Agriculture and Retail Upstream Director

Role Summary

GS1 is seeking a strategic and analytical individual to lead our engagement in the agriculture and retail upstream segments. The goal is to understand retail upstream value chains and assess where GS1 standards and services can add value, for example, in fresh produce, such as fruit and vegetables, or food commodities like coffee, cocoa, and palm oil, as well as in apparel upstream, like cotton. This role will shape a global engagement strategy to reinforce our federated membership model, collaborating closely with GS1 Member Organisations and external retail industry stakeholders to expand GS1’s relevance further upstream in the retail supply chain.

Responsibilities

Market Understanding & Strategic Intelligence

• Map the global agriculture and upstream landscape in relation to retail supply chains, including fresh food, commodity crops, and natural materials.
• Identify and prioritise retail supply chains' challenges, benefits and opportunities for the usage of GS1 standards.
• Track agriculture and upstream retail trends impacting the supply chain and need for GS1 standards.

Global Market Priorities and Engagement

• Define retail upstream target actors and business organisations to engage for each prioritised vertical.
• Select and prioritise key verticals (e.g. cacao, coffee, palm oil, cotton, fresh produce, ...) as well as key actors to engage (e.g. cooperatives, traders, certifiers, processors, ...).
• Identify key use cases where GS1 standards and services create value upstream and develop engagement plans for different stakeholders.
• Develop bundled value propositions (‘target offers’) tailored to sector-specific needs.
• Assess capability needs and support skill-building across the federation, partners, and users (could be education and awareness initiatives in the upstream ecosystem).
• Assess GS1 standards offer and inform the standards team on any changes needed.

Execution Model

• Define roles and responsibilities across GS1 Global Office and Member Organisations.
• Establish coordination mechanisms for shared planning, execution, and oversight.
• Define and track KPIs and impact targets to measure adoption success.

Education/Experience

• Minimum of 10 years’ experience in one or several of the following fields: 1) Strategic consulting for Agriculture/Food companies with a supply chain focus; 2) Supply chain integration expertise in fresh produce, such as fruits and vegetables, or agricultural raw materials such as cocoa, coffee, and palm oil. 3) Supply chain sustainability role within an FMCG company. 4) End-to-end supply chain-related experience in the retail sector.
• Experience in an organisation or foundation whose members span the entire supply chain, such as farmer cooperatives, processors, and manufacturers.
• Proven experience with board-level strategy, business case development, financial forecasting, and presentation development.
• Demonstrated success in leading and delivering complex strategic initiatives.
• Strong background in developing rigorous, fact-based analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) to inform recommendations.
• Understanding of federated and membership organisation models and ability to navigate multi-stakeholder environments is a strong plus.

Skills

• Experience with market research and data analytics.
• Knowledge of upstream commodity sectors such as cacao, coffee, palm oil, or cotton, and their value chains.
• Project management experience in multi-region or multi-stakeholder contexts
• Familiarity with GS1 standards or other global identification and traceability systems.
• Effective communicator and influencer, able to operate comfortably with senior stakeholders in a diverse cultural setting
• Fluent in English; additional languages are a plus.

This job may require up to 15% global travel.

This is a hybrid role with a minimum of 4 to 8 days per month in our Brussels office.

IMPORTANT! Please do not contact hiring managers. Apply through LinkedIn Recruiter and we will be in touch if you are a good fit.

GS1 Overview

GS1 develops and maintains the most widely used supply chain standards that are fundamental to numerous enterprises around the world. The best-known symbol of GS1 standards is the barcode, named by the BBC as one of “the 50 things that made the world economy”. Five decades ago, we started by helping food retailers do business more efficiently and reduce consumer prices. Today, GS1 standards improve the efficiency, safety, and visibility of supply chains across physical and digital channels in 25 sectors, including retail omnichannel and e-commerce, healthcare, transport and logistics, food service, technical industries, and humanitarian logistics. Our scale and reach – local Member Organisations (MO) in 120 countries, 2 million user companies, and 10 billion transactions every day – help ensure that GS1 standards create a common language that supports systems and processes across the globe.

GS1 is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We will never unlawfully discriminate on the grounds of race, religion, belief, ethnic origin, colour, nationality, gender, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, age, disability, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy, maternity, or political opinions.