Senior Director, GPS Portfolio Strategy & Governance

Your role at Baxter

The Senior Director, GPS Portfolio Strategy & Governance is an enterprise transformation and portfolio leader accountable for translating Baxter’s Growth & Performance System (GPS) strategy into a focused, integrated portfolio that delivers measurable enterprise value. This role combines 80/20-based portfolio optimization with rigorous transformation-office governance to simplify complexity, concentrate resources on the vital few priorities, and accelerate execution across businesses and functions. The Senior Director governs a large, cross-functional portfolio of 800+ initiatives spanning process improvement, business transformation, capability building, digitization, and product/SKU rationalization. Product and SKU work remains an important portfolio workstream, but the role governs it through the same prioritization, stage-gate, benefit-tracking, and accountability mechanisms applied to all other initiatives rather than directly leading SKU execution. Partnering with senior leaders across Finance, HR, Quality, Supply Chain, Commercial, Digital/IT, and Reporting & Analytics, this leader drives integrated planning, disciplined decision making, resource alignment, benefits realization, and sustained adoption of GPS ways of working.

What will you be doing

• Enterprise Portfolio Strategy: Translate GPS and enterprise priorities into an integrated, multi-year portfolio roadmap with clear outcomes, owners, milestones, dependencies, and decision points; maintain focus on the critical few initiatives that advance enterprise value creators and KPIs.
• 80/20 Portfolio Optimization: Apply Pareto-based segmentation and 80/20 capabilities across customers, products, processes, projects, and investments to identify the vital few opportunities, simplify complexity, stop or reshape low-value work, and redirect resources toward the highest-return priorities.
• Portfolio Governance & Operating Model: Design and lead enterprise governance for an 800+ initiative portfolio, including intake, prioritization, stage gates, decision rights, resource alignment, risk and issue management, escalation, and executive reporting.
• Product and SKU Rationalization Governance: Govern product and SKU rationalization as a critical portfolio workstream by establishing decision criteria, milestones, ownership, benefit expectations, and escalation paths; ensure accountable business and functional teams lead execution and integrate decisions with customer, commercial, supply chain, quality, and financial considerations.
• Benefits Realization & Performance Management: Establish standards for defining, validating, and tracking financial and operational benefits across Operating Income, Revenue Growth, ROIC, Free Cash Flow, cost avoidance, productivity, and customer satisfaction; reinforce disciplined follow-through, action closure, and a strong Say/Do ratio.
• Executive Governance & Operating Cadence: Lead portfolio reviews and GPS governance forums using standardized agendas, scorecards, bowling charts, decision logs, and escalation paths to increase transparency, surface risks early, accelerate countermeasures, and enable timely leadership decisions.
• Cross-Functional Execution & Dependency Management: Orchestrate workstreams across businesses, functions, and geographies; proactively manage dependencies, remove barriers, and ensure initiatives remain aligned to enterprise priorities and expected outcomes.
• Portfolio Mining, Scaling & Standardization: Identify repeatable initiatives, scalable solutions, and proven practices within the portfolio; standardize and deploy them across the enterprise to accelerate value capture, reduce duplication, and improve consistency.
• GPS Capability Building: Partner with Operational Excellence leaders to embed GPS Methods and Standards—including Lean, Six Sigma/DMAIC, kaizen, A3 thinking, root-cause analysis, visual management, daily management, and Hoshin Kanri—through playbooks, coaching, training, and communities of practice.
• Change Leadership & Adoption: Partner with HR and Communications to build stakeholder alignment, reinforce leader behaviors and standard work, measure adoption, and sustain a culture of simplification, accountability, continuous improvement, and enterprise focus.
• Data, Analytics & Tooling Enablement: Partner with Finance, Reporting & Analytics, Data Governance, Digital, and IT to enable trusted data, segmented P&Ls, dashboards, and insights, and to simplify work through process redesign, digitization, and automation.
• People Leadership: Lead and develop a high-performing team and matrixed network of portfolio and transformation leaders; set expectations for execution rigor, coaching, talent development, and succession depth.

Typical Activities

• Conduct enterprise 80/20 analyses across customers, products, profit pools, processes, and initiatives to inform portfolio choices and investment tradeoffs.
• Chair executive portfolio, stage-gate, kaizen, and strategy review forums; frame decisions, challenge assumptions, resolve escalations, and confirm accountable owners and actions.
• Maintain the integrated transformation roadmap, portfolio health view, benefit scorecards, risk profile, and dependencies across major GPS workstreams.
• Review product and SKU rationalization progress as part of the broader portfolio, ensuring business-led execution, cross-functional alignment, and transparent value delivery.
• Mine the portfolio for scalable solutions and enforce enterprise deployment of repeatable practices, including targeted selling and customer-value strategies where applicable.
• Provide concise, decision-ready updates and recommendations to senior executives on progress, outcomes, risks, tradeoffs, and resource needs.

What will you bring

• Enterprise and Strategic Thinking: Connect strategy, portfolio choices, operating model, and execution across businesses and functions.
• Portfolio Governance: Build and run disciplined governance, prioritization, stage-gate, risk, resource, and benefits-management processes at enterprise scale.
• 80/20 and Analytical Leadership: Apply segmentation, Pareto analysis, financial insight, and fact-based challenge to identify leverage points and simplify complexity.
• Executive Influence: Align senior stakeholders, frame tradeoffs, challenge constructively, and translate complex information into clear recommendations and decisions.
• Transformation Leadership: Mobilize cross-functional teams, manage interdependencies, accelerate execution, and sustain adoption in a highly matrixed environment.
• Performance and Accountability: Establish clear outcomes, owners, measures, and operating rhythms that convert decisions into measurable results.
• People and Capability Building: Develop leaders and teams through coaching, standard work, disciplined problem solving, and intentional delegation.
• Bachelor’s degree required in Business, Engineering, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, or a related field; MBA or other advanced degree preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive leadership experience in enterprise portfolio management, transformation, operational excellence, strategy, and/or large-scale change across multiple functions and geographies.
• Demonstrated experience governing complex, high-value portfolios, including prioritization, stage gates, risk and issue management, resource alignment, benefits tracking, and executive reporting.
• Strong working knowledge of 80/20 methodology and GPS Methods and Standards, including portfolio segmentation, Lean, Six Sigma/DMAIC, kaizen, A3 thinking, root-cause analysis, visual management, daily management, and Hoshin Kanri/goal deployment.
• Experience applying these methods to enterprise portfolio optimization, governance, and transformation is strongly preferred.
• Proven ability to translate strategy into executable roadmaps and measurable outcomes, with strong financial acumen and experience partnering with Finance on value cases and benefits realization.
• Exceptional executive communication, stakeholder management, and influence skills, with demonstrated success aligning senior leaders in highly matrixed organizations.
• Demonstrated people leadership, coaching, and talent development experience, including leadership of direct teams and matrixed networks.
• Six Sigma Green Belt, Black Belt, or Master Black Belt certification preferred.

Leadership Competencies

• Enterprise Mindset: Makes portfolio tradeoffs that maximize end-to-end enterprise value rather than optimizing individual functions or workstreams.
• Action with Alignment: Creates clarity on outcomes, decision rights, owners, measures, and follow-through.
• Data-Driven Judgment: Uses trusted facts and financial and operational metrics to surface problems early and guide choices.
• Change Leadership: Builds commitment through a compelling narrative, active listening, coaching, and reinforcement of leader routines.
• Systems Thinking: Connects people, process, performance, technology, and portfolio dependencies to deliver sustained results.
• Inclusive Leadership: Seeks diverse perspectives and creates an environment in which constructive challenge improves decisions and outcomes.

What This Role Is Expected to Do

• Turn GPS strategy into a focused enterprise portfolio that accelerates execution and delivers measurable value.
• Focus the portfolio: Translate enterprise priorities into an integrated roadmap and use 80/20 thinking to concentrate resources on the vital few initiatives.
• Establish disciplined governance: Set clear intake, prioritization, stage-gate, decision-right, risk, escalation, and reporting standards across 800+ initiatives.
• Drive value realization: Define, validate, and track financial and operational benefits, ensuring accountable owners, action closure, and a strong Say/Do ratio.
• Enable faster execution: Orchestrate cross-functional work, manage dependencies, remove barriers, and bring decision-ready tradeoffs to senior leaders.
• Scale what works: Mine the portfolio for repeatable solutions, standardize proven practices, and deploy them across businesses, functions, and geographies.
• Embed GPS: Strengthen GPS Methods and Standards, leader routines, capabilities, data, and tools so improvements are sustained.

Expected outcomes: A simplified and transparent portfolio, faster decisions, stronger accountability, reduced duplication, better resource allocation, and measurable enterprise impact.