Senior Director, Portfolio, Connections & Media

The Coca-Cola Company; Atlanta (GA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

The Coca-Cola Company is seeking a Sr. Director, Portfolio to provide strategic oversight across the Connections & Media brand portfolio, partnering with analytics, finance, consumer intelligence, and agency teams to drive investment governance and performance.

This role will help shape a modern, audience-first planning approach and drive measurable business outcomes. You will lead cross-functional collaborations, steward portfolio performance, and guide organizational transformation to ensure

Qualifications

• 10-12 years of experience in media, marketing, communications strategy, audience development, growth planning, or connected marketing, with increasing responsibility for investment stewardship, business performance, and strategic leadership.
• Experience in leadership roles within agencies, media organizations, consulting firms, or client-side marketing organizations at scale.
• Experience in consumer-packaged goods (CPG) or complex multi-brand environments is advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Strong influencing skills and ability to lead across complex, matrixed environments.
• Drive strategic thought leadership across the communications ecosystem and advocate audience-led approaches.
• Interpret business, consumer, and performance data to develop insightful solutions and translate objectives into decision frameworks.
• Partner across functions to align audience strategies, investments, measurement plans, and commercial objectives.
• Champion innovation, continuous improvement, and disciplined investment stewardship.

Skills

Influencing skills

Strategic leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Data-driven decision making

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Excel

BI tools

Analytics platforms

Job description

The Sr. Director, Portfolio is responsible for providing strategic oversight across the portfolio of brands within the Connections & Media team, reporting to the VP, Connections & Media. The role is responsible for driving strategic thought leadership, portfolio stewardship, investment governance, business performance management, and system communications across the portfolio of brands. In addition, this role is responsible for stewarding operational excellence, enabling audience-led growth, and driving measurable business outcomes through effective investment decisioning. Operating in partnership with the Sparkling & Stills Leads, Marketing Analytics, Finance, Consumer Intelligence, Creative, Category/Brand, Commercial, and Agency teams, the Portfolio Lead ensures investments are aligned to enterprise priorities and optimized through continuous learning, audience intelligence, and performance signals. As the Connections & Media model continues to evolve, this role will help shape and operationalize modern audience-first practices, moving beyond campaign-based planning toward persistent audience architecture, adaptive decisioning, and continuous investment optimization. This leader will steward both portfolio performance and organizational transformation, ensuring teams, partners, and systems are positioned for the future of connected marketing.

Function-Specific Activities

• Strong influencing skills and an ability to lead effectively across complex, matrixed environments.
• Drive strategic thought leadership across the communications ecosystem, helping advance new ways of working, emerging technologies, and audience-led approaches.
• Interpret business, consumer, and performance data to develop insightful solutions to complex business challenges. Translate business objectives and priorities into strategic briefs and decision frameworks that guide internal and external partners.
• Partner across functions to align audience strategies, communications investments, measurement plans, and commercial objectives in support of business growth.
• Champion innovation, experimentation, continuous improvement, and organizational learning while maintaining disciplined investment stewardship.

Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Advertising, Communications, Business, Analytics, Economics or a related field is required. Advanced coursework or certifications in marketing analytics, communications strategy, digital marketing, audience strategy, media, or emerging technologies are a plus.

Experience

• 10-12 years of experience in media, marketing, communications strategy, audience development, growth planning, or connected marketing, with increasing responsibility for investment stewardship, business performance, and strategic leadership.
• Experience may include leadership roles within agencies, media organizations, consulting firms, or client-side marketing organizations operating at scale.
• Experience within the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry or other complex, multi-brand consumer businesses is advantageous.

Media & Audience Expertise

• Deep understanding of connected media ecosystems, audience architecture, digital and biddable channels, and the evolving role of AI-enabled decisioning systems.
• Experience leveraging audience, performance, and business intelligence signals to guide communications investment decisions is required. Familiarity with communications technology stacks, data ecosystems, and modern planning, activation, and measurement capabilities is highly desirable.

Data & Analytical Skills

• Proficiency in using data to inform investment decisions, optimize performance, and evaluate business outcomes.
• Able to interpret consumer research, market intelligence, marketing effectiveness data, and advanced analytics to derive actionable insights for audience engagement and communications strategy.
• Experience with modern measurement frameworks and capabilities, including A/B testing, lift analysis, incrementality testing, leading indicators, MMM/rMMM, media ROI curves, and business outcome measurement.
• Able to partner effectively with analytics teams to apply these methodologies to real-world business challenges and investment decisions.
• Strong skills in Excel, BI tools, and modern analytical platforms are important.
• The ideal candidate combines analytical rigor with commercial acumen and a pragmatic mindset, translating complex findings into clear recommendations and actionable business decisions.

Collaboration & Communication

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and coordinate across teams, functions, and stakeholders.
• Experience working within highly cross-functional environments is required.
• Comfortable partnering with brand leaders, creative teams, analytics partners, consumer intelligence teams, commercial stakeholders, agencies, platforms, and external vendors.
• Able to clearly articulate portfolio strategies, investment recommendations, business rationales, and performance outcomes to senior leadership while also engaging effectively in operational discussions with agency and executional partners.
• Strong presentation, storytelling, and written communication skills are critical.
• Adept at building alignment across diverse stakeholder groups, influencing change, and driving adoption of new approaches within a large, matrixed organization.

Project Management & Leadership

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex projects, programs, and business initiatives from planning through execution and post-analysis in environments characterized by ambiguity and change.
• Highly organized, with strong attention to detail and the ability to balance multiple priorities simultaneously.
• Capable of setting clear priorities and adapting quickly as business conditions evolve or new opportunities emerge.
• While this role may not directly manage a large team, strong leadership skills are essential, as the role will lead cross-functional working groups, influence senior stakeholders, and guide agency and partner teams.
• Demonstrated ability to lead organizational transformation, operating model evolution, capability development, and adoption of emerging technologies, automation, and AI-enabled ways of working.
• A bias for action, growth mindset, and proactive problem-solving approach are essential.
• This leader takes initiative, drives accountability, navigates complexity effectively, and consistently translates strategy into execution and measurable business impact.