About Victor Barnes
In Victor’s 26 years at The Coca-Cola Company, he traveled extensively and worked internationally, and he built a wealth of experience in multiple industries, markets, cultures, and business models. Victor was the de facto expert on transformation, regularly updating board-facing members of the company’s executive leadership team on business performance and progress in transformation.
Victor’s team orientation and leadership style were honed as an elite-level basketball coach, where he mastered the art of unselfish play, acknowledging the assist, and winning as a team. The result is that transformed businesses are positioned to capture growth. At The McDonald’s Division, Victor’s global team became a digital pacesetter with modernized planning and collaboration capability. Previously, his inspiring leadership transformed Canada into an innovation leader within Coca-Cola’s global system in less than three years, including entering new categories while achieving the highest finance team engagement scores and exceeding business plan results.
With Big Four accounting firm and Internal Audit experience at Disney and Coca-Cola, Victor has deep exposure to industries ranging from manufacturing and electric utilities to real estate, entertainment, and retail. He led the post-merger integration and structuring of company entities for the Coca-Cola Africa Bottler acquisition. He also led multi-country teams on international tax and statutory governance as Regional Controller for Sub-Saharan Africa. Victor has led the financials of some of Coca-Cola’s most strategic packaging innovations and has been the financial expert on deals with some of the Company’s most strategic partnerships (Disney, MLB, NBA), plus a litany of customer deals.
He holds an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and is an alumnus of Northern Illinois University. He received his Certified Public Accountant credentials in Georgia and an Executive Coaching Diploma from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University.
Victor was born and raised in Chicago, where he met Victoria, his wife of 39 years. They reside in Atlanta, Georgia, and are blessed with two children and five grandchildren. Victor is a US Navy Reserve Veteran. He enjoys reading, fitness, traveling, and sports, and he still mentors the basketball players he coached and the finance associates he’s led worldwide.
Victor C. Barnes is an accomplished global executive with 35 years of experience building and leading teams and driving game-changing transformations. In his most recent role, Victor was the Chief Connected Planning Officer at Anaplan, working closely with their top customers on large transformations to make the business case for change and dissect the barriers to address upfront and along the journey. Previously, Victor was Global CFO of the McDonald’s Division of The Coca-Cola Company and, before that, the CFO of Coca-Cola’s Canada Operating Unit.