Senior Manager, PMO Sustainable Development, New Business & Lobbying

The core mission is to give structure and pace to a multi-year transformation that spans sustainable development, circularity and new business models. Day to day, that means building the project architecture: governance routines, milestones, deliverable definitions, dependency mapping, risk registers, budget follow-up and decision preparation. You are the person who makes sure the roadmap is clear enough for teams to actually progress against it, month after month. A large share of the work sits on the Lighter Sustainable Development plan, where you support the move from pilot stage toward broader deployment. That means coordinating workstreams across scientific research, collection, recycling, dismantling, revalorization, production integration, quality control and financial viability, and testing whether pilot results hold at scale. As the Lighter model matures, you translate its principles into category-specific roadmaps for Stationery, Shavers and Brushes, each with its own feasibility questions and product range. Beyond coordination, the role carries a genuine problem-solving mandate: breaking down complex situations, structuring options, identifying where teams are stuck or where decisions are pending, and bringing clear recommendations. The secondary perimeter covers initial screening of new business or M&A opportunities related to the agenda, and organizing lobbying and external stakeholder inputs so they align with internal project needs.

The most evident learning curve is circularity in an industrial setting. BIC's Lighter roadmap has already involved scientific research, industrial trials, collection models, recycling and dismantling options and business model testing, so a newcomer gains exposure to the full chain rather than a single slice of it. That includes seeing how quality requirements and manufacturing constraints shape which circular options are actually viable. You would also deepen skills in transformation governance at scale: designing program architecture in a matrix organization, preparing decisions for senior audiences, and managing long, multi-year timelines where priorities compete. Working across categories such as Stationery, Shavers and Brushes adds practice in adapting one model to very different product realities, which is a transferable capability in any industrial group. The role also builds exposure to adjacent areas that many sustainability professionals never touch: value creation and business model thinking alongside Finance, early screening of new business opportunities, and lobbying or public affairs coordination. Where methodologies are concerned, the posting notes Lean, Six Sigma, PMP or PRINCE2 and PMO tools such as MS Project, ServiceNow SPM or Power BI as valuable, so there is room to formalize existing skills in those frameworks. The profile is explicitly not required to be a sustainability expert at entry, which suggests the learning is expected to happen on the job.

The posting points to roughly 15 years in project management, program management, transformation, industrial operations, manufacturing excellence or portfolio management. More important than the label is where that experience happened: industrial or manufacturing environments where you encountered plant realities, quality constraints and operational trade-offs first hand. Experience in complex international settings, juggling multiple stakeholders and long timelines, is treated as a baseline. Technical and methodological requirements include solid project management discipline: governance design, planning, risk management, dependency tracking, budget follow-up and decision preparation. You need to be hands-on and detail-comfortable rather than a pure coordinator, and able to structure ambiguity into actionable plans. The posting is explicit that you do not need to be a sustainability specialist, though curiosity and genuine interest in sustainable development and circularity are expected, and prior exposure to recycling, materials, end-of-life products or ESG transformation is listed as an advantage. The differentiators are behavioral. BIC describes the successful profile as structured but not bureaucratic, ambitious but pragmatic, and challenging but collaborative. The ability to influence without direct authority across functions, categories, plants and geographies is named repeatedly, as is the capacity to keep people engaged over a long journey. Fluency in French and English is required, with Portuguese or Spanish as a plus. Methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, PMP or PRINCE2 and tools like MS Project or Power BI are nice to have rather than mandatory.

Lead with industrial transformation programs, not with sustainability vocabulary. This posting says clearly that a pure sustainability expert is not required and that the decisive capability is structuring complex industrial transformation. Your CV should therefore make program scale visible: number of sites, functions and countries involved, budget size, length of the roadmap, and the specific blockers you resolved. One or two examples where you moved a program from pilot to deployment will land better than a long list of frameworks. Prepare to speak concretely about influence without authority, because BIC states that some stakeholders may not initially be convinced by the topic. Interviewers will likely probe how you handled a plant, finance or commercial team that resisted a change, and what you did rather than what you escalated. Having a structured answer about how you reframe a sustainability constraint in terms of cost, quality or speed would be directly relevant, since the role is expected to connect the program to what motivates different teams. Since the role starts on the Lighter circularity plan and then extends to Stationery, Shavers and Brushes, showing that you understand category differences will set you apart. Before applying, read what BIC has published on its Lighter circularity work and on its sustainability commitments, and be ready to discuss why copying the Lighter model into Stationery, with its much broader product range, would not work as a straight transfer. Do not overlook the language requirement: French and English are both needed, so indicate your level explicitly rather than leaving it implicit.

The near-term focus is circularity in the Lighter category. BIC has invested several years in research, industrial trials, collection models, recycling and dismantling options and business model testing, and this role supports the shift from pilot toward broader deployment. In practice you would be close to questions of material recovery, end-of-life product handling, quality and the economics that make a circular model defensible. The second focus is replication. Stationery, Shavers and Brushes each raise different feasibility questions, and Stationery in particular has a far wider product range that may call for a selective, phased approach. The role therefore touches industrial transformation as much as environmental strategy: which formats can be collected, dismantled or recycled, what plant constraints apply, and where the business case holds. Governance and value creation cut across both. Because the role works with Finance on assumptions, costs and benefits, the sustainability angle is framed in terms of economically viable and value-creating models rather than commitments alone. The lobbying and external stakeholder dimension, though secondary, suggests some exposure to how regulatory and public affairs contexts shape what BIC can pursue on circularity and new business models.

The clearest challenge is the gap between pilot and scale. What works in a controlled trial often meets resource limits, quality requirements and industrial constraints when deployed. The posting acknowledges this directly by asking the role to anticipate risks, resource constraints and operational derailers as the roadmap expands. Someone in this position will spend real time on the unglamorous middle ground where promising results meet production reality. Influence is the second challenge. The role has no direct authority over the categories, plants, affiliates and functions it must mobilize, and some of those stakeholders may not be convinced by the topic at all. Maintaining engagement over a multi-year horizon, with competing priorities and long timelines, is as much a test of persistence and relationship building as of program management skill. There is also a structural tension in the mandate itself: bringing discipline and governance without becoming, in BIC's words, the project police. Finally, each category resists a single template. Stationery's wide product range may force a selective approach, while Shavers and Brushes require their own feasibility analysis. Avoiding oversimplification while still producing clear, actionable roadmaps is the daily trade-off, and it is complicated by the fact that the role is not expected to hold deep sustainability expertise at the outset and must learn technical topics quickly.

Much of the day is spent on program mechanics and unblocking: reviewing progress against milestones, updating risk and dependency logs, following budget lines, and preparing decision points for governance forums. Interspersed are conversations with workstream leads on scientific research, collection, recycling, dismantling, production integration or quality, where the task is often to understand where something is stuck and what options exist. Meetings will vary widely in nature. Some are structured governance sessions with category or function representatives; others are working sessions where you help a team break a complex problem into parts and draft a recommendation. There will also be regular contact with Finance to test assumptions and cost-benefit logic, and occasional work on new business screening or lobbying coordination, keeping those external inputs aligned with internal priorities. The rhythm changes with the program phase. Early months are heavier on mapping what already exists in the Lighter roadmap, identifying stakeholders and building the governance structure. Later, the balance shifts toward category roadmaps for Stationery, Shavers and Brushes, where the analysis is more forward-looking and the decisions less defined. Across all phases, a good part of the job is following up, since progress depends on people who do not report to you.

The role sits close to one of BIC's stated long-term strategic priorities, which tends to bring visibility. Success in structuring the sustainable development and circularity portfolio and helping it move from pilots to scalable models would place the holder at the center of a transformation that spans categories and geographies. That is the kind of exposure that supports a move into broader transformation, operations or general management roles later, particularly in an industrial group. Development also comes from the breadth of the perimeter. Working alongside scientific, industrial, financial and commercial stakeholders builds a cross-functional profile that is hard to acquire in a narrower sustainability position. The secondary involvement in new business screening and lobbying coordination adds two further dimensions that could become specializations in their own right. Because the posting treats methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, PMP or PRINCE2 and PMO tooling as desirable rather than required, there is room to formalize or extend qualifications while on the job. The multi-year horizon also means the holder can build a track record on a single program rather than a series of short assignments, which is useful evidence when describing scope and results in future applications.

The most frequent interactions are with the workstreams that make up the Lighter circularity plan and the later category roadmaps: scientific research, collection, recycling, dismantling, revalorization, production integration and quality control. These are partly technical and industrial counterparts whose cooperation determines whether a roadmap is feasible, and who often hold the operational knowledge the program needs. Alongside them sit Finance and business stakeholders, with whom the role tests assumptions, costs, benefits and risks, and category teams for Stationery, Shavers and Brushes who will own the adapted roadmaps. Support functions, plants, affiliates and transformation teams round out the internal network, which is spread across functions and geographies. Because the role operates without direct authority, each of these relationships has to be built on trust and mutual interest rather than hierarchy. External contacts are less central but present. The posting mentions possible lobbying and external stakeholder coordination, which would involve public affairs or external parties, and it also references connecting internal and external expertise, suggesting some contact with outside specialists or benchmarks. New business screening may bring exposure to opportunity-level discussions, though integration is explicitly out of scope. The overall picture is a wide, mostly internal network in which the role is a connector rather than a line manager.