Coca‑Cola is aiming to unify digital, data and operations across the business with the appointment of its first global chief digital officer, in a move that its incoming chief executive insists is “a pivotal new role for our future”.
Sedef Salingan Sahin, who currently serves as president of Coke’s Eurasia and Middle East operating unit, will take on the new position, and will lead Coca‑Cola’s digital strategy, integrating the company’s digital network and connecting work across related functions.
Quite why it has taken Coke so long to appoint its first digital chief is anyone’s guess; most global companies have had CDOs for over a decade and it hired its first global chief data officer back in 2020.
Until now, digital strategy efforts for the company have been overseen by John Murphy in his capacity as president and chief financial officer.
Coke says Sahin is a seasoned business leader with deep operating experience across developed and developing markets, having lived in multiple regions, adding that “her broad, multi-functional leadership makes Sahin the ideal leader to enable end-to-end transformation from strategy to execution, creating new ways of working to accelerate growth and performance”.
Having joined Coke in 2003, Sahin served as president of the company’s nutrition, juice, dairy and plant category in the marketing organisation before taking her current role in the Eurasia and Middle East operating unit.
Both roles involved extensive work to lead the digitisation of the business, including the transformation of the marketing organisation.
The move is part of a wider reshuffle within the business, which has also affected the marketing team. Customer and commercial leadership responsibilities will transfer from CFO Murphy to Manolo Arroyo, who serves as executive vice president and chief marketing officer. Arroyo will become executive vice president and chief marketing and customer commercial officer. It is debatable, however, how much difference this reshuffle will actually make.
Even so, incoming CEO Henrique Braun insists the new digital leadership role is crucial.
The executive vice president and chief operating officer will become the boss on March 31 2026, succeeding James Quincey, who will continue as executive chairman of the board.
Braun said: “The chief digital officer position is a pivotal new role for our future. Sedef’s proven leadership will help shape how we digitalise the enterprise end-to-end, and over the next several months she will assess how to organise the teams responsible for digital across the enterprise to help strengthen execution, simplify how we work and enable us to deliver for consumers with greater precision and speed.”
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