Director, Stakeholder Strategy Lead (Oncology / Emerging Areas)
Description
As an employee of Boehringer Ingelheim, you will actively contribute to the discovery, development and delivery of our products to our patients and customers. Our global presence provides opportunity for all employees to collaborate internationally, offering visibility and opportunity to directly contribute to the companies' success. We realize that our strength and competitive advantage lie with our people. We support our employees in a number of ways to foster a healthy working environment, meaningful work, mobility, networking and work-life balance. Our competitive compensation and benefit programs reflect Boehringer Ingelheim's high regard for our employees.
The Stakeholder Strategy Lead owns the lifecycle-based external HCP and expert engagement strategy for an assigned Therapeutic Area (TA), customer group or portfolio, as determined at the TA level. The role connects pipeline, launch and in-line asset priorities into a single coherent external HCP and expert engagement strategy and determines who BI engages, why each relationship matters, and what scientific or medical objective it advances. The role establishes proactive annual planning and a defined prioritization cycle.
The incumbent owns: expert landscape mapping, tiering and prioritization against defined criteria; the annual TA stakeholder engagement strategy and integrated engagement plan; criteria for the medical-universe along with defining criteria to inform compliant customer facing medical and commercial engagement targets; strategic external partnership planning; congress expert strategy; and the prioritization of access to external expertise across assets and functions. The incumbent serves as the single strategic entry point for expert-led partnership opportunities and retains direct strategic ownership of a defined set of the highest-priority external relationships, including personal engagement with selected senior experts and organizations.
The Stakeholder Strategy Lead retains accountability for overall stakeholder strategy, expert prioritization, relationship objectives, strategic partnership decisions and a defined set of the highest-priority external relationships. The Stakeholder Operations Lead, who reports to this role, maintains ongoing relationships with assigned prioritized experts and supports execution of the approved engagement strategy. Detailed scheduling, contracting, meeting logistics and other administrative activities may be supported by stakeholder engagement project coordination resources where applicable.
Duties & Responsibilities
Expert Landscape Mapping, Tiering and Prioritization:
Accountable for identification, mapping, segmentation and tiering of the TA's external expert universe against defined, documented criteria.
Maintains an integrated view of Key External Experts, Centers of Excellence, professional societies, committees, healthcare innovators and their circles of influence.
Uses data and analytics to identify established and emerging experts and to detect shifts in influence across the expert landscape.
Accountable for the facilitation of compliant interactions with external experts and the BI US HQ medical and/or commercial leadership team.
Defines the scientific, clinical and informational needs of each prioritized expert and HCP segment, and sets and refreshes strategic engagement objectives against those needs, medical strategy and lifecycle stage.
Annual Engagement Strategy and Integrated Planning:
Owns the annual TA stakeholder engagement strategy and the single integrated engagement plan, specifying which initiatives, communications and engagements are delivered to which tier — by whom, through which channel, at what frequency and with what content.
Develops lifecycle-based engagement strategy spanning pipeline, launch and in-line assets, and sequences engagement to lifecycle milestones.
Allocates access to external expertise to the highest-value needs and arbitrates competing requests for the same experts across assets and functions.
Establishes the TA engagement calendar and designated system of record as the single source of truth for engagement planning.
Provides strategic requirements, approved priorities and relationship objectives to the respective Stakeholder Operations Lead(s), who translate them into ongoing relationship plans and engagement execution in coordination with relevant support resources.
Cross-Functional Coordination and Engagement Governance:
Coordinates external expert engagement across Medical Affairs, MSL teams, Global Scientific Relations Managers, the Stakeholder Operations Lead, AMAs, Scientific Affairs, Medical Customer Experience and the Evidence Generation Lead so that the TA presents one coordinated approach to each expert.
Acts as the governance point that identifies and eliminates duplicative or conflicting touchpoints across US Medicine, Global and, through defined liaison, Commercial (i.e., KAMs).
Liaises with Commercial and Field-Based Medicine to maintain a customer-back view of BI's engagement with prioritized HCPs while preserving Medical independence.
Partners with Medical Operations & Practice Exchange Lead (and their reports) within the Medical Strategy & Business Operations organization on performance visibility, workflow improvement, implementation and scaling of agreed stakeholder-engagement practices while retaining accountability for stakeholder strategy and relationship priorities.
Compensation
Requirements
- A Bachelor's degree in a scientific, medical, business or related discipline from an accredited institution, plus a minimum of ten (10) years of relevant pharmaceutical, biotechnology or healthcare industry experience, is required.
- OR Advanced scientific, clinical or business degree from an accredited institution preferred (e.g., PharmD, PhD, MD, MSc or MBA), with a minimum of eight (8) years of relevant industry experience.
- Experience must include progressive responsibility in external expert or stakeholder engagement strategy, Medical Affairs, external scientific relations, market development or a closely related field.
- Demonstrated ability to build, tier and maintain a complex external expert landscape using defined criteria and data signals, including identification of emerging influencers.
- Proven capability to own an annual strategy and integrated planning cycle and to hold the organization to the resulting plan.
- Strong understanding of lifecycle-based planning considerations from development through LOE Strong relationship-management skills and executive presence with senior external scientific experts and organizations.
- Ability to prioritize and arbitrate access to external expertise across competing asset and functional needs.
- Strong analytical and data literacy applied to expert mapping, tiering, engagement coordination and impact measurement.
- Demonstrated matrix leadership and ability to influence without direct authority across US Medicine, enabling functions, Commercial and Global stakeholders.
- Demonstrated skill identifying, evaluating and advancing external partnership opportunities against structured criteria.
- Ability to synthesize external insight and translate it into actionable implications for evidence, publication, content and medical strategy while maintaining compliant Medical and Commercial boundaries.
- Experience directing operational or execution resources, including setting priorities and quality expectations for an operations partner.
- Strong communication, negotiation and facilitation skills; proficiency with CRM or engagement-management platforms, Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word.
- Willing and able to travel domestically and internationally as required to meet business needs.
Eligibility Requirements:
- Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without restriction.
- Must be willing to take a drug test and post-offer physical (if required)
- Must be 18 years of age or older
Desired Skills, Experience and Abilities
Congress and Senior Executive Engagement Strategy:
Owns the expert-facing congress strategy, including congress-level expert priorities, relationship objectives and engagement plans.
Determines congress needs jointly in partnership with the relevant MINT leaders, informed by asset strategy and asset-team input as appropriate, and aligns pursue, defer or decline recommendations through MINT governance.
Directs the strategic external engagement of senior BI leaders at priority congresses and coordinates cross-TA and Global stakeholder considerations.
Ensures post-congress follow-through on priority relationships, commitments and opportunities.
Strategic Partnerships and Expert-Led Opportunities:
Serves as the single strategic entry point for expert-led partnership opportunities, owning intake, triage, strategic evaluation and enterprise visibility.
Prioritizes opportunities involving Key External Experts, Centers of Excellence, professional societies, committees and healthcare innovators against structured criteria.
Leads or supports co-evaluation of innovative partnerships and determines how approved opportunities connect to TA, pipeline and brand strategy.
Contributes the external expert and partnership perspective to relevant Global and brand planning processes.
Insight Capture, Routing and Impact Review:
Accountable for systematic capture and analysis of insights arising from prioritized external engagement, drawing on MSL teams, the Stakeholder Operations Lead, Impact and Data Enablement and Medical Affairs strategy.
Synthesizes implications for pipeline, asset and medical decisions and routes insights to the stakeholders accountable for acting on them, including the Evidence Generation Lead, Medical Customer Experience and the Publications group in Medicine Excellence.
Owns the periodic engagement impact review and makes explicit start, stop and continue decisions that reset the engagement plan and expert tiering for the following cycle.
Represents TA engagement performance in the recurring Medical impact review forum and owns the TA actions arising from it.
Administration and Compliance:
Manages the engagement budget within the assigned scope and prioritizes spend against the approved engagement plan.
Ensures that engagement strategy, priorities and decisions are documented in designated systems in line with applicable BI policies and procedures.
Completes all required compliance and role-specific training within required timeframes.
People Leadership, Capability Building, and Performance Management
Lead, coach, and develop 2-3 Stakeholder Operations Leads to ensure successful execution of the approved external expert engagement strategy for an assigned Therapeutic Area (TA) or Asset.
Set clear goals and performance expectations; provide frequent field-based coaching and feedback; assess capability and development needs; support onboarding, mentoring, succession, and talent development; and hold individuals accountable for outcomes and compliant behaviors.