Rachel Hayden is the Vice President & Chief Information Officer at Just Born Quality Confections, a family owned candy company that manufactures PEEPS®, MIKE AND IKE®, HOT TAMALES® and GOLDENBERG’S® PEANUT CHEWS® candy brands.
With nearly 25 years of experience, Rachel is most notably recognized as a transformational IT Executive focused on shifting the operating model and culture of IT organizations from cost centers to proactive enablers of business growth. Rachel’s broad industry experience spans multiple geographies and includes Fortune 500 companies such as Wachovia, MCI WorldCom, Omnicom Group, PepsiCo (PBG), and Fujitsu.
Rachel joined Just Born in 2016, relocating from Charlotte, NC. Prior to Just Born, Rachel served as a global IT Executive at Berry Plastics leading the business analyst, program management and application development teams. Rachel’s responsibility included oversight of all global business applications, re-organization of the IT department as well as systems integration relating to multiple corporate acquisitions under private equity ownership (The Blackstone Group). Rachel’s noteworthy accomplishments include developing a custom global pricing application enabling $16M in annual price increases and re-engineering the financial forecasting process resulting in 5- 15% improvement in global forecasting accuracy. Before Berry Plastics, Rachel worked at Fujitsu Consulting in CIO Advisory, PMO development and Principal Consulting roles for The Coca-Cola Company, Perdue Farms, Amour-Eckrich Meats and Honeywell Technology Solutions. Other significant career achievements include implementing the “third largest” CRM implementation for PepsiCo (PBG), co-authoring an executive outsourcing playbook for Wachovia and leading the implementation for Coca-Cola’s Freestyle JET Dispensers.
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Universities of South and North Carolina respectively. Rachel supports the science and technology community by advocating for STEM education through her service as a board member for The DaVinci Science Center and memberships in SIM (Society of Information Management - Philadelphia) & WITI (Women in Technology International).
