KDP Hires Mondelez Career Vet to Lead North America R&D for Coffee Business
Michael Weber has departed Mondelez International to lead research and development for Keurig Dr Pepper's North America coffee business following the company's restructuring.
By the end of 2026, KDP plans to be operationally ready to separate into two independent businesses: Beverage Operating Unit and Coffee Business Operating Unit.
As VP R&D North America, Weber will be tasked with leading the segment across the Keurig and JDE Peet's coffee portfolio, including its innovation pipeline and value creation journey. As part of this, he joins the global R&D leadership team and regional North America leadership team.
Weber spent 24 years at Mondelez International, working across R&D, engineering, business development, mergers and acquisitions, and sustainability, according to a post on LinkedIn.
At Mondelez, his leadership spanned top-level executive positions managing global end-to-end climate and sustainability strategies, directing supply chain M&A integrations, and heading $7 billion regional engineering operations across North America and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
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During nearly a decade at Kraft Foods, Weber's career progressed from technical R&D and product commercialization to managing regional business development and directing manufacturing engineering footprint strategies across Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa.
His early career began with foundational research and process engineering roles in food packaging systems at Nestlé and the Fraunhofer Institute.
He rejoins some of the coffee brands he worked on earlier in his career for which he oversaw end-to-end processes from prototype to commercialization in global coffee R&D efforts.
"With two coffee powerhouses coming together through Keurig Dr Pepper Inc.'s acquisition of JDE Peet's, this is an incredible opportunity to help shape the future of coffee and be part of building something new," he shared on LinkedIn.
