This role will lead Yum!’s enterprise-wide AI strategy, driving adoption, innovation, and transformation across brands and functions. This leader will oversee the AI Academy, advance AI-first enablement, and guide the development of scalable AI solutions that enhance productivity, operational efficiency, and business performance. Working closely with executive leadership and cross-functional teams, this role will shape AI investment priorities, champion responsible AI adoption, and deliver measurable business impact.

Key Responsibilities Drive AI Academy & Enterprise AI Adoption

Lead Yum!’s enterprise-wide AI Academy, expanding it from a training program into a strategic transformation engine that elevates AI readiness, maturity, and capability across all brands and functions.

Own the strategy, design, and evolution of Yum!’s AI curriculum, ensuring it drives measurable behavior change, productivity uplift, and enterprise value creation.

Direct the roadmap and execution of the AI learning platform in partnership with engineering and design teams, delivering a scalable, intuitive, and gamified ecosystem for ongoing AI proficiency development.

Establish and evolve Yum!’s analytics architecture for AI adoption—including measurement standards, enterprise dashboards, and KPIs that inform executive decisions on AI investment and capability building.

Drive enterprise-wide AI adoption targets for Above Restaurant Leaders (ARLs), holding direct accountability for outcomes that influence operational performance and transformation readiness.

Build and lead a global community of AI champions and practitioners, enabling high-capillarity change management across diverse markets and functions.

Partner closely with Learning, AI, Data, Analytics, and brand leadership to embed AI tools and workflows into operations, ensuring adoption is sustained and value-generating.

Manage and develop three direct reports, ensuring the AI Adoption team delivers strategic and operational excellence.

Lead Enterprise AI-First Enablement

Continuously evaluate emerging AI technologies, model releases, platform capabilities, and ecosystem shifts to identify high-value opportunities for enterprise transformation.

Own the enterprise AI enablement roadmap, aligning emerging technology opportunities with Yum!’s strategic priorities, business needs, and brand-specific requirements.

Shape the enterprise agent strategy and operating model, enabling business and technology teams to build, deploy and reuse agentic AI solutions across brands and functions.

Lead Yum!’s cross-functional rapid-enablement engine—including cybersecurity, privacy, data governance, legal, engineering, and AI—to accelerate secure, compliant activation of new AI features and capabilities.

Define and govern standardized frameworks for assessing feasibility, risk, compliance, business impact, and readiness for new AI technologies.

Drive an “AI-first” culture across the organization by equipping leaders with the guidance, guardrails, and tools necessary to deploy new AI capabilities safely and quickly.

Hold accountability for enterprise technology risk related to AI enablement, ensuring alignment with Yum!’s global security, governance, and compliance standards.

Lead Enterprise AI Development Initiatives

Lead multidisciplinary teams (product, engineering, design, data science, operations) to develop proprietary autonomous agents and AI-driven automation systems that transform mission-critical workflows.

Own the strategy for internally built AI solutions that drive operational efficiency, margin expansion, improved decision quality, and enterprise speed.

Identify and prioritize high-value enterprise workflows and pain points in partnership with executive and functional leaders, translating them into scalable AI products.

Partner with functional leaders to develop AI transformation roadmaps, redesign priority workflows and coordinate implementation with clear ownership and productivity targets.

Define success metrics, monitor business impact, and continuously optimize proprietary AI systems to maximize enterprise value creation.

Provide high-judgment leadership in balancing innovation with risk, guiding the development of systems that operate safely within Yum!’s global technology and compliance environment.

Enterprise Leadership & Executive Influence

Own Yum!’s enterprise AI strategy and annual and multiyear roadmaps, aligning priorities across brands and functions and guiding investment decisions.

Lead the enterprise C-level agenda for AI, partnering directly with executive leadership to shape long-term AI strategy, investment priorities, transformation milestones, and governance.

Serve as a principal advisor to the CTO, CIO, and CDO on AI innovation, enterprise adoption maturity, enablement challenges, and opportunities for competitive advantage.

Deliver executive-level storytelling, insights, and recommendations that guide decision-making across Yum!’s brands and corporate teams.

Act as Yum!’s senior internal expert on AI transformation, ensuring alignment across technology, operations, finance, brand leadership, and global digital strategy.

Represent the enterprise AI function in high-stakes decision forums, shaping policies, risk posture, and operational readiness for AI adoption at scale.

Qualifications

10+ years of experience in AI, digital transformation, product leadership, or related fields.

Demonstrated ability to lead enterprise-scale transformation programs with high complexity, ambiguity, and cross-functional interdependencies.

Experience managing and developing teams, including direct leadership responsibility.

Strong capability to define strategy, structure complex problems, and execute at scale through diverse cross-functional teams.

Expertise in evaluating AI technologies, governing risk, and driving safe, responsible AI adoption.

Exceptional communication and influencing skills, with a proven ability to engage C-suite leaders and guide strategic decision-making.

Deep understanding of AI platforms, emerging technologies, enterprise security, and compliance frameworks.

Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree preferred.

Nice to have: Experience building enablement programs, learning platforms, or automation systems.

Salary Range: $195,200 - $243,900 annually + bonus eligibility and stock-based compensation. This is the expected salary range for this position. Ultimately, in determining pay, we'll consider the successful candidate’s location, experience, and other job-related factors.