakeholder sessions. This will require proactively coordinating with customer and stakeholder teams to ensure key details and deliverables for sessions are aligned and communicated with excellence.
• Define, oversee, lead and bring to life strategic projects that are highly-complex in nature. Projects will include reinvention and reimagination of the physical KOlab space to drive more productive sessions, developing new processes to streamline planning and organizing of collaboration sessions and/or implementation of new technologies that increase operational effectiveness of session intake and execution.
• Manage KOlab budget and investment spending/costs associated with session execution.

Customer Collaboration

• Co-facilitate / facilitate customer collaboration sessions. This will be a learned experience in role. It will include engaging with C-suite leaders to identify problems to be solved, and pathways toward solutions leveraging Design Thinking principles.
• Lead occasional tours of the KOlab facility for customers, stakeholders and internal partners who seek to learn and leverage the space for inspiration. This is an important aspect of the entire KOlab team - sharing across the network and serving as an ambassador of the space.

Skills Required:

Success in role will be a balance of managing both day-to-day details required for collaboration sessions to function flawlessly, as well as exceptional delivery of end-to-end projects that impact the broader KOlab vision as a collaboration center of excellence. This role will require a solid balance of executing tactical details, as well as setting the foundation and guiding complex projects. Skills needed for success:

• Planning and Organizing day-to-day as well as longer range projects with operational impact on customer engagements / sessions.
• Communication Skills to update/inform and share changes in direction, as well as clarity and guidance with cross functional partners.
• Influencing others to take action to deliver against session planning needs for success (timelines, meeting content, details for success).
• Complex Project Management guided by strategic thinking and making deliberate choices, pivots and decisions that will advance projects forward with a high degree of autonomy. Must take full accountability on project road mapping and milestones to keep deliverables on track.
• Understanding the Beverage Business and the Coca-Cola Network to advance critical projects through an awareness of how the industry operates to add value to project leadership and to tap into the organization to advance operational efficiency in project management.

Experience and Growth Mindset:

An ideal candidate will have 5 - 7 years experience related to project management with proven results and outcomes, effective communication skills across various stakeholders and partners, CPG / beverage industry knowledge, and superb organizational skills. An ideal candidate must also demonstrate an attitude of persistent problem solving and a desire to make a difference as demonstrated through:

• Initiative: Work autonomously, with a growth mindset, empowered to make decisions with limited guidance.
• Entrepreneurial Spirit: The ability to try new things and test/learn to create improvements in projects, process and engage the best thinking on ideas to advance.
• Agility & Problem-Solving Skills: Quickly identify challenges and implement effective solutions. Creatively and proactively think through solutions.
• Decision-Making: Make sound decisions with demonstrated used of business judgement, particularly under time pressure and with incomplete information.

Education:

Minimum Required: Bachelor's Degree

Location - Atlanta, GA

Travel - Approximately 10%

Skills:
Team Development; Communication; Influencing; organization; Planning Ability