Career Path of a Head of Strategic Planning at Monster Energy Company

I'm currently the Head of Strategic Planning for Monster Energy Company. I've been with Monster for about two and a half years and, admittedly, took a pretty unique path to get here.

I started at the University of Michigan, studying Industrial and Operations Engineering. I was always good at math and science in high school and naturally thought I'd be an engineer. Candidly, when I was going through engineering, I started wanting to be a mechanical engineer, then a chemical engineer. I quickly realized those highly technical fields weren't something I wanted to do for my entire career.

So, I pivoted into Industrial Engineering, which, if you ask a hardcore engineer, is the softest engineering degree you can get. It was the easiest to pivot into a business or operations setting. After graduating with my industrial engineering degree, I'll even back up and say I know we talked about internships. During school, I had the opportunity to do an internship for the Greek Telephone Directory. I sold ad space door-to-door to local businesses in Ann Arbor. It was a brutal internship; I learned to accept the term "no" very quickly.

The next year, I worked for Cummins Diesel Engines as an operations/industrial engineering intern. I'll say those internships are critical in college. I ended up, when I graduated, going to work for General Electric Company. Those internships were a prerequisite for even getting an initial interview. I highly encourage you to take those internships seriously, as they are a great forward indicator to a potential hiring manager that you're serious about your career.

When I graduated, I went to work for General Electric Company in their rotational leadership program, the Operations Management Leadership Program. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and this was a great opportunity to rotate through different components of their supply chain and manufacturing operations to figure out what I liked. I really fell in love with lean manufacturing; it resonated with me – the idea of continuous improvement and always striving to get better.

I came off that leadership program into a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt role at a new startup facility in Las Vegas. For someone at 24 years old, it was a really cool opportunity. I got to wear many hats and learn many aspects of starting and running a small manufacturing operation. Hindsight's 2020; I was on an upward trajectory at a company like General Electric locationally speaking. They wanted me to move back to Erie, Pennsylvania, where that business unit was headquartered. I had made it as far west as Las Vegas, could see the ocean over the mountains, and said, "You know what? Let's go to Los Angeles and just try something new."

So, I left General Electric and worked for McMaster-Carr Supply Company, a large industrial supply distribution company. I ran their Downstream Warehouse operations for about three and a half years, applying many of the lean manufacturing principles I had learned at General Electric. While working at McMaster-Carr, I was doing my MBA at UCLA.

The idea was, through GE and McMaster-Carr, I had developed a great foundation in operations and operations management. But I wasn't making the strategic decisions for the future of the company, and that's where I wanted to go. My MBA was an opportunity to pivot more into management consulting, where I worked for Booz & Company. It was bought by PwC and rebranded as Strategy&, essentially PwC's strategic consulting arm. I did operations and supply chain strategy consulting for them for about three and a half years.

I really enjoyed consulting, again, being able to work with an executive presence and for smart, capable individuals. But the travel is brutal. I reached a point where I met my to-be wife, and we wanted to start a family. So, I chose to pivot away from consulting more into corporate strategy, which allowed me to work with a single company and travel significantly less.

I went to work for Mattel, the toy company, in their corporate strategy group. It was an interesting time to join Mattel. I got to do a lot of cool work, most prominently reshaping their global manufacturing footprint to cut costs out of their operations. They had seen declining sales for a number of years, so right-sizing their operations to support their future was what I was working on. It was a really cool project, but again, it was a challenging company.

When I found another opportunity at a company called Tramontina USA, I took it. At Tramontina, I was Director of Strategic Initiatives, responsible for integrating seven disparate entities on the West Coast into two go-forward business units. It was really cool; I got to do a lot of operations, but it was really about soft skills – taking those legacy businesses, capturing what made them special, and reimagining their future while adding productivity and synergies. It wasn't easy work, but it was very rewarding and a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, like many, I was impacted by COVID. Tramontina USA is in the restaurant equipment and supply space, and restaurants were hit hard. I was laid off and spent the summer of 2020 figuring out what I wanted to do. I shifted my focus from driving cost and efficiencies to working for a growth brand. I wanted to not worry about cost and just worry about how to grow our future.

So, I joined Monster Energy as Director of Strategy. I should emphasize that I was Director of Commercial Strategy because, as I mentioned, most of my career has been in operations and supply chain management. Shifting to a commercial strategy focus was a 180-degree pivot for me, but I've had a blast. I enjoy learning new things, and getting to learn about a different half of a business has been a lot of fun.

Now, a couple of years into my time with Monster, I feel like I have this amazing, well-rounded background. I started in supply chain and operations, so I know how to adequately support an organization to drive efficiencies and costs, but also to ensure we're ready to scale for growth. And most recently, on the commercial side, I'm understanding how we win in the market, how we differentiate our brands, and how we continue to grow.

I've been at Monster for two and a half years and recently pivoted into the Head of Strategic Planning role. Now, I'm trying to step back and identify the strategic imperatives for our business. I'm defining the tactics across the business we need to deploy daily, weekly, and yearly to drive those imperatives. I'm also setting up measures to ensure what we say we're doing is actually moving the needle towards our strategic goals. It's a very cool company to be working for, and I really enjoy it.