Business Optimization & Internal Controls Director

B&H Photo Video; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

B&H Photo Video is seeking a Director to shape and lead the Business Optimization and Internal Controls functions. You will diagnose enterprise issues, define priorities with senior stakeholders, and drive transformation initiatives to improve execution and outcomes.

This highly visible role balances speed, scalability, governance, and risk management, elevating capabilities across teams and ensuring sustainable, measurable impact for the organization.

Qualifications

• Proven track record leading large-scale transformation programs.
• Experience building and maturing enterprise control environments.
• Ability to diagnose enterprise issues and design pragmatic solutions.

Responsibilities

• Set direction for Business Optimization and Internal Controls functions, with multi-year roadmaps.
• Lead cross-functional transformation initiatives end-to-end from problem definition to adoption.
• Strengthen governance, controls design, testing, and remediation processes across the organization.
• Partner with senior leadership to balance speed, efficiency, and risk.
• Establish enterprise-wide operating rhythms and accountability for outcomes.

Skills

Leadership & People Mgmt

Strategy & Transformation

Governance & Risk

Internal Controls

Communication & Influence

Data Fluency

Education

10-15+ years in management consulting, business operations, strategy, transformation, internal controls, risk management, or related disciplines

Job description

B&H is building Business Optimization and Internal Controls teams focused on improving how we operate so we can deliver more, faster, and better for our customers.

We are hiring a director to set the direction of both the Business Optimization and Internal Controls functions, lead the teams, and identify what is getting in the way of execution today. This role is accountable for strengthening the control environment while removing friction, simplifying complexity, and designing processes and operating models that enable teams to move with greater efficiency - speed, clarity, and consistency.

You will partner across departments and with senior stakeholders to diagnose enterprise-level issues, align leaders on priorities, design practical solutions, and lead transformation initiatives that make it easier for the business to execute and achieve better outcomes.

This role sits at the intersection of business transformation, process optimization, governance, risk management, and internal controls. Success requires the ability to balance speed, scalability, operational effectiveness, and appropriate governance while helping the organization navigate growth and complexity.

This is a highly visible leadership role with significant influence on how B&H evolves. You will provide direction to the Business Optimization and Internal Controls teams, elevate their capabilities and standards, and bring together deep internal knowledge with external perspective from mature or scaled environments.

Establish and Lead Enterprise Business Optimization

• Uncover friction and inefficiencies: Identify what’s slowing teams down, creating confusion, or leading to inconsistent outcomes across the business.
• Define problems with clarity: Take ambiguous challenges and break them into structured, actionable components.
• Simplify and improve processes: Redesign workflows, decision rights, and operating models to make execution easier, faster, and more reliable.
• Design practical solutions: Apply proven business frameworks and best practices while tailoring solutions to fit B&H’s reality.
• Lead cross-functional transformation: Own initiatives end-to-end, from problem definition through implementation and adoption.
• Enable faster execution: Remove blockers, streamline handoffs, and improve coordination across teams.
• Drive alignment and adoption: Bring stakeholders along by clearly communicating problems, solutions, and benefits.
• Leverage data to improve outcomes: Use data to diagnose issues, prioritize opportunities, and measure impact.
• Raise how we operate: Help introduce and institutionalize more consistent, scalable ways of working across the organization.

Lead Internal Controls and Strengthen Governance

• Strengthen the control environment: Partner with business and functional leaders to identify risk, establish practical preventive and detective controls, clarify ownership, and embed controls into day-to-day operations without creating unnecessary complexity.
• Assess enterprise risk and process vulnerabilities: Identify operational, governance, compliance, process, and organizational risks that may impact execution, scalability, customer experience, business continuity, or financial performance.
• Champion strong control design: Ensure key business processes include appropriate controls, monitoring mechanisms, accountability, and documentation.
• Establish governance frameworks: Create scalable approaches to process ownership, decision-making, accountability, escalation, and performance management.
• Reduce organizational risk and single points of failure: Identify dependencies, governance gaps, knowledge concentration, and process weaknesses and drive mitigation strategies.
• Integrate controls with transformation: Ensure process redesign and operating model changes improve efficiency while maintaining appropriate governance, traceability, segregation of duties, accountability, and sustainable risk management.
• Oversee control governance and remediation: Establish a consistent approach to control testing, issue tracking, escalation, remediation, and reporting to leadership.

Set the Direction of Business Optimization & Internal Controls

• Set team direction and priorities: Define the vision for both the Business Optimization and Internal Controls functions, establish multi-year roadmaps, operating priorities, success measures, and capability-building plans aligned with enterprise strategy.
• Establish methodologies, standards, and governance models that improve consistency, effectiveness, and scalability across both teams.
• Lead and develop managers, principals, analysts, and future team members, creating a high-performing organization focused on delivering measurable impact.
• Ensure resources are aligned to the most critical business priorities and risks.

Govern the Transformation Portfolio

• Govern the transformation portfolio: Prioritize opportunities, sequence initiatives, manage interdependencies and risks, and ensure the portfolio delivers measurable business value.
• Establish enterprise-wide operating rhythms that reinforce accountability, transparency, and execution.
• Balance business needs, resource constraints, risk considerations, and organizational priorities across competing initiatives.
• Ensure initiatives remain focused on outcomes rather than activity.

Partner with Business Leadership

• Act as a key partner to Risk, Finance, HR, IS, and business leadership teams.
• Support audit readiness efforts and ensure findings are addressed through sustainable process improvements.
• Translate risk, control, and governance requirements into practical operational solutions.
• Advise senior leaders on organizational challenges, governance considerations, operational risks, and opportunities for improvement.
• Build alignment across stakeholders and help navigate complex tradeoffs between speed, efficiency, customer experience, and risk.

Additional Responsibilities:

• As assigned by the Director

Specific Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

Problem Solving & Structure

• Strong, structured thinker who can quickly make sense of complex, ambiguous situations.
• Comfortable diagnosing root causes, not just symptoms.
• Familiar with business frameworks including process optimization, operating model design, governance models, KPI design, organizational effectiveness, and risk management.
• Able to simplify complexity and translate ideas into practical, implementable solutions.

Execution & Ownership

• Proven ability to lead large-scale initiatives and drive tangible outcomes.
• Strong program and portfolio management skills with a focus on delivering results, not just recommendations.
• Able to establish enterprise-wide operating rhythms that reinforce accountability, transparency, and rapid decision-making.
• Creates sustainable change that continues beyond the completion of individual projects.
• Comfortable balancing short-term business needs with long-term organizational capability building.
• Working knowledge of governance frameworks, internal controls, operational risk management, audit methodologies, and process accountability models.
• Ability to evaluate business processes through both operational effectiveness and risk-management lenses.
• Experience identifying control gaps and designing practical, sustainable solutions.
• Familiarity with concepts such as control design, control testing, segregation of duties, permissions governance, policy adherence, issue remediation, and risk mitigation.
• Ability to balance operational efficiency, customer experience, and risk management when designing solutions.
• Understands how governance can enable better execution rather than create unnecessary bureaucracy.

Communication & Influence

• Exceptional communicator who can clearly articulate problems, tradeoffs, and solutions.
• Able to build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders and executive leaders to influence direction, navigate organizational complexity, resolve friction, and accelerate alignment.
• Executive presence and judgment, with the ability to facilitate difficult discussions and communicate recommendations clearly to senior decisionmakers.
• Proven ability to influence without direct authority.
• Skilled at bringing people along through change.

Data Fluency

• Comfortable using data to inform decisions and measure success.
• Able to translate analysis into clear, actionable insights.
• Uses data to identify opportunities, prioritize investments, evaluate controls, and measure business outcomes.

Mindset

• Pragmatic and action-oriented; focuses on what works, not just what is ideal.
• Obsessed with making things simpler, more effective, and more scalable.
• High ownership and accountability.
• Collaborative and low ego, with a focus on outcomes over credit.
• Willing to challenge the status quo thoughtfully and constructively.
• Thinks at an enterprise level and optimizes for B&H as a whole rather than individual departments.
• Naturally balances transformation ambition with operational discipline.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and helping others do the same.

Preferred Education, Experience and Licenses:

• 10-15+ years in management consulting, business operations, strategy, transformation, operational excellence, internal controls, risk management, internal audit, or related disciplines.
• Track record of improving business performance through process, operating model, organizational, governance, or controls-related changes.
• Experience in mature or scaled environments, with the ability to bring those learnings into a privately owned, values driven organization.
• Demonstrated experience setting the direction of a team or function, translating enterprise strategy into a clear roadmap, and driving execution through others.
• Experience leading and developing high-performing teams, including coaching, performance management, resource planning, and capability development.
• Experience leading large-scale cross-functional initiatives involving business, technology, and operational stakeholders.
• Experience working with governance, risk, internal controls, compliance, or audit-related functions, either directly or as a senior partner.