Job summary: The Brazil SPD Lead will be responsible for building a unified team across all crops and stations throughout Brazil ensuring a safe work environment for all regardless of reporting. They will be directly accountable for leading all corn breeding efforts of the region, aimed at creating industry leading seed products for Brazil and Paraguay and leverageable germplasm for the global organization. In addition, the position will coordinate and support all field operation activities across Corn, Soy, and Sorghum ensuring global and local strategies. The position reports to the Latin America & Africa (LA-AF) Commercial Zone (CZ) SDP Lead and interact with the regional business leadership and other stakeholders across the organization. The position will manage all regional corn and sorghum breeding activities, biofuel crop testing, and breeding operations across crops, ensuring coordination with soybean breeding efforts. The following positions will directly report to the Brazil SPD Lead: corn EZ Leads, Brazil SPD Logistics Lead, and Brazil Corn OneSeed Lead. Soybean EZ Leads, Brazil Soybean OneSeed Lead, Sorghum, and CRSP leads will be critical members of the Brazil Team while maintaining reporting to their global teams
The successful candidate for this role possesses:
- Demonstrated leadership, effective communication, and large team management skills.
- Ability to work with diverse groups and geographies. Excellent people skills. A history of keeping teams safe while managing work life balance
- At least 10 years of experience and proven record of success in subtropical/tropical corn breeding.
- Seedspersonship: holistic understanding of all components of the seed business.
- Continuous process improvement mindset and adequate understanding of operational and business needs.
- PhD or equivalent in Plant Breeding, Quantitative Genetics or Crop Physiology.
- Full fluency in Portuguese and English.
Examples of the types of work expected include but are not limited to:
- Drive local genetic gain in the core regional crops to support business needs through managing the corn Evaluation Zone leads and multi-crop research centers.
- Establish and implement regional hybrid advancement, characterization, and evaluation that positions products that deliver on Business Unit metrics and financials.
- Work with the research community to support global goals and needs aligned to the global research vision.
- Partner with commercial and operations colleagues to deliver products, inventory, and information in support of customer needs.
- Supervise the administration and management of the SPD Research Centers of the region, ensuring the most effective use of company assets while meeting research/business objectives.
- Contribute to the elaboration and control of operational and capital budgets and be the ultimate responsible for achieving budget targets.
- Manage, coach, and develop personnel, ensuring effective collaboration, teamwork, efficiency, enjoyable working environment, and a long-term succession plan.
- Participate in field activities and hybrid/variety advancement processes.
- Building a culture of working safely and ethically is a pre-requisite of starting any job.
- Promote health, safety, and environmentally friendly practices.
- Interact with internal and external stakeholders.