WHO ARE WE?
We are the VMS Co-Op, a group of fast growing companies in the Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements (VMS) space. The VMS Co-Op includes OLLY, SmartyPants and future acquisitions to come! This position's home company is OLLY.
THE ROLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR - CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE AND STRATEGY
At OLLY and SmartyPants, we believe the best growth strategies start with a deep understanding of people. As Senior Director, Consumer Intelligence & Strategy, you will lead OLLY/SPV's Consumer Intelligence & Strategy function, setting the consumer and growth intelligence agenda and ensuring consumer understanding directly shapes growth choices, innovation priorities, and commercial decisions.
This role sits at the center, partnering across Brand, Innovation, Sales, eCommerce, Finance, and Marketing to ensure our most important decisions are rooted in consumer understanding and actionable intelligence. You will lead a team responsible for consumer insights, analytics, foresight, AI-enabled intelligence capabilities, and performance measurement while also connecting growth analytics, commercial intelligence, and enterprise decision support into a more integrated view of where the business should focus. This leader will connect consumer understanding, growth analytics, commercial and retail intelligence, foresight, and AI-enabled systems into an integrated enterprise capability that helps OLLY/SPV make smarter growth decisions, prioritize investments, and stay ahead of emerging consumer and market shifts.
More than a traditional insights leader, you are a strategic business partner who translates consumer, shopper, cultural, commercial, and business intelligence into growth strategies, innovation priorities, investment decisions, and enterprise learning. You do not simply respond to questions from the business
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
Consumer Intelligence & Strategy Leadership
- Define and lead OLLY/SPV consumer intelligence strategy and multi-year enterprise intelligence agenda.
- Serve as the voice and champion of the consumer across the organizations, ensuring decisions are grounded in consumer understanding and market reality.
- Translate consumer, shopper, cultural, commercial, and business intelligence into actionable recommendations that shape brand strategy, innovation priorities, campaign development, investment decisions, and growth outcomes.
- Partner closely with the leadership teams to identify strategic opportunities, risks, and future growth platforms, influencing organizational strategies, and long-term growth priorities.
Growth, Brand & Innovation Strategy
- Guide the development of brand, innovation, and commercial strategies through deep consumer understanding and foresight.
- Identify emerging consumer needs, cultural shifts, category trends, and whitespace opportunities that can fuel future growth.
- Lead strategic synthesis across consumer research, analytics, trend intelligence, and business performance to shape long-term priorities.
- Support innovation pipeline development by identifying unmet needs, opportunity territories, and the consumer problems most worth solving.
Analytics & Business Performance
- Ensure robust measurement frameworks are in place across marketing, innovation, retail, and commercial initiatives.
- Guide analytics-driven decision making across brand, shopper, eCommerce, and commercial performance.
- Oversee learning agendas related to marketing effectiveness, consumer behavior, growth drivers, and business performance.
- Partner with Sales, Category Management, RGM, eCommerce and Finance to translate consumer behavior, category dynamics, and commercial performance into growth plans that carry through to retail execution.
AI, Intelligence Systems & Future Capabilities
- Lead the transformation of OLLY/SPV into an AI-first intelligence organization, redefining how consumer, shopper, cultural, and commercial signals are generated, synthesized, shared, and activated.
- Build and scale AI-enabled capabilities that help the business identify emerging opportunities, anticipate market shifts, and make faster, smarter growth decisions.
- Reimagine traditional insights, analytics, and research approaches through AI-enabled research, predictive intelligence, signal detection, automated synthesis, and scalable knowledge systems.
- Establish the tools, systems, and ways of working that increase learning velocity, reduce duplication, and make intelligence easier to access and apply across the business.
- Continuously pilot emerging technologies and methodologies that create competitive advantage and future-proof howOLLY/SPV understands consumers and markets.
Build OLLY/SPV's enterprise learning advantage.
- Understand today's consumer
- Anticipate tomorrow's consumer
- Quantify growth opportunities
- Accelerate learning velocity
- Enable smarter decisions
- Scale intelligence through AI and modern capabilities
Team Leadership
- Lead and develop a high-performing team across consumer insights, analytics, foresight, and intelligence capabilities.
- Foster a culture of curiosity, strategic thinking, experimentation, and continuous learning.
- Establish clear priorities, coach talent, and build capabilities that elevate the impact of the function.
- Create strong alignment and collaboration across OLLY and SPV insights resources, ensuring the function operates with clear priorities and consistent enterprise impact.
THE CANDIDATE
You are a highly strategic, consumer and growth-obsessed leader who thrives at the intersection of insights, analytics, strategy, and business growth. You possess an unusual ability to connect seemingly disparate signals, identify emerging opportunities, and synthesize complexity into clear recommendations that influence enterprise decisions.
You are equally comfortable discussing consumer motivations, innovation platforms, commercial performance, marketing effectiveness, future trends, and AI-enabled capabilities. You understand that insights alone are not enough. The real value comes from transforming intelligence into action.
You are known for asking the right questions, uncovering opportunities others miss, and helping organizations make smarter decisions faster. You bring a clear point of view, challenge assumptions constructively, and help senior leaders make sharper choices.
CAPABILITIES + SKILLS REQUIRED
Strategic Leadership & Influence
- 15+ years of progressive experience across consumer insights, strategy, analytics, innovation, consulting, marketing, or related disciplines.
- Strong business acumen, senior stakeholder partnership, and ability to build alignment and drive action.
- Ability to translate consumer understanding into strategic priorities and business outcomes.
- Proven ability to define and lead a consumer intelligence strategy and multi-year enterprise intelligence agenda.
Consumer, Commercial & Growth Expertise
- Deep expertise in consumer insights, shopper behavior, market dynamics, and growth strategy.
- Ability to connect consumer trends, category opportunities, and commercial realities to identify future growth opportunities.
- Demonstrated success turning insights into actionable recommendations that shape brand, innovation, and business strategy.
Analytics, AI & Future-Focused Thinking
- Strong analytical capabilities across multiple data sources, measurement frameworks, and business performance diagnostics.
- Ability to synthesize consumer, cultural, technological, and business signals into actionable foresight.
- AI-first mindset: proven track record leading the transformation of an insights or analytics function into an AI-enabled intelligence organization, redefining how consumer, shopper, cultural, and commercial signals are generated, synthesized, and activated to increase learning velocity and speed enterprise decisions.
- Appetite to continuously pilot emerging technologies and challenge traditional research methods to create competitive advantage.
Leadership Style
- Proven ability to lead high-performing teams and influence enterprise-level decisions.
- Exceptional communicator and storyteller capable of simplifying complexity for senior audiences.
- Highly collaborative and influential across diverse stakeholders.
- Strategic, curious, growth-oriented, and outcomes-oriented.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity while bringing clarity and focus to decisions.
- Able to proactively surface opportunities, risks, and recommendations that help leaders make better decisions faster.
WHAT TO EXPECT DURING THE INTERVIEW PROCESS
- Initial video screen with a member of our Talent team
- Round 1: Conversation with the Hiring Manager + 1-2 conversations with other Ollies on the team
- Round 2: 2-3 conversations with team or cross functional Ollies
- Final Round: Homework*
*At OLLY, our final round is called Homework. Candidates who participate in this round are given 3 questions in advance to answer and present to the interview panel they previously spoke with in the process. We understand every candidate is different. If you need a reasonable accommodation to adjust this procedure, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can evaluate and provide other options that work for your needs
THE DETAILS
LOCATION: Remote, USA - 4X travel per year to company offsites
HOURS: Full time, exempt (salary)
PLEASE NOTE: Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship.
WHAT WE OFFER:
- An opportunity to work with an intelligent, inspiring, and extraordinarily fun team
- We pay 100% of the premiums for employee-only medical, dental + orthodontics, and vision insurance
- 4 weeks PTO + paid holidays + 12 Mental Health Days per year
- 100% Paid parental leave, Fertility + Adoption Benefits
- Annual Bonus
- 401(k) plan with Employer Match
- Hybrid Work + Wellness + Cell Phone Stipends
- Free product
- And much more!
