Company Overview
FoodChain ID was founded in 1996 as Genetic ID, a pioneer of the GMO food identification industry, now embraced worldwide. Their technical and business services rapidly expanded to serve clean label, food safety, and sustainability claims through various verification, certification offerings, and a robust suite of testing/business services that expedite food and agricultural exports.
The company is at the vanguard of the New Food industry, providing expertise worldwide to navigate the requirements of an increasingly regulated food economy and technical services to support the demand for clean label standards.
FoodChain ID assists food, feed, and agricultural companies, from the world’s leading brands to single local product producers, and is at the forefront of the visibility and transparency revolution. They provide the knowledge, technologies, and tools necessary to meet the growing demand for higher transparency, accountability, safety, and sustainability.
More than 30,000 companies in over 100 countries rely on their industry-leading solutions. They annually certify more than 3 million metric tons of agricultural product for social and environmental responsibility to the ProTerra standard while guiding export to all major markets.
Globally, the company employs 750 people and is rapidly expanding.
Berkshire Partners acquired the company in December 2020. Berkshire Partners, a Boston-based investment firm, has made more than 130 private equity investments since its founding over 30 years ago. Berkshire Private Equity has developed sector experience in business services & technology, communications, consumer, healthcare, and industrials. The firm has a strong history of partnering with management teams to grow the companies in which it invests.
Summary
The key priorities of the Director, Legal and Contracts will lead the legal and contract administration activities in a dynamic and global operating environment. It will be responsible for balancing risk management and providing an outstanding customer experience. In addition, the role will be responsible for designing and implementing scalable processes and systems.
The role will report to the CFO, SVP Finance and will interact extensively with business leaders, the Commercial Team and external advisers.
Responsibilities
- Drive customer contracting process for diverse set of international customers
- Implement scalable processes, select an automated workflow solution (Contract Lifecycle Management)
- Coordinate and optimize use of specialist third party legal advisors
- Manage legal filings and drive legal entity simplification
- Provide clear, pragmatic advice to a diverse group of internal constituents (Execute Leadership Team, Commercial Team, General Managers, M&A team…).
- Support the company in achieving its objectives while mitigating risk and anticipate legal issues that could arise.
- Define authority matrix in managing legal matters
- Implement process to ensure all constituencies understand the escalation levels necessary to ensure all legal matters are dealt with
Qualifications and Experience
- 5+ years prior customer contract experience (ideally combination of law firm and corporate)
- Well-versed in B2B software industry commercial contracts including drafting, reviewing, interpreting, and negotiating complex international contracts, MSAs, enterprise-wide, T&Cs etc.
- Working knowledge of data privacy and security, intellectual property, M&A, corporate, compliance and employment law
- Experience implementing a CLM system is an advantage
- JD degree
Competencies, Knowledge, and Skills
- Well organized, process driven and adept in a fast-paced, complex environment. Ability to balance workload and effectively prioritize.
- Demonstrated ability to exercise sound judgment in assessing risk and determining when to involve third-party expertise
- Great ability to assess the legal risk and judgment who should take internal or external action
- Ability to set up a process for authority decision making process to ensure the appropriate parties are involved and consulted
- Customer-centric: dedicated to enhancing our overall customer experience
- Looking for win-win solutions, while protecting the company from risks