Sr Manager, Dairy Climate Smart Agriculture

Job Description:
Job Purpose/Overview
The world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. At Mars, our Sustainable in a Generation (SIG) Plan is our roadmap to creating a healthy planet where people and pets can thrive. Following the ambition of Mars, Incorporated to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions across our entire value chain by 2050, and in alignment with our Healthy Planet strategy under the Sustainable in a Generation Plan, dairy represents one of our most critical raw material footprints and emissions reductions opportunities.
The Senior Manager, Dairy Climate Smart Agriculture is a high-impact leadership role responsible for the end-to-end global strategy for Dairy sustainability across Mars, while directly leading and executing regional implementation in North America. This role will be responsible for translating Mars Snacking’s global Healthy Planet commitments into on-the-ground operational reality under a unified framework targeting holistic impact across carbon (-50% GHG reduction by 2030), water, regenerative agriculture, farmer livelihoods and animal welfare.
This role acts as a critical strategic bridge, connecting global Commercial, R&D, and regional brand teams with key value chain partners such as raw material suppliers, farmers, and 3rd party partners. By driving mutuality and co-investment, you will create generational resilience from Soil to Snack by derisking the climate smart dairy transition for farming communities while securing long-term supply chain resilience for Mars Snacking. This role serves as Mars Snacking’s key dairy sustainability expert, building strong partnerships to lead the industry in climate-smart food systems.
Key Responsibilities
1.Global Dairy Sustainability Strategy & Performance Management
Global Strategy Ownership: Design, refine, and champion the multi-year Global Dairy Sustainability Strategy for Mars Snacking, ensuring alignment to the evolving Healthy Planet strategy, regulatory requirements and customer commitments. Align category goals under a unified framework targeting holistic impact across carbon (-50% GHG reduction by 2030), water, regenerative agriculture, farmer livelihoods and animal welfare. Lead Mars Snacking thinking on the development of an animal welfare strategy.
Regional Execution and Scaling: Lead the deployment of holistic regional programming in North America that addresses relevant climate, regenerative ag, water, animal welfare and farmer livelihoods opportunities. Oversee projects and design pathways to scale these initiatives across dairy supply chain volumes, creating global connections on best practices where relevant.
Global Category Governance and Performance Management: Establish robust global governance and performance management processes to execute quarterly KPI tracking on category delivery for both short term actuals and long term forecasts.
Transition Finance & Funding: Partner with Global Commercial, financial institutions, and public agencies to design a funding strategy and implement innovative mechanisms (e.g., cost-sharing, premium structures, technical assistance grants, and public-private partnerships) that de-risk the multi-year transition for sustainable dairy. Own the budget of these programs and ensure they are built into global and regional financial planning process in partnership with global commercial and regional sustainability teams.
2.Supplier Engagement, Capacity Building & Partner Management
Strategic Sourcing Integration: Partner with Global Dairy strategic sourcing teams to integrate sustainability metrics and targets and animal welfare standards directly into sourcing strategies, commercial contracts, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and Joint Business Development Plans (JBDPs). Architect and negotiate innovative shared-value commercial models that support the right long-term incentives and joint risk sharing. Complete climate legal contracts working with Mars legal teams.
Supplier Relationship Ownership & Joint Roadmaps: Serve as the primary, high-influence relationship owner for strategic global and regional dairy suppliers. Build trusted, direct relationships with strategic suppliers and key growers to co-develop tailored, multi-year joint Dairy sustainability roadmaps that align to Mars’ Healthy Planet and Net Zero trajectory. Develop governance to drive executive sponsorship of supplier commitments to Mars sustainability targets and embed in supplier performance management processes.
Capacity & Capability Building: Support comprehensive supplier onboarding to Mars requirements and ensure suppliers are equipped with the knowledge and tools required to deploy Mars aligned interventions independently across their supply chain.
3rd Party Partner Management: Where relevant, manage technical implementation partners (e.g. agronomists, conservation groups, crop advisors) to ensure farmers receive high-quality, local, and practical support during their transition.
Measurement, Reporting & Verification:
Metrics & Reporting: Establish and maintain a robust, auditable system to track, verify, and report program performance data in accordance with global corporate metrics and standards. Project manage global dairy volume collection and audit process for annual footprinting exercise.
Tools & Accounting: Work with the Climate Data Lead to ensure program MRV is designed in line with global corporate standards and leverages approved partners. Own development of relevant supplier impact factors to ensure impact is accounted for in annual footprinting exercises. Support development of future tools to enhance the automation of dairy and overall Health Planet data.
Audit Readiness: Ensure all data collected from farm-level interventions is verifiable, meets substantiation requirements and is prepared for external 3rd party assurance to support corporate reporting.
Innovation, Industry Collaboration & Commercial Activation:
Technological Innovation: Act as lead point of contact for the External Partnerships team. Identify technological gaps in delivering our dairy sustainability goals as input into start up selection processes.
Precompetitive Alliances: Represent Mars in key regional industry coalitions to benchmark practices, pool resources and drive systemic sector change. Identify and manage relationships with potential program partners to drive collaboration.
Brand & Commercial Alignment: Support overall external communications on Mooving Dairy Forward strategy in partnership with Corporate Affairs. Translate dairy sustainability outcomes into customer value propositions that strengthen customer partnerships, support category growth and enable responsible commercialization in partnership with North America and Accelerator teams.
Internal Capability & Leadership:
XFunctional Coaching: Act as the regional subject matter expert, coach and train commercial buyers, category managers, and cross functional leadership on climate smart farming and the business case for sustainable dairy.
Global/Regional Bridge: Support North America and Acclerator regional sustainability teams in delivering key regional targets and drive consistency between the regional and global strategies and activation plans.
Context and Scope
The Senior Manager operates with a high degree of autonomy, navigating a complex, matrixed global organization.
Internal Context: This role acts as a critical link between global corporate sustainability commitments and regional procurement teams. The associate must successfully influence global Commercial Directors to embed sustainability criteria into dairy sourcing strategies. They will lead a global team with a direct report in Europe, requiring excellent cross-cultural leadership, virtual collaboration, and performance-management skills.
External Context: The dairy industry is unique due to the dominant role played by farmer-owned cooperatives. The candidate must possess the commercial and political savvy to negotiate with cooperative executives, the technical credibility to engage with industry experts and the ability to build relationships with our value chain partners, including strategic customers and retailers.
Job Specifications/Qualifications
Education & Professional Qualifications
Minimum: Bachelor’s Degree in Agronomy, Environmental Science, Sustainable Agriculture, Agricultural Economics, or a related technical discipline.
Preferred: Master’s Degree in a related technical agricultural field.
Knowledge / Experience
8+ years of direct industry experience (corporate, agribusiness, agriculture consulting or related sustainability industry) managing dairy sustainability programs or agricultural sourcing initiatives
Knowledge/understanding of global and regional dairy systems, with experience working with procurement teams to build comprehensive sourcing strategies
Proven ability to collaborate across multiple functions and track record of building trust and influencing diverse stakeholders, from multi-generational family farmers to executive commercial directors and downstream brand teams.
Strategic financial acumen and analytical capabilities. Strong command of agribusiness economics. Comfortable navigating digital systems for data management and reporti