Director, AI Strategy & Transformation

This role will lead Yum!’s enterprise-wide AI strategy, driving adoption, innovation, and transformation across brands and functions. This leader will oversee the AI Academy, advance AI-first enablement, and guide the development of scalable AI solutions that enhance productivity, operational efficiency, and business performance. Working closely with executive leadership and cross-functional teams, this role will shape AI investment priorities, champion responsible AI adoption, and deliver measurable business impact.

• Lead Yum!’s enterprise-wide AI Academy, expanding it from a training program into a strategic transformation engine that elevates AI readiness, maturity, and capability across all brands and functions.

• Own the strategy, design, and evolution of Yum!’s AI curriculum, ensuring it drives measurable behavior change, productivity uplift, and enterprise value creation.

• Direct the roadmap and execution of the AI learning platform in partnership with engineering and design teams, delivering a scalable, intuitive, and gamified ecosystem for ongoing AI proficiency development.

• Establish and evolve Yum!’s analytics architecture for AI adoption—including measurement standards, enterprise dashboards, and KPIs that inform executive decisions on AI investment and capability building.

• Drive enterprise-wide AI adoption targets for Above Restaurant Leaders (ARLs), holding direct accountability for outcomes that influence operational performance and transformation readiness.

• Build and lead a global community of AI champions and practitioners, enabling high-capillarity change management across diverse markets and functions.

• Partner closely with Learning, AI, Data, Analytics, and brand leadership to embed AI tools and workflows into operations, ensuring adoption is sustained and value-generating.

• Manage and develop three direct reports, ensuring the AI Adoption team delivers strategic and operational excellence.

• Continuously evaluate emerging AI technologies, model releases, platform capabilities, and ecosystem shifts to identify high-value opportunities for enterprise transformation.

• Own the enterprise AI enablement roadmap, aligning emerging technology opportunities with Yum!’s strategic priorities, business needs, and brand-specific requirements.

• Shape the enterprise agent strategy and operating model, enabling business and technology teams to build, deploy and reuse agentic AI solutions across brands and functions.

• Lead Yum!’s cross-functional rapid-enablement engine—including cybersecurity, privacy, data governance, legal, engineering, and AI—to accelerate secure, compliant activation of new AI features and capabilities.

• Define and govern standardized frameworks for assessing feasibility, risk, compliance, business impact, and readiness for new AI technologies.

• Drive an “AI-first” culture across the organization by equipping leaders with the guidance, guardrails, and tools necessary to deploy new AI capabilities safely and quickly.

• Hold accountability for enterprise technology risk related to AI enablement, ensuring alignment with Yum!’s global security, governance, and compliance standards.

• Lead multidisciplinary teams (product, engineering, design, data science, operations) to develop proprietary autonomous agents and AI-driven automation systems that transform mission-critical workflows.

• Own the strategy for internally built AI solutions that drive operational efficiency, margin expansion, improved decision quality, and enterprise speed.

• Identify and prioritize high-value enterprise workflows and pain points in partnership with executive and functional leaders, translating them into scalable AI products.

• Partner with functional leaders to develop AI transformation roadmaps, redesign priority workflows and coordinate implementation with clear ownership and productivity targets.

• Define success metrics, monitor business impact, and continuously optimize proprietary AI systems to maximize enterprise value creation.

• Provide high-judgment leadership in balancing innovation with risk, guiding the development of systems that operate safely within Yum!’s global technology and compliance environment.

• Own Yum!’s enterprise AI strategy and annual and multiyear roadmaps, aligning priorities across brands and functions and guiding investment decisions.

• Lead the enterprise C-level agenda for AI, partnering directly with executive leadership to shape long-term AI strategy, investment priorities, transformation milestones, and governance.

• Serve as a principal advisor to the CTO, CIO, and CDO on AI innovation, enterprise adoption maturity, enablement challenges, and opportunities for competitive advantage.

• Deliver executive-level storytelling, insights, and recommendations that guide decision-making across Yum!’s brands and corporate teams.

• Act as Yum!’s senior internal expert on AI transformation, ensuring alignment across technology, operations, finance, brand leadership, and global digital strategy.

• Represent the enterprise AI function in high-stakes decision forums, shaping policies, risk posture, and operational readiness for AI adoption at scale.

• 10+ years of experience in AI, digital transformation, product leadership, or related fields.

• Demonstrated ability to lead enterprise-scale transformation programs with high complexity, ambiguity, and cross-functional interdependencies.

• Experience managing and developing teams, including direct leadership responsibility.

• Strong capability to define strategy, structure complex problems, and execute at scale through diverse cross-functional teams.

• Expertise in evaluating AI technologies, governing risk, and driving safe, responsible AI adoption.

• Exceptional communication and influencing skills, with a proven ability to engage C-suite leaders and guide strategic decision-making.

• Deep understanding of AI platforms, emerging technologies, enterprise security, and compliance frameworks.

• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree preferred.

• Nice to have: Experience building enablement programs, learning platforms, or automation systems.