Jennifer Bentz serves as our Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, having served in this role since January 2024. Ms. 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, Ms. Bentz was Executive Vice President, Applied Technology & Insights at CLIF Bar & Co., from October 2020 to July 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 June 2013 to December 2019, Ms. Bentz led Innovation & Insights for Tyson Foods where she delivered over $2 billion in revenue from new launches and identified, developed, and championed growth strategies grounded in deep consumer insight. Prior to joining Tyson Foods, Ms. Bentz led the Global Consumer Insight and Strategy team at Kraft Foods. While at Kraft Foods 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 earned a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Indiana University where she also minored in Sociology.