Associate Director - Sustainability

Overview

• pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) is the future of our organization – a strategic end-to-end transformation, with sustainability at the center of how we will create growth and value by operating within planetary boundaries and inspiring positive change for the planet and people. It is our roadmap for becoming the global leader in convenient foods and beverages and a leading actor in the transformation of the global food system. Our aspiration focuses on integrating purpose into our business strategy and doing even more for the planet and for our people. It also aims to leverage our scale, reach and expertise across the areas where it can have the greatest impact – Agriculture, Water, Packaging, Products, Climate and People – to help build a more sustainable food system.
• This role will focus on defining, streamlining & evolving overall strategy and transformation plans across all pep+ goals by working with technical team leads, provide overall governance to cross-functional teams to embed sustainability in our business processes and drive the wholistic agenda execution.
• The Senior Manager Sustainability (Lead- Sustainability) will support PepsiCo India’s Pep+ roadmap, ensuring alignment with global commitments on climate, agriculture, packaging, and ESG reporting. This will be a PO1 role.
• The position requires expertise in sustainability strategy, data management, and stakeholder engagement, with a focus on measurable impact across PepsiCo’s supply chain and operations, including food & beverages.

This role is based in Gurgaon reporting directly to Chief Corporate Affairs Officer & Head, Sustainability with a matrix reporting to Chief Sustainability Officer APAC & INDIA

Responsibilities

Governance & Oversight

• Drive overall governance across OU Office and cross-functional sustainability task forces with regular meeting cadences, progress tracking and performance reporting

• Provide thought leadership to sustainability and business partners, including the Executive Committee, and other operating leaders on a broad range of business-critical sustainability topics

• Manage, direct, advise and/or influence cross-functional to shape, develop, advocate, implement, or accelerate implementation of sustainability goals

• Sustainability Strategy & Execution
  • Develop and implement PepsiCo India’s sustainability initiatives in line with global “pep+” commitments.
  • Track execution of initiatives across the pillars, and highlight risks and enable opportunities as possible
  • Liaise effectively between GSO, regional Sustainability teams and India teams to ensure transparency and predictability
  • Co-lead Pep+ Big Bet projects and drive outcomes to deliver against agreed KPIs
• Monitoring & Impact Assessment
  • Collect, consolidate, and verify sustainability data for reporting
  • Partner with execution and governance teams to ensure compliance with necessary
  • • Track progress against sustainability KPIs (GHG reduction, water use, waste management).
    • Provide insights and recommendations for continuous improvement.
    • Demonstrate strong leadership and significant influence with the ability to gain credibility with Sr Leadership
    • Own “Executive-ready” project deliverables and manage Executive Committee updates and other communications
  • Stakeholder Engagement
    • Analyze external trends on environmental issues by staying on top of consumer, competitive, and macroeconomic/geopolitical trends and incorporate the insights in our strategic plans
    • Collaborate with external stakeholders (industry associations, partners, vendors, government bodies) to enable strengthening sustainability ecosystems.
    • Engage internal teams across supply chain, sales, and operations to embed sustainability practices.
    • Represent PepsiCo in internal/ external forums for driving PepsiCo’s sustainability agenda
  • Ensure audits for water, plastics and sustainability report
    • Drive the delivery on PEP’s EPR commitments for the food business
    • Drive the delivery of water and plastics audit as per company / regulatory requirements

Qualifications

• The candidate should have atleast 10-15 years of experience in Sustainability & CSR field & Master’s degree in Environment /Sustainable Development or related fields