Global Category Lead - Meetings, Conferences, Events, Travel & Fleet

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Job Description

About this Role:

This role is a member of the Indirect Procurement Leadership team, providing global leadership for Meetings, Conferences, Events, Travel, and Fleet. It leads category strategy and a team of category professionals to connect business and program needs with supplier strategy, commercial models, contracts, user experience, compliance, sustainability, resilience, and value delivery.

 

OBJECTIVES: 

• Define and lead an integrated global strategy for Meetings, Conferences, Events, Travel, and Fleet that supports business priorities, user experience, compliance, sustainability, resilience, and total cost.
• Serve as a strategic partner to senior business leaders and relevant program owners, shaping demand, service models, supplier choices, and investment priorities before commitments are made.
• Build a competitive and resilient global supplier ecosystem with appropriate regional and local solutions, clear governance, and measurable performance outcomes.
• Lead and develop the category team while creating consistent global frameworks that enable effective regional and market execution.
• Lead enterprise wide initiatives for selected subcategories to drive excellence in external spend management
• Partner with key functions such as Meetings & Travel Center of Excellence, embedded meetings planners, and fleet managers in the business to drive consistent approaches in relevant categories across the board.

ACCOUNTABILITIES: 

• Develop and continuously evolve category strategies for meetings, conferences, events, travel, and fleet using spend, demand, process, supplier, risk, and market intelligence.
• Manage selected subcategories along with the rest of the team to drive category excellence.
• Partner with Finance, business functions, Operations, Legal, Risk, Compliance, Technology, and regional teams to connect sourcing choices with operating model, control, transformation, and business objectives.
• Shape demand and service models by challenging scope, role mix, locations, process design, automation potential, service levels, pricing mechanisms, and supplier dependencies.
• Lead make versus buy, insource versus outsource, supplier consolidation, benchmark, and competitive sourcing decisions where appropriate, while protecting critical expertise and continuity.
• Own strategic sourcing, negotiation, and contracting frameworks, including master agreements, statements of work, pricing structures, rate cards, service levels, incentives, performance guarantees, audit rights, data protections, and transition provisions.
• Establish supplier segmentation and governance for strategic and critical providers, including executive reviews, performance scorecards, continuous improvement, innovation, issue resolution, and remediation.
• Lead the most complex and enterprise critical commercial initiatives while enabling category managers to execute within the approved global strategy and frameworks.
• Create transparency across total spend, addressable spend, demand drivers, contracts, rate and fee structures, supplier performance, concentration, risk, and value realization.
• Integrate third party risk, regulatory, financial control, data privacy, information security, business continuity, sustainability, and responsible sourcing requirements into category decisions.
• Maintain appropriate independence and governance boundaries for regulated or assurance services while pursuing commercial value and high quality delivery.
• Translate enterprise and functional priorities into a global category strategy, multi year roadmap, and clearly governed initiative pipeline.
• Establish clear global, regional, and local decision rights and enable execution within common strategies, preferred supplier models, commercial frameworks, and buying channels.
• Own the end to end portfolio view, including spend visibility, category taxonomy, sourcing pipeline, contracts, supplier performance, risk, tail spend, and value realization.
• Use market intelligence, advanced analytics, automation, and responsible AI solutions to improve decision quality, speed, transparency, and Procurement productivity.
• Lead, coach, and develop category managers and associates, raising the quality and consistency of category strategies and execution across the portfolio.
• Allocate capacity and priorities across the portfolio, making clear trade offs based on enterprise value, business urgency, risk, and available resources.
• Foster a culture of accountability, curiosity, inclusion, collaboration, continuous improvement, and strong business partnership.

 

EDUCATION, BEHAVIORAL COMPETENCIES AND SKILLS:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Supply Chain, Finance, Economics, or a related field required; Master's degree or MBA preferred.

Behavioral:

• As members of Global Procurement, you are expected to demonstrate ways of working that support our strategic ambition and shape how we create value for Takeda. You will contribute to a procurement function that:
• Shapes strategy upstream through close business partnership
• Delivers total enterprise value beyond savings
• Takes ownership of spend and outcomes end to end
• Uses curiosity, insights, and data to drive better decisions

 

Competencies and skills:

• Subject matter expertise across several relevant categories such as meetings and events agencies, venues, event production, group travel, transient travel, travel management services, airlines, lodging, ground transportation, payment solutions, fleet management, or vehicle leasing.
• 10+ years of experience in procurement, category management, supply chain, supplier management, or a related commercial function within complex global organizations.
• Demonstrated success developing and executing global category strategies and delivering measurable enterprise value.
• Strong commercial and financial acumen, including strategic sourcing, negotiation, supplier economics, total cost of ownership, contract strategy, and value realization.
• Ability to influence and constructively challenge senior leaders across functions, business units, and geographies.
• Experience leading cross functional transformation in a highly matrixed and regulated environment.
• Deep understanding of supplier segmentation, relationship management, performance governance, third party risk, business continuity, and sustainable procurement.
• Strong analytical and executive communication skills, with the ability to turn market, supplier, spend, and performance data into clear decisions and compelling narratives.
• Demonstrated people leadership, talent development, change leadership, and experience leading globally distributed teams.
• Experience using digital tools, automation, analytics, and AI enabled approaches to improve procurement outcomes.
• Fluent written and spoken English.

 

Preferred experience:

• Experience in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, healthcare, financial services, or another highly regulated global industry.
• Experience with meetings and events operating models, travel programs, fleet programs, or related technology and data ecosystems.
• Knowledge of global and local market dynamics, including how enterprise strategies must adapt to regulatory, service, and market requirements.
• Experience balancing stakeholder experience with commercial, sustainability, compliance, and operational priorities.

 

Takeda Compensation and Benefits Summary

We understand compensation is an important factor as you consider the next step in your career. We are committed to equitable pay for all employees, and we strive to be more transparent with our pay practices. 

For Location:

Boston, MA

U.S. Base Salary Range:

$177,000.00 - $278,080.00

The estimated salary range reflects an anticipated range for this position. The actual base salary offered may depend on a variety of factors, including the qualifications of the individual applicant for the position, years of relevant experience, specific and unique skills, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and the location in which the applicant lives and/or from which they will be performing the job. The actual base salary offered will be in accordance with state or local minimum wage requirements for the job location. 

For information about our benefits, please click here.

EEO Statement

Takeda is proud in its commitment to creating a diverse workforce and providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, parental status, national origin, age, disability, citizenship status, genetic information or characteristics, marital status, status as a Vietnam era veteran, special disabled veteran, or other protected veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws, and any other characteristic protected by law.

Locations

Boston, MA

Worker Type

Employee

Worker Sub-Type

Regular

Time Type

Full time

Job Exempt

YesIt is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.