Emily Christy

My role as Senior Manager of Whitespace Innovation at Tyson Foods is all about driving innovation and bringing Tyson into categories that we currently don't play in. A typical day revolves around consumer trends and insights, really digging into data and looking at what's picking up across the food landscape or in other industries. I look at what we do in our portfolio and what systems we have across our enterprise, and how we can leverage those to go into additional industries or additional aisles in the grocery store, and then outside the grocery store. There's a lot of cross-functional meetings and leveling up, and my reporting structure is essentially one level below the CEO, which is wild to think of in a Fortune 500 company. It's incredible and really fun, and great to have that kind of influential ability here that I never would have thought was going to be an opportunity when I took the role. I work with R&D scientists to make sure we can make the product, and I make sure we have consumer input and feedback to ensure it's something people actually want in market, even if they don't know they want it yet. I'm solving consumer needs on a daily basis for things they don't have or have unmet needs now, listening to the consumer, listening to market data, and then layering that in with trends, and then obviously the product development all through from start to finish.