Irene+Rosenfeld

**__ Irene Rosenfeld __**

Irene Rosenfeld was born on May 3, 1953, in Brooklyn. She later moved to Westbury, NY and was raised there by her parents Seymour and Joan Blecker. There, she went to West Tresper Clarke High School. She graduated from Cornell and has a PhD in marketing and statistics, a master of science in business, and a B.A. degree in psychology.Irene has had a number of jobs (see bottom of article) but after a lot of hard work she finally became CEO of Kraft Foods. Kraft Foods is an American company that makes food and beverage products, markets many brands in more than 155 countries, and 12 of its brands annually earn more than $1 billion worldwide: Cadbury, Jacobs, Kraft, LU, Maxwell House, Milka, Nabisco, Oscar Meyer, Philadelphia, Trident, Tang. It’s also an independent public company. Irene has been listed on Forbes' "100 most powerful women" list and has been placed as number 2 on the "50 most powerful women in business" list by Forbes. One passion that Irene has is figuring out why people behave the way they do and using that to develop new products and create stronger relationships with the consumers. After Rosenfeld returned to her comapany in 2006 and the company was not living up to it's potential, she knew the company needed to make a turnaround .Rosenfeld unveiled 4 strategies and 5 "rules of the road" (See bottom of Article)The company still uses the rules and Rosenfeld is sure that those rules have set Kraft Foods in a great direction.Irene now makes around $1,500,000 a year after being with Kraft for 30 years.

Strategies

Rules of the Road
 * Rewire our company for growth by strengthening our leadership team and decentralizing our organization;
 * Reframe our categories by making our products relevant to consumers again and by ramping up our innovation pipeline;
 * Treat sales as a competitive advantage rather than an overhead cost;
 * And drive down costs … without compromising the quality of our products.


 * 1) Get The right people on the bus (Hire and fire people if you have to but make sure they aren't afraid to challenge and raise the bar on performace across the company)
 * 2) Give them a road map (Tell them how to do it)
 * 3) Engage their hearts and minds (People vote with their heart not their head so reignite their passion by focusing on something uplifting)
 * 4) Move quickly (Move faster than you are comfortable because you'll always wish you did things sooner)
 * 5) Commuinicate frequently, consistently and honestly (How you manage change can make all the difference so put a premium on communication and people need to know what they're doing is making a difference)

Jobs
 *  F irst job was in New York at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample advertising company
 * General Foods in Consumer Research.
 * Chairwoman and CEO of Frito-Lay where she promoted healthy products
 * President, North American Businesses
 * Group Vice President, Kraft Foods North America, and President, Operations, Technology, Information Systems, Kraft Foods Canada, Mexico & Puerto Rico
 * President, Kraft Canada
 * Executive Vice President and General Manager, Desserts
 * Marketing Director, Beverages
 * CEO of Kraft Foods
 * Also appointed chairwomen in 2007

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 * __Sources__**