Senior Manager - Open Innovation Projects

At Chanel, we are focused on creating an inclusive culture that nurtures personal growth, contributing to collective progress. We believe the uniqueness of each individual increases the diversity, complementarity, and effectiveness of our teams. We strongly encourage your application, as we value the perspective, experience, and potential you could bring to CHANEL.

About The Team

The Chanel Open Innovation team’s role is to identify and test new innovations that will well position us for the future of business. To support these initiatives, numerous projects will be launched to test disruptive technologies, different ways of working and trends on the ten year horizon and beyond. The Innovation projects will combine internal incubations with proofs of concept in a non-Chanel branded environment to support learnings and future direction.

About The Job

The Senior Manager, Open Innovation Projects (Project Management) role will be responsible for the operational and financial oversight of the Innovation projects. Specifically, this role is expected to create the processes to forecast, manage, track and measure the financial and operational health of these projects. It will take a leadership role in overall project management of key initiatives and organizing the team processes to maximize and streamline routing, approvals, deadlines and meeting cadence. Key partners include the entire Chanel Open Innovation team as well as the US and Global Finance and Legal teams.

This position will be managing and liaising with external and internal resources in order to execute the goals and milestones of the project. They must deeply understand the underlying experience principles of the concept and ensure that all actions taken adhere to original intent of the concept and are rigorously managed and documented to provide the supporting materials related to results and learnings.

You are energized by

• Financial Oversight of Development: create a process for approving costs of all new development items, work with production and development teams to value engineer
• Budget Management: create, manage and project the following: team corporate budget and Atelier P&L, capital expenditures
• Internal Relationship Management: work with internal stakeholders to ensure compliance with all legal regulations, corporate policies, systems and to check accuracy and consistency with financial reporting and BI
• External Resource Management: be the primary point of contact with the team and legal for all contract negotiations, SOW terms and legal sign-off
• Project Management: provide overall project management tying various works streams from digital to construction to creative development
• Team Organization: define the platforms and technology to store and organize team information

What You Will Bring To The Team

• Strong communication skills across all formats, excellent relationship building skills as well as the ability to influence and assess situations objectively with EQ are all required
• Alignment with responsible employer values and ability to operationally bring to life
• Technical abilities to include leveraging Office 365 on a daily basis as well as ability to fluently learn and navigate new systems and technologies to support the employee and client experience
• Innovative and creative mindset to push boundaries and explore new ideas, balanced with knowledge and judgement around compliance as well as the ability to project-manage, execute and ensure seamless delivery of creative ideas

Position Logistics

• Excellent communication skills in English, both verbal and written. French language skills a plus
• Prior project management experience required
• Track record of building and managing a large budget
• Ability to problem solve and propose multiple solutions
• Strong interpersonal and relationship skills with openness to other perspectives
• Experience in vendor management and project management
• Connection to and knowledge of Chanel brand values
• Open to various backgrounds in terms of prior work experience
• University degree, MBA is a plus.
• Fluent in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint

What Skills Will You Learn, What Experiences Might You Have

With a small client group comprised of multiple global locations and functions, you will have the chance to be deeply embedded directly in a dynamic innovation team, while also benefiting from the guidance and perspective of a strong global community. You will connect with local colleagues as well as with partners and team members across the world. This role allows for a mix of building long-term ongoing relationships with business partners as well as managing discrete projects with clear timelines. You will have the opportunity to design and implement projects from start to finish, managing the change strategy and people implications along the way, as well as being hands-on with the operational delivery of these projects to bring the team’s mission and organization to life. You will be challenged to constantly seek new perspectives, trends and ideas from the outside and then to apply your learnings in a real-world internal environment, generating learnings and new ways of working that can be scaled or further leveraged by the company.

The anticipated base salary range for this position is $85,000 through $115,270. Base salary is one component of the total compensation for this position. Other components [may/will] include additional compensation, benefits, and perks.

Chanel is a private company whose values are grounded in creating the conditions for people to perform at their best and feel fulfilled and confident in their work. We offer a unique work environment where individuals are encouraged to better understand the brand, the business, and motivations, so that together we can unlock the possibilities of growth. This is reflected in:

Diversity and Inclusion

At CHANEL, we are intentional in promoting Diversity & Inclusion. We foster respect, empathy and dignity for all. We believe strongly that the diversity of our people across the full spectrum of human differences is essential to our organisation and the connections we have with each other and our clients.

We offer Employee Resource Groups in the US that are voluntary, open to all, employee-led groups formed around a shared identity or lived experience, whose aim is to foster a diverse, inclusive, and equitable community aligned with the values and missions of the communities they support.

Chanel Community

CHANEL Community empowers our employees to channel their passions, talents, and sense of purpose to contribute to and learn from our communities.

Employees are encouraged to take time off annually to volunteer through CHANEL Community. CHANEL also matches employee donations to select charitable organizations.

Sustainability

CHANEL Mission 1.5° is our climate action plan. It is focused on transforming the business in line with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement on climate change to limit the average global mean temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

Employees are encouraged to contribute to our US Sustainability efforts at the corporate level and within the divisions, through organized taskforces and initiatives.

Arts and Culture

We are committed to extending our legacy of cultural engagement. Global support includes the CHANEL Culture Fund, which supports a select group of leading art culture institutions across the globe, and the CHANEL Next Prize for the next generation of creative talent. US support currently includes Annual sponsorship of the MoMA film program, Tribeca Film Festival programs and Through Her Lens, Support of the Academy Gold Fellowship for Women and Sponsorship of the BAAND Together Dance Festival at Lincoln Center.

Career and Leadership Development:

We have dedicated in-house teams focused on supporting the onboarding of employees, developing leadership skills via custom programs like Imagine Chanel People, Heart of Leadership and group and individual coaching, and blended online and live classes offered on our Bloom platform and by skilled trainers, such as Shape Your Career, to develop career building skills.

Compensation

Base salary, bonus potential and other forms of variable pay [may/will be] offered for this position

Benefits And Perks

• Family and care giving benefits (inclusive of parental leave, fertility support, Milk Stork, and Care.com Membership)
• Flexibility (flexible time and hybrid work options)
• Robust healthcare offerings; medical, dental, vision, MDLIVE (virtual care), One Medical, Flexible Spending Accounts (Health Care & Dependent Care), Health Savings Account and Employee Assistance Program
• Generous paid time off policies to include vacation, holiday, sick and volunteer days
• Wellbeing resources include dedicated paid time off for wellbeing (2-week August Office Closure and Wellbeing Days in Retail) and a Wellbeing fund
• Life insurance, Accidental Death & Dismemberment, Short Term Disability, Long Term Disability, Health Advocate, International Business Travel Accident & Medical, and Commuter Transit & Parking
• 401K, pension, and other incentives
• Chanel, Inc. benefits and perks are dependent on eligibility and subject to modification by Chanel at any time.