Kraft Heinz Announces New Position, Exec

The Kraft Heinz Co. has named Dafne Hefner its first chief strategy and transformation officer. In this newly-created role, Hefner will help the Chicago-headquartered company accelerate its growth plan in the U.S. and Canada.

As a member of the leadership team, she will lead an Agile Center of Excellence for the North America Zone and spearhead a digital agenda for the region. Hefner will report to Carlos Abrams-Rivera, Kraft Heinz EVP and president, North America.

Hefner’s broad background in the CPG industry includes high-level positions at Anheuser-Busch InBev, where she most recently served as SVP of strategy and insights and built that organization’s first internal research and agile agency. Prior to Anheuser-Busch InBev, she worked as services and consumer products strategy consultant and co-founded a data analytics tech startup. She earned a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica and a master’s degree in product innovation and business from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.

“Dafne brings a tremendous amount of leadership and experience to the critical areas we’ve been building since late 2020, including digital, innovation and insights. Her proven ability to translate strategy into action, and effectively leverage agile methodologies and teams at scale, will help us deliver a best-in-class innovation agenda, operations plan and go-to-market approach,” said Abrams-Rivera.

It has been a dynamic time at Kraft Heinz, which announced in December its plans to combine the U.S. and Canada businesses into a North America Zone. In addition to Hefner, the company has enhanced its leadership team in the United States and Canada over the past two years to add fresh expertise in key areas like  commercialization, marketing, sales, insights, research and development, human resources and communications.