Commercial Strategy Lead – High Value Crops

Role Overview

This role turns Tupande’s five-year HVC and Potato strategies into coordinated projects that can deliver commercial results and meaningful benefits for farmers. You will lead initiatives from early planning through evaluation, bringing together teams, analysing performance and helping leaders decide where to invest, adapt or scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Convert HVC and Potato priorities into project plans with defined milestones, accountable owners, dependencies and decision points.
• Lead priority HVC workstreams through established Stage-Gate reviews, surfacing risks and proposing interventions when progress or viability is in question.
• Analyse farmer, market, supply, pricing and operational information to identify performance trends, opportunities and constraints across priority value chains.
• Build business cases and recommendations for initiatives such as crop-variety diversification, commercial partnerships and margin improvement.
• Bring Agronomy, Global Supply Chain, Government Relations, Operations and other teams together to coordinate testing, regulatory approvals, seed multiplication and market implementation.
• Track portfolio KPIs and assess initiatives against commercial, farmer-impact and operational measures; recommend whether to scale, revise, pause or stop activity.
• Connect HVC priorities with S&OP and wider business planning, including relevant forecasts and performance reviews.
• Prepare clear analyses, recommendations and progress updates for HVC leadership, S&OP and Steering Committee discussions, highlighting risks and decisions needed.

Requirements & Qualifications

• At least five years of professional experience, including leading complex projects or cross-functional initiatives.
• Strong project-management capability, with a record of translating strategic goals into practical plans and following through on milestones and dependencies.
• Excellent analytical skills and sound business judgment; able to interpret operational and commercial data and use it to shape decisions.
• Commercial acumen, including the ability to assess viability, develop business cases and understand the financial implications of investment and portfolio choices.
• Strategic thinking to recognise opportunities, risks and structural bottlenecks, then turn findings into actionable recommendations.
• Strong stakeholder-management and interpersonal skills, including the ability to align teams and influence people without direct authority.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office, especially Excel, and Google Workspace tools.
• No specific education requirement is stated in the supplied role information.