Amanda Almond takes the helm as President, International at The Hershey Company effective October 12, succeeding Rohit Grover, who spent 27 years building the company's cross-border business including eight as international president. The appointment brings a distinctly beverage-sector profile into one of the most consequential seats in global confection and snacking.
Almond arrives from Vinarchy, the Bain Capital-backed global wine company where she served as regional managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa — a remit covering 57 markets. Before that she spent 12 years at Bacardi in progressively larger regional leadership roles. That background — scaling premium and mass-market beverage brands across fragmented regulatory and retail environments — is increasingly the profile large CPG companies are recruiting when they want to sharpen international channel discipline and margin management.
Why the Profile Matters
For operators and buyers tracking how major snack suppliers allocate shelf, promotional support, and innovation by region, leadership transitions at this level often precede re-prioritization of market tiers. Grover oversaw significant international expansion; Almond's hire suggests Hershey's next chapter is less about entering new geographies and more about scaling profitable volume in the markets already established. Her track record at Bacardi — a company that manages a complex portfolio across duty-free, on-premise, and modern trade simultaneously — positions her to tighten how Hershey's portfolio of more than 85 brands, including Reese's, KIT KAT, SkinnyPop, and the ONE protein line, is sequenced across retail tiers internationally.
Kirk Tanner, president and CEO of The Hershey Company, framed the hire around acceleration: "She has a track record of scaling and growing businesses, bringing teams together and building high-performance cultures." That language is deliberate. Hershey reported more than $11.7 billion in annual revenues across approximately 65 countries; international remains a growth lever the company has consistently called out for investors.
What Operators Should Monitor
For foodservice and retail operators sourcing Hershey SKUs — or competing against them on shelf — a leadership change of this scope typically plays out in vendor terms, promotional calendars, and trade marketing budgets within two to four quarters. Almond's beverage-industry background means she is likely to apply channel segmentation logic familiar from spirits and wine: prioritizing high-velocity accounts, tightening distributor accountability, and rationalizing tail SKUs in underperforming markets.
Distributors and brokers working Hershey lines internationally should expect relationship resets as Almond and the international leadership team align on priorities. Retail buyers in EMEA and beyond — the region where she has the deepest operational history — may see revised planogram pitches and adjusted promotional structures sooner than other regions. Operators on the brand-launch and retail-readiness side who compete for the same confection and better-for-you snack shelf space should note that a more commercially disciplined Hershey international team raises the bar on buyer decks and category sell-in narratives.
Almond will be based in Hershey's U.K. office, reinforcing EMEA as the near-term operational focus. She holds a bachelor's degree in commerce from the University of Edinburgh and has completed advanced studies at Oxford and Harvard Business School. Her start date gives her roughly one quarter to complete the transition alongside Grover before closing out the fiscal year.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
