EVP – Risk and Resilience — Cold-Chain Division

The mandate

A cold-chain division derives a disproportionate share of earnings and facility utilisation from a small number of customers. That concentration has historically supported stable volumes, dedicated processes and predictable investment. It now creates material exposure to renewal decisions, customer consolidation and abrupt changes in product mix. The division intends to diversify, but new customers may introduce unfamiliar temperature ranges, validation duties, packaging, regulatory expectations and credit profiles.

An EVP – Risk and Resilience is being appointed to make diversification safe and economically credible. The executive will own enterprise risk, operational resilience, business continuity, insurance, crisis management, third-party risk and the independent challenge of controls across the cold-chain estate. Quality, food-safety, pharmaceutical and workplace specialists retain their regulated authorities; this role must connect their evidence to enterprise choices without blurring accountabilities.

This is a new role created before the portfolio shifts materially. The board does not want a risk function that merely records customer concentration after commercial decisions are made. It expects early challenge of which sectors, volumes and facility commitments the division can absorb while maintaining product integrity under stress.

Scope and operating context

The Chicago-based EVP influences approximately 1,725 employees and material partners across United States operations and a broader international region. The perimeter includes refrigerated warehouses, cross-docks, transport interfaces, monitoring platforms, energy and refrigeration dependencies, specialist subcontractors and customer-specific operating cells.

Cold-chain failure is rarely confined to a single machine. A refrigeration fault can coincide with an energy interruption, blocked access, unavailable technicians, cyber loss or an extreme-weather event. Inventory may remain within specification for a finite period, but decision rights, validated alternatives and customer authorisation determine whether that time is useful. The division also handles products whose disposition rules cannot be generalised.

Concentration appears in more than revenue. Anchor customers may dominate a facility, a lane, a packaging process, a validated chamber or a specialist labour pool. Their departure could strand fixed cost; their rapid growth could crowd out diversified business. Risk analysis must reveal these second-order dependencies.

First-year agenda

During the first ninety days, the EVP will build a concentration map that links customer revenue and margin to facility occupancy, temperature zone, equipment, labour skill, transport capacity, technology interface, credit exposure and exit rights. It will distinguish contractual minimums from forecast habit and identify where multiple named customers ultimately depend on the same end market or parent.

The diversification plan will receive risk thresholds before sales targets. Prospective sectors and products will be assessed for temperature tolerances, excursion rules, segregation, sanitation, security, validation, traceability, insurance and incident-notification needs. Entry will be staged where evidence is incomplete. A high-margin opportunity will not proceed simply because spare cubic capacity appears available.

Facility resilience will be tested against a changing portfolio. Each material site will have product-aware continuity playbooks covering refrigeration loss, power quality, alarm failure, access restriction, labour shortage, transport disruption and loss of a critical contractor. Plans will state who decides to hold, move, release or dispose of inventory and which customers or authorities must participate.

The EVP will sponsor live exercises that use realistic thermal windows and constrained alternatives. Scenarios will include simultaneous failures and competing customers seeking priority capacity. Lessons must result in funded equipment, contracts, training or decision changes; repeatedly accepted findings will be escalated to the executive committee.

Energy and refrigerant risks will be incorporated into capital planning. The team will examine backup generation, fuel duration, grid exposure, maintenance, refrigerant availability, leakage and transition obligations. Investments will be ranked by product consequence and recovery time rather than by asset age alone.

Third-party controls will focus on specialist dependency. Refrigeration engineers, sensor providers, carriers, pest control, security and calibration services will be assessed for competence, response capacity, geographic correlation, cyber access and financial health. Contracts promising priority response will be tested against the provider’s obligations to other clients in the same disruption.

Customer contracts will be reviewed with commercial and legal leaders. Liability, temperature evidence, forecast variability, reserved capacity, termination, audit, data sharing and incident communications must match operating reality. The EVP will not negotiate price, but will prevent ambiguous risk transfer from being mistaken for commercial protection.

Risk reporting will become decision-oriented. The board will see concentration under loss and growth cases, available thermal protection time, unmitigated single points, exercise findings and the cost of resilience commitments made to win business. Aggregate risk colours without causal evidence will be retired.

Crisis governance will be clarified for events crossing quality, operations and customer boundaries. Technical release authority must remain independent, while a single incident lead coordinates facts, customer contact, logistics and executive escalation. Post-event reviews will separate reasonable decisions made with limited information from control neglect.

The EVP will build a capable risk organisation that spends time at facilities and understands product consequence. Site leaders will own local controls; the central team will set scenarios, challenge evidence and connect patterns. Training will include difficult prioritisation and escalation, not only procedural acknowledgement.

By month twelve, the division should know where customer diversification reduces exposure and where it adds unfamiliar correlated risk. Priority sites should have exercised continuity options, and new-sector proposals should reach investment committees with transparent resilience cost and control conditions.

Leadership responsibilities

The EVP will advise the group sponsor and challenge division, commercial and operational executives before commitments harden. They will have direct access to the appropriate board committee when product integrity or continuity evidence is overridden or withheld.

During significant incidents, the role will protect factual discipline and clear decision ownership. Communications must distinguish confirmed product status from assumption and avoid reassurance unsupported by temperature evidence.

They will maintain constructive relationships with customers, insurers, specialist responders and relevant authorities while preventing external assurance from replacing internal preparedness.

Measures of success

The board will track customer and facility concentration, diversification risk acceptance, exercised recovery capability, thermal protection time, critical-dependency remediation and closure of material findings. Product measures will include excursions, quarantine, traceability completeness, disposition time and recurrence.

Financial indicators will cover revenue and margin at risk, insurance effectiveness, resilience investment, stranded-capacity exposure and losses avoided through timely intervention. A lower number of logged risks will not be treated as improvement.

Candidate profile

Candidates should offer 22–28 years in enterprise risk, resilience or controlled operations across cold chain, pharmaceuticals, food, chemicals, healthcare logistics or another temperature-dependent sector. They need evidence of influencing portfolio growth, not merely managing incidents after acceptance.

Required experience includes multi-site continuity, product-specific crisis decisions, complex third parties, insurance and board reporting. The board will value examples of declining or conditioning revenue because controls were immature and of managing simultaneous facility and customer pressure without compromising release authority.

The successful EVP will combine technical curiosity with commercial proportion. They must question both optimistic diversification assumptions and risk arguments used to preserve an uncompetitive status quo.

Compensation and appointment terms

Base compensation is indicated at USD 360,000 to USD 480,000, plus annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will consider concentration reduction, tested recovery, product protection, risk-informed growth and talent depth rather than the absence of reported events. Final terms will recognise proven cross-sector scope and forfeited awards.

Confidentiality

The division is unnamed because customer exposure, facility dependencies, product types and resilience gaps are sensitive. Further information is conditional on identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must not provide client inventories, validation records, incident reports or security details from previous employers.