Project Manager, Innovation

Nature’s Fynd

140

Chicago, IL, United States

Posted on: 2021-11-19

Category: renewables

Apply now

Please let Nature’s Fynd know you found this job on Work in Green. This will help us grow!

Expired

Employment type:

Full time

Experience required:

Intermediate

Salary

Salary not provided

About the company:

Nature’s Fynd is a Chicago-based food company creating versatile alternative proteins to nourish the world’s growing population while nurturing the planet. Born out of research conducted for NASA on microbes in Yellowstone National Park, the company’s breakthrough technology produces Fy™. Fy is a new-to-the-world, nutritional fungi protein that only uses a fraction of the resources required by traditional agriculture. We use Fy to make delicious, nutritious, and sustainable meat and dairy alternatives.

Nature’s Fynd is a groundbreaking food tech company born out of NASA-supported research on extremophiles in the geothermal pools of Yellowstone National Park. Our novel fermentation technology produces a sustainable source of complete protein using only a fraction of the resources required by traditional agriculture. As the challenge to feed the world’s expanding population grows, our mission is to create amazing foods and materials that provide sustainable choices and nurture the planet.

We’re looking for passionate, driven, and ambitious people to join our fast-growing team.

The project manager will play a crucial role in managing the strategy and execution of key business operations. The project management function is responsible for carrying out the innovation pipeline in line with the strategic objectives of the business. In addition to managing projects, this role will develop and implement processes to optimize business efficiencies and enhance organizational performance.

The project manager will be the cross-functional leader of the project teams, balancing speed-to-market with risk management and cost optimization to deliver projects with excellence. This function will also need to be adaptable in order to find, communicate, and sometimes fill new or unforeseen needs for the business. This high-visibility role will play a critical part in empowering the aggressive growth trajectory of Nature’s Fynd on our path to revolutionizing the food industry.

Primary Responsibilities:

Track and manage innovation and base business projects from the exploratory phase through to launch

Lead project team meetings, manage timelines, and own cross-functional communication on projects

Ensure cross-functional key action items are being completed by the indicated deadlines

Define and escalate cross-functional project risks and mitigation strategies to the exec team

Enable and accelerate decision making for project teams to remove obstacles within a project

Manage the packaging graphics approval process for all product packaging

Manage a subset of operations and cost optimization projects

Support process improvement projects for the organization

Education and Work Experience:

Bachelor’s degree in science, engineering, operations, or a related business field

Minimum of 5+ years of project management experience is required

Minimum of 5+ years of relevant work experience, which could include research & development, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and/or operations is required

Consumer Packaged Goods and/or Food industry experience is highly preferred

Knowledge and expertise of New Product Development / stage gate processes is required

Experience with project management software is required

Experience with contributing to or managing master data, ERP systems, and specification systems is preferred