Hall of Fame Profile: Katie Williams, The J.M. Smucker Co.
Katie Williams started her career as a research scientist. She’s a neurobiologist who was trained to tackle the challenging questions that a career in research would give her. And while she always knew that her innate curiosity and love of problem solving would be a cornerstone of her daily work, it wasn’t until her first job out of college at Procter & Gamble that she truly found her path.
Williams started looking at brands, their connectivity to consumers, and marketing in a whole new light. She admits she was "bit by the bug" and realized then that she wanted to make more of an immediate impact on a business than she could in the long-game work that she saw Ph.D. scientists undertaking.
Today, as only the third chief marketing officer in The J.M. Smucker Co.’s long and storied history, Williams is transforming the company’s marketing lens and focusing on long-term brand vision while taking steps to see measurable impact every day.
Her track record of driving growth by connecting brands to culture, advancing digital-first engagement and leaning heavily on analytics to drive decision-making in past roles speaks for itself. It’s what she set out to accomplish again when assuming the role in March, and how she’s begun modernizing J.M. Smucker’s marketing, brand strategy and consumer engagement efforts in her short time there.
“I’m taking my experiences and expertise into everything I do, but layering on a healthy dose of curiosity and humility so that we can stay open to how we do things next,” she says.
The Early Years
Williams was born and raised in Milwaukee, the daughter of a cab driver and a nurse who focused on hard work, family culture and education. She worked as a sales associate at Sears while in high school and then at a convenience store while attending Purdue University to pay for college. Her first summer internship was in pharmaceutical research at what was then Eli Lilly, focusing on drug metabolism in the area of pancreatic cancer drugs.
"I really thought I wanted to be this hard-core research scientist and spend time tackling some of the meaningful and challenging questions that science could tackle," she says. "But I knew I needed variety and loved seeing the impact of my curiosity in a shorter period of time than that type of research was going to give me."
Williams had two job offers upon graduating — one at Abbott Labs focusing on diagnostic tools for diabetics, and the other at nearby Procter & Gamble, working in hair care research. She chose P&G, and for the next two years learned more about consumer connection and how to lead a business through consumer brands.
Her next stop was the University of Michigan, where she met her future husband and earned an MBA in marketing and general management.
In 2001, she joined Kraft Foods full time, working in Chicago on its pizza business. She held progressive marketing positions for nearly seven years before being named the marketing director of desserts and leading strategy for the Jell-O, Cool Whip and Jet Puffed brands.
“Very early on in my career I understood the power of brand building and commercial execution — and how important it was to really be able to bring the brand closer to the consumer through that shopper experience,” Williams says. “It was part of my early development and training as a marketer working in a DSD environment.”
Career Development
After she had her first son, Williams was responsible for the early stages of Kraft Food’s strategic direction when it was pivoting its portfolio to address consumers’ evolving health and wellness needs. Having been with Kraft for nearly a decade at that point, she decided to take the advice of a former manager and broaden her experience with a few roles that were "off the beaten path" instead of taking a linear approach to her career development.
She pivoted to a CRM role, which was part of the still-emerging discipline of building brands that connect with consumers by leveraging data and more direct content development.
Then, in early 2012, Williams chose to move into the snack business at what became Mondelez International, seeking "the energy, agility and resilience it takes to work in fast-growing, high-growth businesses," she says. Williams and her family moved to New Jersey that year, where her husband continued with PepsiCo in a finance role and she ran the Ritz business at Mondelez.
With global aspirations after giving birth to her second son, Williams' next role centered around developing the company's savory biscuit portfolio, launching innovation and marketing campaigns, and partnering with marketers all over the world to expand the Mondelez portfolio.
In early 2016, she assumed her next post — coming back to the U.S., so to speak — and leading a team focused on the North American confections business. "We built out amazing capabilities and brand-building skills leveraging social media platforms and new ways to engage with consumers," she says, including new processes and approaches with Oreo in real-time activation, and using licensing as a way to connect with culture through the Sour Patch Kids brand, which included a sneaker collaboration with Under Armour and basketball great Stephen Curry.
Williams rose to vice president of marketing transformation and excellence, a position she held for two years at Mondelez, before being tapped by GSK to be its chief marketing officer in late 2020.
She welcomed the chance to be part of another major transformation and help stand up new and modern capabilities as a way to connect with consumers, which was something the company hadn't done at scale as part of a big pharmaceutical company.
"Being able to lead through that — after I started my career as an intern at a pharmaceutical company and did similar consumer brand-building work at Kraft and Mondelez — made it a true full-circle moment for me," Williams says. "We went on to do some amazing work at a critical time with some phenomenal brands."
Looking back, Williams says the experiences she gained in the first 15 years of her career — working to build her marketing prowess while also dabbling in sales rotations — helped her better understand the different pathways to connecting with consumers and just how important the growth of data, digital activation and technology was becoming in the brand-building space.
"[My early experiences have] continued to pay dividends as I've gone through my career in terms of how I think about transforming — as new behaviors emerge, new factors come into play and new technologies and tools continue to change the marketing landscape," she says. "All of these are a hallmark of how I have led through the years."
From her foundational beginnings at Kraft, Williams has benefitted from strong mentors. She partnered with former Campbell's CEO Mark Clouse while at Kraft, watching how he brought focus to the organization through his performance-driven approach. Tim Cofer, CEO of Keurig Dr Pepper, taught Williams to understand and leverage consumer insights as a way to drive the business. Mary Beth Stone West, also from her Mondelez days, is another mentor who continues to support her in her career journey. Most recently, Williams worked with Lisa Paley at Haleon, whom Williams credits as an amazing champion of her teams and of women leaders.
Making Her Mark at J.M. Smucker
When CEO Mark Smucker approached Williams about joining the executive team at Smuckers, she wasn't sure she was ready to make another big move. But she was intrigued by the company's portfolio of powerful brands.
She joined the company in March of this year, and since then she and her team — consisting of media lead, Kelly Sweeney; insights and analytics lead, Kelly Gronlund; creative and design lead, Kara Buckler; net-revenue optimization lead, Chunhong Zhang; and technology and data strategy lead, Melissa Faucher — have started to build an enterprise marketing muscle.
"We're elevating our thinking of what it means to build brands the Smucker way," she says, noting that they are partnering across the company's business units to think about and codify the vision and approach it will adopt as a total marketing organization to help build and nurture its brands.
Williams commissioned Oxford Consulting to be the company's external partner in the process. "We are working to define the Smuckers brand-building way and what is differentiated about our approach," she says, "and then embed a common, consistent and impactful way to think about how we build our brands now and in the future."
In the meantime, she is leading the development of a new cadence of enterprise leadership across the marketing function and aligning on key growth priorities, focusing heavily on modernizing the company's engagement approach.
"We want to address some of the new ways that consumers are engaging with our brands, whether from a long-term equity perspective or from an accelerated connected commerce space," Williams notes, through its social and creator workstream as well as unlocking the future of discoverability in terms of agentic commerce.
By gaining insights and knowledge of how the latter is evolving, her team will be able to better understand each brand's visibility and, perhaps more importantly, the science behind the new content strategies it can put in place to support optimization in the space.
Another top priority has been to modernize the company's in-house studio approach to address the elevated content needs. "We're looking to build automation into that process so we can be more efficient in how we think about developing end-to-end processes that can not only take advantage of highly data-intense insights, but carry that through into seamless and efficient productions to allow us to address the scale that we need," she says.
And Williams knows a good thing when she sees it. "We have had some really amazing progress on creative excellence across our portfolio through a strong culture-first mindset and bold creative thinking, and we'll continue to employ that across our brand portfolio," she says.
As for some recent work that stands out in her mind, Williams points to the Cafe Bustelo “Game Face” campaign that ran during the World Cup this summer; to August’s “Every Jif’ing Thing” campaign; and to a new campaign launching for the Dunkin’ brand in partnership with singer/songwriter Chaka Khan that the team hopes will further differentiate the brand within the coffee category.
And while these programs connect with consumers in stores and online, Williams is behind the scenes helping to build the foundation for what true end-to-end brand building looks like, but with a much more modernized take, she notes. She thrives on leading through change and developing new skillsets to build the company’s brands, while strategizing about organizational design and capabilities. Especially, as she says, “with this more blended, blurry approach to how we get things done.”
Looking Ahead
Ensuring clarity and connectivity within the company’s retail media ecosystem will continue to be a daily focus for Williams. “Our biggest opportunity is considering how we are optimizing across that full ecosystem,” she notes, "and making sure our dollars are working as hard as they possibly can across that.”
Equally important, she adds, is making sure her team is keeping pace with not only how consumer and shopper behavior is changing when it comes to digital commerce, but how its retailer partners continue their own evolution.
She anticipates further acceleration of changing consumer behavior, driven by the adoption of new technology. As a leader, she is also reimagining what a marketer with modern and relevant capabilities looks like.
“I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can build out not only our organizational design but the capability framework to support an effective marketing team as consumers continue to change their behavior in this space.”
Katie Williams
Title: Chief Marketing Officer
Company: The J.M. Smucker Co.Career path:
- The J.M. Smucker Co.: Chief Marketing Officer (2026-present);
- Haleon: Chief Marketing Officer, U.S. (2022-2026);
- GSK: Chief Marketing Officer, U.S. (2020-2022);
- Mondelez International: Vice President, Marketing Transformation & Excellence (2018-2020), Senior Director, NA Confections (2016-2018); Senior Director, Global Savory and Kid Wholesome (2014-2016); Senior Director, Wholesome Crackers (2012-2013);
- Kraft Foods: Senior Marketing Director, Consumer Relationship Marketing (2011-2012); Marketing Director, Global Health & Wellness (2010-2011); Marketing Director, Desserts (2008-2010); Director, Frozen Quick Meals; Senior Brand Manager, DiGiorno Pizza; Brand Manager, Innovation; Senior Associate Brand Manager, California Pizza Kitchen (2001-2008)
- Procter & Gamble: Research Scientist (1997-1999).
Industry activities: Board Member, Personal Care Products Council; Ad Week Marketing Vanguard.
Education: Purdue University, Bachelor’s, Neurobiology; University of Michigan, Master’s of Business Administration, Marketing and General Management.
