VP, AI Product & Portfolio

Business Unit Description

Feeding the world is what we do – how we do it is unique. We are not your textbook consumer packaged goods company. While others may be slow to make change happen, Post continuously drives both inorganic and organic growth. Our history is evidence of that fact with over 100 years of heritage and growth from brands that transcend generations like Honey Bunches of Oats, Fruity Pebbles, Malt-O-Meal, Bob Evans, Kibbles 'n Bits, Egg Beaters, Peter Pan peanut butter and more. Our foodservice and ingredient businesses supply other products you love for brands, restaurants and stores.

We have more than 55 offices and manufacturing sites and approximately 13,000 employees. Over the past 13 years, Post has made 28+ acquisitions and innovative financial transactions and reached $8.2 billion in net sales in fiscal 2025. During turbulent times of market uncertainty, the food industry has provided a level of stability unlike other industries

Post Holdings, Inc. is a Fortune 500® company headquartered in Brentwood, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Our casual professional atmosphere encourages team members to collaborate, innovate and support our operating companies. Our passion and drive advance the reputation of our operating companies and brands—together, we make a difference.

Responsibilities

The VP of AI Product & Portfolio leads Post’s enterprise approach to prioritizing, funding, and governing AI, Generative AI, and agentic workflow investments. This role owns the business decisions that determine which AI opportunities get pursued and how they get delivered – through an existing platform, a vendor, an in-house build, or a hybrid approach – and tracks the value those investments deliver once live.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Lead the AI Product & Portfolio Office

• Design and govern the central intake, prioritization matrix, problem definition, success metrics and funding stage-gates for all enterprise AI, Generative AI, and agentic workflow opportunities. This is the single point of entry for AI initiatives at Post – distinct from general data or BI initiative planning

Use Case Identification & Scoping

• Partner directly with the C-suite and division heads to identify high-friction workflows and convert business challenges into clear, high-ROI AI transformation programs.
• Assess business value, operational impact, enterprise risk, and implementation readiness to prioritize opportunities

Build vs Buy Business Case

• Own the business case for whether a prioritized use case should be solved through an existing enterprise platform, a vendor solution, an in-house build, or a hybrid approach.
• Assess ROI, business fit, adoption impact, scalability of the operating model, and value realization potential.

AI Vendor Strategy & Business Ownership

• Govern vendor selection for prioritized AI use cases from a business fit, value, and delivery accountability perspective.
• Own the business relationship, commercial rationale, expected outcomes, and value realization for vendor-enabled solutions.

OPERATING MODEL MODERNIZATION

Enterprise Operating Model Modernization

• Establish the methodology, governance, executive sponsorship, and transformation roadmap required to redesign priority value streams for AI-enabled work.
• Ensure business processes are optimized before AI investment decisions are made and provide executive oversight for workflow modernization initiatives across the enterprise
• Lead and oversee deep-dive process mapping efforts that redesign legacy business workflows across people, handoffs, technology, and decision logic – ensuring the team optimizes processes before applying AI tools. This role sets the methodology, directs the IC’s analysis, challenges recommendations, and ensures redesigned workflows are AI-ready and scalable.

Scaling Reusable Business Playbooks

• Convert successful single-department pilots into repeatable business playbooks, adoption patterns, value cases, and rollout models that can be scaled across business units.
• Partner with technical stakeholders to turn recurring technical components into reusable APIs, toolkits, reference architectures, and deployment accelerators

VALUE REALIZATION & IMPACT MEASUREMENT

Value Tracking & ROI

• Establish the measurement framework and executive oversight required to track AI portfolio performance, validate business outcomes, and guide investment decisions throughout the AI lifecycle.
• Publish AI Value Dashboards detailing adoption rates, time-to-value metrics, model performance, and financial impact of the AI portfolio for executive leadership

Responsible AI & Enterprise Risk

• Partner with AI Council, Compliance, Legal, IT, Internal Audit, and business leaders to establish accountability, escalation paths, and portfolio controls for responsible AI. Functional owners retain policy, assurance, and technical control execution

Organization and Talent Leadership

• Build and lead the AI Product & Portfolio organizations, including portfolio leaders and senior product leaders.
• Define capability needs, succession plans, performance expectations, and ways of working across federated product teams

Qualifications

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Data Science, Computer Science, or a related field; MBA or Master’s preferred
• 10+ years of experience in business strategy, product or portfolio management, or management consulting, including at least 5 years in a leadership role focused on strategy and portfolio governance
• Track record of translating ambiguous business problems into structured, high-ROI transformation programs
• Strong understanding of AI/ML/Generative AI capabilities and the vendor landscape, sufficient to set strategy, challenge recommendations, and make informed investment decisions
• Experience in a complex, multi-business consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, retail, or supply chain-intensive enterprise is strongly preferred
• Demonstrated people leadership, including building senior teams, leading through influence, and developing product and portfolio leadership capability

Skills & Competencies

• Strong business acumen; able to build, defend, and communicate business cases and ROI models to executive audiences
• Executive presence; able to influence C-suite and division-head stakeholders without formal authority
• Strategic leadership experience governing material commercial relationships and enterprise sourcing decisions
• Process and workflow redesign experience
• Enterprise portfolio and program governance experience – intake processes, prioritization frameworks, stage-gates
• Ability to partner effectively across functions, including but not limited to Legal, IT, Operations, Supply Chain, Compliance, Safety, and HR, without owning execution in any of them

This is a hybrid role based in St. Louis, Missouri. In office days are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Work remotely on Mondays and Fridays.