Vice President of Operations
What if you could make a real difference, every day, for people’s health, animals, and the planet — working with a passionate vegan team?
You certainly can, at LeafSide! We are a fast-growing company, offering innovative 100% whole-food plant-based (WFPB) vegan meals. Our mission is to make optimally healthy, whole vegan eating so easy and enjoyable, that it becomes a societal norm.
We're seeking a masterful integrator and business leader: someone who excels at implementing visionary ideas, harmonizing all business functions, and driving systematic execution. You are mission-driven, ironclad in integrity, super-organized, boldly inspiring, uncannily resourceful, amazingly adaptable, crystal-clear communicating, totally tech-savvy, persistently problem-crushing, and a get-it-done fellow vegan — ready to join us in our Tempe, AZ office as our VP of Operations — internally known as our General Manager.
As our team’s Vice President of Operations and key integrator, you’ll be directly helping develop strategic plans, and then driving their execution to meet growth and P&L expectations — while staying aligned with Leafside’s vision and values. Besides being a great manager and coach, you’ll also be leading the company via team building and culture-building, and involved in key projects, and administration. It’ll all be happening in the fast-paced environment of a growing, mission-driven company — so we’re looking for someone who will see this role as not just another job, but their life’s calling.
Responsibilities
The VP of Operations helps to define the company’s strategic plan and goals, then drive their execution to meet growth and P&L expectations — staying aligned with company values, purpose, and mission.
- Strategy, Goals-Setting, and Execution: Help the founder develop company-wide strategy, expectations, and clear goals including P&L goals, KPI targets. Then align and drive the team to the promised land with regular reviews and accountability for results. Find and allocate resources as needed.
- Ongoing Overall Business Oversight, Alignment & Accountability-Driver: Push for execution excellence every day. Implement inspiring goals, integrate and align all major functions/departments and leaders with daily and weekly meetings. Keep a close eye on progress and key metrics, from budgets, P&L, and cashflow; to supply chain, production, quality assurance & control, and customer success.
- Organization-Building: Organize, simplify, and systematize superb execution at all levels of the company. Find and/or build effective, essential tools, systems, and processes that are lean and adaptable, training teammates as needed. Promote and coach values-driven, distributed decision-making, instead of proliferating rules. Be relentlessly obsessed with values alignment, focus, simplicity, and clarity.
- General Problem-Solver: Resolve issues effectively, seeing and calling out real problems, being comfortable with conflict, and finding healthy, pragmatic solutions. Ensure the leadership team is healthy, functional, cohesive.
- Communication & Culture-Building: Ensure all key messages are consistently and correctly cascaded throughout the organization. Exemplify, communicate, promote, and reinforce LeafSide’s values, purpose, and mission throughout the company. Help rally individuals and teams within and across departments, soliciting and using good ideas from any teammate, for mission success.
- Staffing & Development: Plan and help manage staffing, recruiting, and onboarding to meet company goals. Develop managers and top performers; review individuals’ career development plans and ensure follow-through therein. Handle staff/HR issues as needed.
- Ad-hoc Awesomeness: Do whatever it takes for mission success! Solve problems and create opportunities befitting your leadership role. As a certain formidable leader once declared, “We shall either find a way, or make one.” We want YOU to be that superstar who can grow yourself, the team, and the company to create the healthier, better world we all want!
Desired Candidate Attributes & Experience
- Minimum 10 years professional work experience, and a minimum 5 years of experience as senior manager, director, or other executive role in a small or mid-sized company, with increasing responsibilities and progression in roles you’ve filled. You should have clear leadership, management, company-building, and project management skills and experience.
- Schooling & Education: Your formal schooling should include a bachelor’s degree or higher, ideally in a STEM or closely related field. Lifetime education should be one of your ingrained habits, along with a Growth Mindset (a core value at LeafSide), and being curious & challenge-seeking. Per Twain: “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Quantitative and analytical skills should be evident, e.g. college-level mathematics courses including basic statistics, and college-level science coursework (physics, chemistry, molecular biology / biochemistry, engineering, computer science, etc).
- Managerial & Leadership Skills: You are passionate about finding and developing talent, both within and outside the company. You’ve studied and applied the best theory and practice of rallying people to reach amazing goals together. Your experience (and reflecting on such) keeps you focused on the basics and essentials of leading and managing people, while avoiding fads that don’t actually work.
- Character & Interpersonal Skills, i.e. you are authentic, highly reliable, always curious, highly capable, super-organized, adaptable, diplomatic, persistent, resourceful, and last, but certainly not least, high energy.
- Proactive Problem-solving & Opportunity-finding: You are able to quickly anticipate the needs of the company, its leaders and their departments, avoiding and solving problems with care and resourcefulness — before they become major issues. You also have a quick sense of opportunities worth pursuing further.
- Communication Skills: You have outstanding verbal and written communication skills, and to others you’re engaging, empathetic, clear, and assertive in your writing and speaking. You pair that with strong listening skills so that everyone you deal with feels heard and understood. Public speaking, and knowing how to command a room, should be in your skillset.
- Technology & IT Skills: You’ve used many forms of software, and you quickly pick up new tools, and can teach other teammates in such. You are more than proficient in Google Suite, e.g. creating well-organized Docs & doing calculations in Sheets. Paired with your proactive problem-solving above, you solve most tech problems on your own.
- You’re passionate about LeafSide’s mission to help people, animals, and Earth; and you’re committed to being a stellar example to others by living the whole foods vegan lifestyle.
Salary & Benefits
- This is a full-time on-site role, minimum 50-60 hours/week. To succeed in this role, hard work and constant learning should absolutely be second nature to you. Career success and mission impact should be your top priority in life.
- We offer a market-competitive total rewards package, dependent on experience and qualifications.
- Total time off per year starts at 5 weeks per year. (8 paid holidays, 5 sick days, and 12 PTO days) with sick and PTO time usable interchangeably and accrued per fully employed pay period.
- Health, dental, vision, and life insurance plans are offered, with full or partial coverage by the company depending on the plan chosen.
- Complimentary LeafSide meals every workday (a $2,500+ yearly value), and employee discount on LeafSide products. Unlike most food companies, we eat our own products every day, and high quality food drives us to perform our best!l
