MEA Consumer Insights & Growth Director

GSK; Dubai; On-site; AED 400,000 - 500,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading consumer health company in Dubai seeks a Director to drive insights and innovation across the MEA region. You will lead a strategic transformation, ensuring insights inform decision-making and foster growth. The ideal candidate will have over 10 years of relevant experience in FMCG or Consumer Healthcare, demonstrating exceptional analytical and communication skills. This role offers a unique opportunity to influence a leading company’s future direction.

Qualifications

• Minimum 10 years experience in Consumer Insights Strategy or Innovation leadership roles preferably in FMCG or Consumer Healthcare.
• Proven track record of driving growth through insight-led strategy and innovation.
• Strong fluency in digital tools and AI-driven methodologies.

Responsibilities

• Lead the MEA insights strategy and innovation agenda.
• Develop a MEA-wide learning agenda across category pillars.
• Build a performance enablement system integrating consumer market data.

Skills

Consumer Insights Strategy

Innovation leadership

Analytical capability

Stakeholder management

Job description

Hello. Were Haleon. A new world-leading consumer health company. Shaped by all who join us. Together were improving everyday health for billions of people. By growing and innovating our global portfolio of category-leading brands including Sensodyne Panadol Advil Voltaren Theraflu Otrivin and Centrum through a unique combination of deep human understanding and trusted science. Whats more were achieving it in a company that were in control an environment that were co-creating. And a culture thats uniquely ours. Care to join us. It isnt a question.

With category leading brands such as Sensodyne Voltaren and Centrum built on trusted science and human understanding and combined with our passion knowledge and expertise were uniquely placed to do this and to grow a strong successful business.

This is an exciting time to join us and help shape the future. Its an opportunity to be part of something special.

About the role

This role is a catalyst for Haleon MEAs transformation into a truly insight-led innovation-powered organization. As Director you will unify the MEA H4G strategy insights and innovation to drive commercial impact consumer relevance and future growth. You will reposition the CBIA team from reactive data providers to proactive business partners enabling evidence-based decision-making identifying growth opportunities and shaping the innovation pipeline with precision and purpose.

Role Purpose

To lead and transform Haleon MEAs insights strategy and innovation agenda into a future-fit consumer-centric growth engine. This role will translate insights and analytics into strategic implications informing where to play choices and adjusting growth levers to unlock sustainable growth across Power Brands and local stars. It will also integrate Haleons Access Strategy and Innovation Agenda ensuring affordability and accessibility are embedded into innovation and brand strategies. You will be the architect of a unified performance and innovation framework embedding insight-led decision-making across the business driving impact from concept to commercial execution and leading the Headroom for Growth (H4G) process for MEA to unlock commercial potential across categories markets and consumer segments.

Key Responsibilities

DATA LED INSIGHTS FORESIGHT AND ANALYTICS

• Develop and lead a MEA-wide learning agenda across Haleons three category pillars: OTC Oral Health Care (OHC) and Wellness. This includes not only planning new research but also synthesizing existing data consumer feedback and market intelligence to identify unmet needs demand spaces and growth vectors across categories and markets.
• Monitor emerging trends behavioral shifts and cultural patterns to inform strategic foresight and category planning.
• Translate behavioral and cultural insights into actionable strategies that shape brand development innovation and communication.
• Lead a proactive approach to closing critical data gaps and ensuring MEA has the right breadth and depth of data sources to deliver deeper consumer analytics & stronger performance understanding to support the accelerated growth ambition
• Build frameworks for consumer journey mapping decision trees and occasion-based segmentation tailored to Haleons health and wellness mission.
• Consolidate insights and performance data across categories and markets to proactively identify growth opportunities and surface early warnings on business risks enabling timely course correction and strategic intervention.
• Champion local brand flexibility by advocating for local jewels and BU-led innovations with tailored toolkits and governance support.

INNOVATION LEADERSHIP & EXECUTION

• Own the end-to-end MEA innovation strategy by informing innovation spaces through insights and analytics work including H4G. Provide a transparent view of performance to support teams in the end-to-end ownership of delivery ensuring alignment with consumer needs and commercial priorities in line with identified EGPs and H4G priorities.
• Lead the development of decision-support tools and frameworks that translate complex data into actionable business intelligence.
• Champion consumer intimacy programs include ethnographic research and localization of global insights.

PERFORMANCE ENABLEMENT

• Build and scale a performance enablement system across MEA that integrates consumer market and commercial data into a unified decision-making framework.
• Harmonize KPIs dashboards and review templates across markets to enable consistent tracking and course correction.
• Partner with Finance and Commercial teams to triangulate insights with business performance and growth levers.
• Oversee innovation tracking and investment effectiveness analysis integrating macroeconomic and consumer sentiment data into strategic planning.

OPERATIONAL LEADERSHIP & CAPABILITY BUILDING

• Own resource planning and budget deployment across CBIA teams to maximize strategic impact and operational efficiency.
• Lead capability building across all Insight Strategy and Innovation resources and marketing teams fostering a high-performance insight-driven culture.
• Elevate the analytical capability of the collective MEA organization at both BU and LOC levels by partnering with the EMEAL Regional Cteam. Leverage the full suite of analytical resources to identify performance drivers uncover growth opportunities and embed data-led decision-making across the region.
• Drive a cultural shift from reactive reporting to proactive opportunity identification ensuring insights are woven into business planning innovation and performance management.
• Build rituals and tools that position Insight and Analytics teams as strategic business partners surfacing trends unmet needs and whitespace opportunities across MEA.

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT & INFLUENCE

• Act as advisor to MEA LT BU leads LOC General Managers and global partners influencing decisions with data-backed narratives and ensuring market realities are reflected in planning.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration across BU and LOC with a strong emphasis on proactive constructive engagement with GMs to shape innovation feasibility prioritization and execution pace.
• Represent MEA in global forums contributing to the evolution of Haleons global insights and innovation strategy.

Qualifications and skills

Essential

• Minimum 10 years experience in Consumer Insights Strategy or Innovation leadership roles preferably in FMCG or Consumer Healthcare
• Proven track record of driving growth through insight-led strategy and innovation
• Experience in multi-country portfolio management and regional leadership
• Strong fluency in behavioral analytics digital tools and AI-driven methodologies
• Demonstrated strength in analytical capability able to leverage complex data sets advanced analytics and cross-functional inputs to identify performance drivers and unlock growth opportunities across BU and LOC levels.
• Exceptional communication influence and stakeholder management skills

Preferred

• 15 years in Consumer Insights Strategy or Innovation leadership roles preferably in FMCG or Consumer Healthcare
• FMCG Experience
• MEA Experience

Please save a copy of the job description as this may be helpful to refer to once the advert closes.

Care to join us. Find out what life at Haleon is really like Haleon we embrace our diverse workforce by creating an inclusive environment that celebrates our unique perspectives generates curiosity to create unmatched understanding of each other and promotes fair and equitable outcomes for everyone. Were striving to create a climate where we celebrate our diversity in all forms by treating each other with respect listening to different viewpoints supporting our communities and creating a workplace where your authentic self belongs and thrives. We believe in an agile working culture for all our roles. If flexibility is important to you we encourage you to explore with our hiring team what the opportunities are.
As you apply we will ask you to share some personal information which is entirely voluntary. We want to have an opportunity to consider a diverse pool of qualified candidates and this information will assist us in meeting that objective and in understanding how well we are doing against our inclusion and diversity ambitions. We would really appreciate it if you could take a few moments to complete it. Rest assured Hiring Managers do not have access to this information and we will treat your information confidentially.
Haleon is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race color national origin religion sex pregnancy marital status sexual orientation gender identity/expression age disability genetic information military service covered/protected veteran status or any other federal state or local protected class.

Accommodation Requests

If you require a reasonable accommodation or other assistance to apply for a job at Haleon at any stage of the application process please let your recruiter know by providing them with a description of specific accommodations you are requesting. Well provide all reasonable accommodations to support you throughout the recruitment process and treat all information you provide us in confidence.

Required Experience:

Director