PepsiCo, Brown-Forman and Beam Suntory are among the companies welcoming new faces to top jobs.
PepsiCo, Brown-Forman and Beam Suntory are among the companies welcoming new faces to top jobs.
Pic:getty/porcorex
Kirk Tanner, CEO of PepsiCo’s North America beverage business, will leave his role on February 2 to become the CEO of The Wendy’s Company.
Ram Krishnan has been appointed as the CEO for PepsiCo Beverages North America.
Tanner leaves PepsiCo after 32 years with the company. He joined in 1992 and has held several leadership roles across sales, operations, customer marketing, distribution, and channel development working in many U.S. and international locations. Over the years, Tanner's responsibilities included serving as President of PepsiCo Global Foodservice, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Frito-Lay's West Business Division; Vice President of Sales at PepsiCo U.K. and Ireland; and multiple Vice President roles of Frito-Lay North America regions.
He assumed the role of CEO for PepsiCo Beverages North America in 2019.
Ram Krishnan will succeed Tanner as Chief Executive Officer for PepsiCo Beverages North America. Krishnan currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of International Beverages and Chief Commercial Officer for PepsiCo. In these roles he oversaw the company's Global Concentrate group, Franchise operations, Global Beverage group, SodaStream, Beyond the Bottle and the Global Commercial organization, which includes, Customer Strategy, Revenue Management, Go-to-Market, E-Commerce, Lipton, Beyond Joint Ventures, and PepsiCo Venturing Group.
Since joining PepsiCo in 2006, Krishnan has held a number of senior leadership roles, including CEO of PepsiCo's Asia Pacific, Australia/New Zealand and China (APAC) Region, Senior Vice President and General Manager of PepsiCo's global Walmart Customer Team, and Chief Marketing Officer of Frito-Lay North America.
Prior to joining PepsiCo, Krishnan spent six years at Cadillac.
Pic: getty/khaosaiwongnatthakan
Beam Suntory has appointed Sarah Langley as Senior Vice President, Chief People, Culture & Communications Officer: succeeding Paula Erickson, who will retire on April 1, 2024, after a 15-year career with the company.
With a career spanning 20 years at Suntory, Langley (pictured above) started in 2004 at Frucor, the company’s beverage arm in Oceania, where she ultimately served as Chief People and Communications Officer from 2008 to 2018. She was then promoted to Suntory Holdings’ Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Global HR, based in Tokyo, where she spearheaded the global talent agenda across Suntory’s companies. Since 2020, Langley has been serving in a hybrid Suntory and Beam Suntory role as Chief Operating Officer, Global People & Culture, and as Beam Suntory’s Vice President HR Asia Pacific.
Langley will be responsible for the company’s global talent strategy, compensation and benefits, culture, learning capability and employee engagement, diversity and inclusion, organizational development and corporate communications. She will report directly to president and CEO Greg Hughes; and serve on the company’s executive leadership team.
A native of New Zealand, Langley earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Psychology and a Master of Arts in Industrial Psychology from Massey University in Auckland. She started her career in consulting with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Sheffield Limited in Oceania before joining Frucor.
Langley will be based at Beam Suntory’s global headquarters in New York City.
Paula Erickson (right) joined the company in 2008, leading Corporate Communications and Public Relations, and in 2014, following the acquisition by Suntory Holdings, she was tapped to join the executive team as Chief Human Resources Officer.
During her tenure, the company experienced tremendous growth, with sales nearly tripled and the company’s talent pool growing from 2,400 to around 6,500 employees across 100 markets.
Under Erickson’s leadership, the company says it has accelerated its diversity, equity and inclusion ambitions, step changed its benefits offerings, achieved “Best Place to Work” rankings around the world, adeptly navigated through the COVID pandemic and built a best-in-class Global Human Resources and Communications team.
Matt Hamel, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary at Brown-Forman, will retire in May.
Mike Carr – currently vice president, associate general counsel for regional and corporate development - will succeed Hamel.
Hamel has led Brown‐Forman’s legal, compliance, risk, and public affairs teams, overseeing activities related to corporate governance, SEC and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, regulatory compliance, trade practices, trademarks, litigation, acquisitions, enterprise risk management, government relations, and more.
He founded and leads a nationwide organization for general counsel and other senior governance professionals at publicly listed family-controlled companies.
Prior to joining Brown-Forman in 2007, Hamel held roles with Dow Jones & Company, Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive LLC (Factiva), Colgate-Palmolive Company and the law firm of White & Case.
Mike Carr (pictured above) has been with Brown‑Forman for more than a decade.
Carr was instrumental in recent acquisitions that are key to the company’s long-term global growth. He played a leadership role stewarding a number of international route-to-consumer transformations and negotiating global agreements such as the Jack Daniel’s and Coca-Cola ready-to-drink relationship, as well as the recent acquisitions of Gin Mare and Diplomático.
Carr brings to the role a background in securities law, corporate law, corporate governance, commercial law, and mergers and acquisitions. Prior to joining Brown‑Forman, Carr practiced corporate and securities law with Frost Brown Todd in Louisville, Kentucky. Carr is a graduate of the University of Mississippi, where he received a Bachelor of Accountancy, Masters of Taxation, and Juris Doctorate.
As general counsel, Carr will serve as the primary legal advisor to the board of directors and the company and will lead the global compliance, legal, risk, and public affairs teams. He will also serve as secretary to the board of directors.
Robert Hanson will step down from his role at Constellation Brands as Executive Vice President and President of the company’s Wine & Spirits Division, at the end of Constellation’s fiscal year on February 29, 2024.
The company has initiated a search to identify a successor.
Bill Newlands, President and CEO, will assume responsibilities as interim leader for the company’s Wine & Spirits Division, in addition to his existing responsibilities, until a successor is named.
Hanson has led the Wine & Spirits business since 2019, during which time the portfolio has adjusted its focus to the higher-end of the market: with divestitures of lower-end brands and several tuck-in acquisitions of fine wine and craft spirits brands.
“Robert has been instrumental in leading the charge to reposition our Wine & Spirits business to a higher-end portfolio of brands more aligned with consumer trends, with an expanded focus to include global, omni-channel distribution, with more robust and targeted international and direct-to-consumer sales channels,” said Newlands.
Hanson joined Constellation in June 2019 after serving in CEO and President positions at John Hardy Global Limited, American Eagle Outfitters, and Levi Strauss & Co. He also served as a member of Constellation’s Board of Directors from 2013 to 2019.
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US alcohol ecommerce company DRINKS has appointed Matt Wolf as CFO.
Wolf's experience in SaaS-centric enterprises, highly regulated industries and M&A fits ideally with DRINKS' evolution, says the company.
Wolf joins DRINKS after the recent sale of its DTC unit, Wine Insiders, giving the company sole focus on its core growth opportunity: the alcohol e-commerce enablement technology it has built and scaled over the last ten years.
Via its WaaS ("Wine as a Service")-platform, DRINKS enables businesses to add alcoholic beverages in a fully complaint manner directly to their online storefronts. For alcohol producers and retailers, the company provides regulatory and compliance technology through its Shopify app that makes it ‘easier and dramatically more efficient’ for anyone who sells alcohol online.
Wolf was previously CFO of Roadster, a SaaS-based, omnichannel digital retail platform that provides the complex and regulated automotive retail industry with digital storefronts to optimize the sales experience for customers, dealerships and OEMs. Wolf oversaw dramatic revenue growth and efficiency improvements, leading to Roadster's $360m acquisition by CDK Global. Wolf most recently served as CFO of ChartHop, a leading people operations platform, where he led finance and operations to help scale a rapidly growing enterprise SaaS platform.
Wolf has held other financial leadership positions in the consumer goods and tech industries, including with AB-InBev, after starting his career in investment banking with Morgan Stanley, where he covered consumer goods, including beverage alcohol.
Wolf earned an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a BA in Economics from the University of Rochester.
Arryved, a craft beverage sales system and guest engagement platform, has welcomed Aaron MJ Gore to its team.
Aaron will spearhead the company’s efforts to further cultivate its presence and relationships within, and in support of, the Craft community.
Aaron brings to Arryved more than a decade of sales, retail management, and business analytic experience in the craft beverage industry.
Most recently, Aaron was the Senior Director of Business Development at Bevana Partners. Prior to that, Aaron founded Fresh Pitch Beverage Consulting where he improved performance for more than 60 breweries on 3 continents. He has also held roles with Granite Falls Brewing Company, Big Boss Brewing and Finch Beer Company. Aaron is an Advanced Cicerone, Certified Pommelier, Certified Cheese Scholar, and is (AF)(NA) Beer Certified.
