John Williams has worked at Diageo for more than 23 years. In 2017 he became Global Brand Director at Johnnie Walker, the world’s No.1 Scotch whisky, a role which he held for three years, before taking up the role of Global Scotch Director in July 2020, with responsibility for scotch brands. His role was then expanded again in July 2025 to cover all of global whiskey including American and Irish whiskey brands.

Leading the Johnnie Walker brand, John delivered with the team and across markets globally a transformation strategy which has seen the creation and execution of new growth across communications, serve and innovation and strengthened Johnnie Walkers position as the world’s most valuable international spirit.

Previous roles include general manager of Africa Innovation, Marketing Director of East Africa based in Kenya and Head of Beer Europe in Dublin.

John has a tremendous track record of creating strategic breakthroughs that lead to strong business results and team performance. His achievements include leading Africa Innovation as a significant growth driver to the region, including the development and launch of the Orijin Bitters brand.

In his time leading Marketing & Innovation for the East African Breweries Limited (EABL) the team drove strong market share gains and supercharged the mainstream spirits category led by Kenya Cane and the launch of Chrome Vodka.

Heading up the beer category for Europe, John identified significant growth opportunities for the category which helped to re-ignite the growth of Guinness in Great Britain and saw the launch of Rockshore beer.