Senior Innovation Project Leader

Position Overview

The Senior Innovation Project Leader is a visible leadership role at the center of Eastman’s innovation and growth agenda. This position is responsible for leading high-impact, cross-functional initiatives from opportunity definition through commercialization—shaping strategy, aligning stakeholders, and driving disciplined execution that creates meaningful business and customer value.

This role is ideal for a leader who thrives in complexity, brings strong business judgment, and can influence across functions, levels, and geographies. The Senior Innovation Project Leader serves as a catalyst for progress—connecting commercial insight, technical capability, operational readiness, and strategic priorities to move critical initiatives forward. Success in this role requires the ability to lead through ambiguity, make sound decisions with incomplete information, and inspire teams toward bold outcomes.

This position is located onsite at our Kingsport, TN headquarters.

Role Expectations

• Lead with enterprise mindset, ensuring projects are aligned to Eastman’s strategic growth priorities and long-term value creation goals.
• Provide confident, visible leadership across cross-functional teams, building alignment and momentum without direct authority.
• Translate complex opportunities into clear direction, executable plans, and decision-ready recommendations for leaders and stakeholders.
• Champion accountability, pace, and execution discipline across the full project lifecycle—from concept development through launch.
• Anticipate risks, remove barriers, and navigate ambiguity with resilience, sound judgment, and a solutions-oriented approach.
• Build strong partnerships with commercial, technical, manufacturing, and functional teams to accelerate progress and strengthen outcomes.
• Communicate with clarity and executive presence, tailoring messages for senior leaders, project teams, and key stakeholders.
• Foster an environment of inclusion, trust, continuous improvement, and high performance while modeling Eastman’s values of safety, integrity, and collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership: Lead innovation programs and complex growth initiatives that advance Eastman’s long-term business strategy and translate opportunity spaces into actionable roadmaps.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Align diverse stakeholders across commercial, technical, manufacturing, and functional teams to accelerate decisions, remove barriers, and maintain forward momentum.
• Enterprise Execution: Drive projects from early-stage concept through commercialization with strong planning, governance, prioritization, and execution discipline.
• Leadership Through Ambiguity: Provide direction and stability in dynamic environments by navigating uncertainty, managing competing priorities, and enabling teams to stay focused on the most critical outcomes.
• Business and Customer Value Creation: Shape compelling business cases, strengthen value propositions, and ensure innovation efforts remain grounded in customer needs and strategic business impact.
• Risk and Change Leadership: Identify project, organizational, and market risks early; respond with agility; and lead change in a way that builds commitment and confidence.
• Executive Communication and Decision Support: Deliver clear, concise, and influential updates to senior leadership, including recommendations, tradeoffs, risks, and decision requests.
• Capability and Culture Building: Contribute to a high-performing innovation culture by reinforcing strong leadership practices, collaboration, continuous improvement, and disciplined ways of working.

Qualifications

• Bachelors in an engineering, science-based, business, or related technical field required.
• Post-bachelor’s education is preferred, including master’s degrees, MBA, PhD, or other relevant graduate or professional degrees.
• Proven track record (5+ years) of project leadership and execution with strong business outcomes, including leading cross-functional teams, driving strategic alignment, effective planning and scheduling, and communicating regularly with senior internal stakeholders required. 10+ years preferred.
• Significant hands-on experience with end-to-end innovation, new product development methodology, and/or stage-gated process, with demonstrated success leading innovation projects, commercialization programs, and/or strategic growth initiatives.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, high-visibility initiatives from idea through launch, including business case development, stakeholder management, risk mitigation, and execution discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without direct authority and drive decisions across diverse, cross-functional teams.
• Change management experience is required, Prosci methodology and/or certification preferred.
• Experience working on or alongside digital data, analytics, or AI-enabled initiatives is strongly preferred; hands-on technical development is not required.
• Market-facing and customer engagement experience is strongly preferred.
• Certifications are a plus, including PMP, Six Sigma Black Belt, Prosci, or other project management certifications from PMI such as Scrum or Agile.