Jennifer Bentz joined Utz Brands as Executive Vice President, Insights, Innovation, and Marketing Services in July 2023. She is responsible for infusing a deep understanding of consumers, customers, and the marketplace to activate marketing and drive innovation enabled by digital transformation.
Before joining Utz Brands, Ms. Bentz was Executive Vice President, Applied Technology & Insights at CLIF Bar & Co., from 2020 to 2023 where she led a cross-functional team and successfully infused consumer understanding into marketing activation to deliver consumer growth goals. She built a commercial analytics capability utilizing first-party data, enabling personalization and successful new product launches.
Previously, Ms. Bentz was the Chief Client Officer for Mintel, a global intelligence agency, where she led consulting and global key account teams working across the food & beverage, financial services, insurance, and technology industries.
From 2013 to 2019, Ms. Bentz led Innovation & Insights for Tyson Foods where she delivered over $2 billion in revenue from new launches. She identified, developed, and championed growth strategies grounded in deep consumer insight.
Prior to joining Tyson, Ms. Bentz led the Global Consumer Insight and Strategy team at Kraft Foods. While at Kraft from 1999 to 2013, she also held leadership positions on the corporate product, package, and quality team as well as functional insights responsibility for the Foodservice and Grocery business units.
Ms. Bentz also held various positions with S.C. Johnson’s business units. She started her career at Information Resources (IRI), where she functioned as a client service professional managing interactions with clients and providing marketing and sales consultation.
Ms. Bentz holds a B.S. in Marketing from Indiana University, where she also minored in Sociology. She remains actively engaged in the industry through her advisory board memberships and affiliations.