CHICAGO — McDonald’s Corp. is strengthening its leadership with three key changes.
The quick-service restaurant chain named Skye Anderson to the newly created role of chief operating officer, McDonald’s USA. In this position, Anderson returns to the US business and includes direct leadership of US national operations, restaurant development and McOpCo, as well as oversight for US supply chain and US technology to form an integrated operations team.
With the addition of the new role, McDonald’s USA plans to ensure alignment of all systems, tools and supplies from end to end.
Anderson brings more than 25 years of experience with McDonald’s, where she has served across finance, field operations and market leadership roles, including six years as a US business leader, culminating in serving as US West Zone president. Since 2023, Anderson has been president of Global Business Services (GBS). In this position, she has worked to build a new enterprise capability from scratch and scale it globally, including at new offices in Hyderabad, India, and Mexico City.
With Anderson’s move to the US business, Mattijs Backx has been promoted to chief transformation and services officer, joining the global senior leadership team. He will be responsible for leading GBS with a focus on simplifying ways of working, improving service delivery and ensuring the right capabilities are in place to support growth across markets.
Since joining McDonald’s less than two years ago, Backx has played an integral role in advancing and shaping GBS capabilities, the company said. As senior vice president of GBS Transformation, he helped drive progress across global people, global finance, enterprise data and analytics, and McDonald’s AI framework.
Prior to joining the company, Backx worked for more than 25 years in global organizations like PepsiCo, Lufthansa and Office Depot, leading complex transformations.
McDonald’s also named Mason Smoot senior vice president of global franchising and delivery. As part of the global senior leadership team, Smoot will be responsible for global franchising standards, systemwide franchisee engagement and the enterprise frameworks that enable consistent execution across markets.
Smoot has been with McDonald’s for 30 years, most recently as chief restaurant officer for McDonald’s USA. During his tenure, the US system expanded with the addition of new and next-generation franchisees, delivered meaningful improvements across key operational metrics — including record-high customer satisfaction scores — and drove significant growth in the US delivery business, the company said.
