AD Corporate Strategy
Associate Director, Corporate Strategy
We're partnered with a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical organization is seeking an Associate Director, Corporate Strategy to help shape and execute strategic priorities across its U.S. business. The company is focused on advancing differentiated science, addressing underserved therapeutic areas in oncology/rare disease, and keeping patients at the center of strategic decision-making.
Position Summary
The Associate Director, Corporate Strategy will serve as a high-impact member of the Corporate Strategy, Development & Operations leadership team, reporting directly to the Head of U.S. Corporate Strategy. This individual will partner closely with senior leaders across Commercial, Medical, Finance, Insights & Analytics, and Development to translate strategic priorities into actionable business plans across the U.S. portfolio.
This role is ideal for an agile, intellectually curious strategist who can quickly build fluency across disease areas, anticipate opportunities and risks, and synthesize complex business, clinical, and market dynamics into clear executive-ready recommendations. The Associate Director will lead independent workstreams end-to-end while also orchestrating cross-functional teams to support growth, decision-making, and long-term business performance.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Planning & Enterprise Impact
- Support the design, coordination, and continuous improvement of the U.S. strategic planning cycle and core enterprise deliverables.
- Build strong fluency across disease areas, pipeline and portfolio priorities, and broader market dynamics to ensure strategies are grounded in scientific, clinical, and commercial realities.
- Lead discrete strategic workstreams, including problem framing, hypothesis development, workplan design, cross-functional engagement, and final synthesis.
- Identify growth opportunities, strategic trade-offs, and business performance risks, clearly surfacing implications for senior leadership decision-making.
Business Insights, Forecasting & Resource Strategy
- Pressure-test forecasts and resourcing plans to ensure alignment with U.S. business priorities, vision, and goals.
- Proactively identify risks, sensitivities, and inflection points that could impact business performance.
- Develop high-impact executive presentations that translate rigorous analysis into focused recommendations and decision pathways.
- Generate opportunity assessments and business cases, including ROI, NPV, and breakeven analyses.
High-Priority Strategic Initiatives
- Lead and support cross-functional strategic projects sponsored by the U.S. Leadership Team, often within ambiguous and fast-moving environments.
- Own projects end-to-end, including scoping, framing, analytics, storyline development, decision enablement, and implementation tracking.
- Leverage market, competitive, and internal data to generate actionable insights and well-supported strategic recommendations.
- Design and facilitate strategic workshops, helping cross-functional teams align around priorities, assumptions, risks, and execution plans.
- Continuously evaluate transformation and growth opportunities that can strengthen U.S. business performance and long-term competitive positioning.
Team Leadership & Culture
- Actively contribute to a high-performing strategy function that operates with speed, clarity, collaboration, and intellectual rigor.
- Model curiosity, agility, accountability, and a bias toward action.
- Support team offsites, annual goal-setting, and budget tracking activities.
- Serve as a visible contributor to a transparent, collaborative, and high-standard team culture.
Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate will bring a strong combination of strategy consulting, life sciences industry experience, analytical rigor, and executive-level communication skills. This individual should be comfortable operating in ambiguity, influencing without authority, and translating complex information into clear, actionable recommendations for senior leadership.
Qualifications
- Undergraduate degree with a business and science focus required; graduate degree such as an MBA or PhD preferred.
- 7+ years of professional experience, ideally including both strategy consulting and a strategic role within the life sciences industry.
- Strong learning agility and ability to quickly develop expertise across new disease areas, business contexts, and portfolio priorities.
- Excellent problem-solving skills, including the ability to conduct research and data analysis to support business recommendations.
- Demonstrated ability to synthesize complexity into crisp, executive-level narratives.
- Proven ability to lead through influence and drive alignment across stakeholders without direct authority.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including experience presenting to and engaging with senior leadership.
- Understanding of oncology or rare disease markets, drug development, regulatory processes, and commercial or market access dynamics preferred.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office tools, particularly PowerPoint and Excel.
- Track record of driving impact, surfacing risks early, and delivering high-quality work in a fast-paced environment.
Location & Travel
- Boston Seaport-based role with an expectation of being onsite approximately 2-3 days per week.
- Travel expected approximately 5-10% of the time for meetings, workshops, external conferences, and internal off-sites.
Compensation
The expected salary range for this role is $180,000-$210,000, with final compensation determined based on factors such as education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs. Employees in this position are also eligible for short-term and long-term incentive programs, as well as a competitive benefits package.
