Head of Procurement Excellence & Strategy

Part of the global bioeconomy, Stora Enso is a leading provider of renewable products in packaging, biomaterials and wooden construction, and one of the largest private forest owners in the world. We believe that everything that is made from fossil-based materials today can be made from a tree tomorrow. We employ approximately 19,000 people.

Career for a better climate. Every day

We are seeking a senior procurement transformation leader to support in propelling our Procurement function in a new strategic era, digitally enabled, and responsible enterprise capability.

This role owns strategy, execution, performance, ESG, and risk integration—designing the future-state Procurement model and personally driving its implementation across processes, technology, data, governance, and ways of working. This is a hands-on leadership role for a builder who combines strategic clarity with execution discipline, able to deliver predictable outcomes, responsible value, and enterprise resilience in complex global environments. The role reports to the CPO.

Why This Role Matters
Procurement is evolving from a transactional function into an enterprise system that orchestrates cost, performance, ESG outcomes, and risk.

The Global Head of Procurement Excellence & Strategy will lead this shift end-to-end, ensuring Procurement is seamless for the business, compliant by design, digitally advanced, and resilient to disruption.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy, Performance & Transformation Leadership (Hands-On)

• Define and own the global Procurement strategy and multi-year transformation roadmap, integrating performance, ESG, and risk objectives.
• Translate enterprise strategy into clear, executable Procurement priorities across value, sustainability, and resilience.
• Personally lead high-impact transformation initiatives, making pragmatic trade-offs between ambition, speed, and risk.
• Ensure Procurement outcomes are predictable, measurable, and aligned with enterprise commitments.

Operating Model, Governance & Risk Integration

• Strengthen the global Procurement operating model, clarifying roles, decision rights, and accountability.
• Establish governance frameworks that embed risk management, compliance, and ESG requirements into daily operations.
• Ensure controls are effective yet pragmatic, enabling speed without compromising integrity.
• Reduce structural and regional fragmentation that creates risk or inconsistency.
• Process, Experience & ESG by Design
• Own the end-to-end Source-to-Pay vision, ensuring processes are intuitive, standardized, and business-centric.
• Embed ESG, supplier risk, and compliance requirements by design, not as afterthoughts.
• Drive simplification, automation, and elimination of manual workarounds that increase risk and reduce transparency.

Digital, Data & Predictive Insights

• Lead Procurement’s technology, digital, and data agenda in close partnership with IT.
• Enable predictive analytics for cost, supplier risk, ESG exposure, and performance management.
• Ensure trusted master data and taxonomies supporting regulatory, ESG and risk reporting.
• Govern AI and innovation initiatives, scaling solutions that improve outcomes and risk anticipation.

Performance, Value, ESG & Risk Management

• Establish a unified performance and benefits realization framework covering financial value, ESG impact and risk reduction.
• Ensure initiatives deliver measurable and auditable outcomes beyond savings.
• Provide transparent, fact-based insights to executive leadership on performance, ESG progress and risk exposure. 

Performance, Value, ESG & Risk Management

• Lead and develop global Procurement Excellence leaders (Process, Operations, Tech & Data, Effectiveness).
• Set clear expectations for performance ownership, ESG accountability, and risk awareness across teams.
• Build future-fit capabilities including digital fluency, analytics, sustainability, risk management and change leadership.
• Foster a culture of ownership, transparency and disciplined execution.

What Success Looks Like

• Procurement operates as a predictable, scalable, and responsible enterprise system.
• Performance, ESG and risk metrics are embedded into decision-making and governance.
• Seamless processes and tools adopted globally with high stakeholder confidence.
• Reduced complexity, manual effort and unmanaged risk.
• Procurement recognized as a strategic enabler of value, sustainability and resilience.

Candidate Profile

Experience & Background

• 15+ years in global Procurement, Supply Chain, or Operations with direct ownership of transformation programs.
• Proven experience integrating performance management, ESG, and risk into Procurement strategy and execution.
• Strong hands-on experience with Source-to-Pay platforms, analytics, governance, and operating model design.
• Experience in complex, matrixed, multinational environments.

Leadership Style

• Strategic yet hands-on; comfortable moving between executive vision and operational detail.
• Outcome-driven, pragmatic, and decisive.
• Strong influencer at C-suite and senior stakeholder level.
• Willing to challenge the status quo to improve performance, integrity and sustainability.

Capabilities

• Deep understanding of modern Procurement, including digitalization, data, ESG, and supplier risk.
• Strong business and financial acumen.
• Excellent communication and change leadership skills.
• Ability to manage ambiguity and build structure in evolving environments.

We are recruiting for this position across multiple locations and are opening to hire in any of our office locations across Europe. You can only submit your application to us by using our recruitment tool. As we are assessing our candidates on an ongoing basis, we hope to hear from you as soon as possible but at the latest by the 28th of June.