GPS Portfolio Strategy and Governance

This is where your work makes a difference. At Baxter, we believe every person—regardless of who they are or where they are from—deserves a chance to live a healthy life. It was our founding belief in 1931 and continues to be our guiding principle. We are redefining healthcare delivery to make a greater impact today, tomorrow, and beyond. Our Baxter colleagues are united by our Mission to Save and Sustain Lives. Together, our community is driven by a culture of courage, trust, and collaboration. Every individual is empowered to take ownership and make a meaningful impact. We strive for efficient and effective operations, and we hold each other accountable for delivering exceptional results. Here, you will find more than just a job—you will find purpose and pride. 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 : Key Skills 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