Vice President of Food Safety and Quality

Job Title: Vice President of Food Safety and Quality                 

Department: Quality

Reports to: President

Job Summary:

The VP of Food Safety and Quality will be responsible for developing and executing quality strategies, as well as be a strong advocate and change agent for food safety and quality at all levels within the organization. They will be responsible for ensuring organizational fitness and alignment to meet existing and emerging food safety and quality requirements.   Specific responsibilities include Quality Systems, FSMA, HACCP, GFSI/BRC, regulatory audits, food safety training, Regulatory Affairs, Plant Quality Assurance, Vendor Compliance, and Consumer Affairs.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Collaborate cross functionally to ensure the effective development and execution of all policies/procedures/programs designed to ensure quality, food safety and compliance with relevant regulations and standards.
• Champion food safety culture within the organization
• Identify skills/ capabilities required and ensure that QA/QC team members are adequately coached and trained in procedures/policies to be successful in their roles and to meet the needs of the business.
• Serve as change agent for FSQ in Change Management process
• Leverage data in a proactive manner, identifying, reporting and taking action on trends and issues that impact Quality or Food Safety.
• Champion collaborative cross functional teams to develop solutions to recurring problems at the root cause level and to incorporate these learnings into our procedures and policy’s to turn individual learnings into institutional ones.
• Regularly visit our various facilities, develop productive working relationships with key stakeholders, walk the production floor, interact with, mentor and motivate people at every level of the organization to assist in ensuring plant production meets or exceeds requirements.
• Ensure that our products and processes are fit for purpose and comply with all food safety regulatory requirements.
• Manage communications with relevant regulatory bodies.
• Help the organization adapt to emerging regulations, agency guidance documents, industry standards, new technologies, customer and internal needs
• Manage adverse events and ensure that the organization and its policies, procedures and training are adequate to ensure that they are handled professionally and competently.
• Work with NPD to ensure that new product introduction process is adequate to protect our customers and consumers and is being adhered to.
• Support all scheduled audits across our facilities.
• Champion the harmonization (as much as is practical) of our quality management systems across the US. And where appropriate support harmonization of global QMS.
• Participate in relevant industry associations, leverage networks to identify emerging opportunities/threats and influence policy development.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to balance regulatory compliance with business objectives
• Lead in the identification and adoption of best practice across all our US facilities.

Required Skills and Abilities:

• Excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to interact effectively with all levels of the organization and external partners
• Strong leadership skills, with the ability to inspire and lead teams towards excellence.
• The ability to work effectively in a stressful, deadline driven environment.
• Excellent analytical, and organizational skills
• Uphold confidentiality of sensitive information
• Microsoft Office proficiency
• Must have ability to effectively discipline and encourage team members in drive to meet customer expectations for quality and safety.
• Knowledge of setting and managing budgets
• Must be able to effectively develop, implement and improve programs serving the food safety and quality of products. Must be able to effectively train individuals and monitor compliance.
• Travel up to 50%.

Education and Experience:

• BS/MS in food or animal science, food technology, microbiology, or related area.
• Minimum of 10 years of leadership experience in FSQ in a USDA and or FDA plant. Preferably has cheese or dairy experience and greater than 5 years managing an FSQ team across multiple sites
• In-depth knowledge of USDA/FSIS and FSMA regulations, HACCP, SSOP, GMP and ideally BRC requirements. Ideally holds PCQI, HACCP, Food Defense, Intentional Adulteration, and relevant Internal Auditor certifications
• Lean Six Sigma certification or strong statistical skills and familiarity with Red Zone a plus.