Director, Benefits & Wellbeing

About the Role

Lead the Colleague Benefits & Wellbeing function for Sound Physicians, including health and welfare plans, retirement, voluntary benefits, and wellbeing programming.

Partner with VP to develop, articulate, and execute a multi-year Benefits strategy aligned to Sound’s practice-of-choice positioning and clinician attraction and retention priorities.

Own all vendor and broker relationships, including renewal strategy, RFPs, performance management, contract negotiation, and escalation.

Partner closely with Marsh and other named partners.

Lead annual benefits planning, plan design recommendations, and the end-to-end Open Enrollment process, including the educational and communications strategy that supports it.

Own the compliance and audit cadence across ERISA, ACA, COBRA, HIPAA, Section 125, DC nondiscrimination testing, 5500 filings, and state-specific requirements.

Design, launch, and continuously improve wellbeing programs that are woven into day-to-day operations — not bolt-on wellness challenges — so clinicians and colleagues can come to work and end the day as their best selves.

Travel to new hospital implementations and key sites to ensure benefits are clearly communicated to incoming clinicians and to build direct relationships with hospital partners and site leaders.

Organize and host an annual benefits fair at Sound's Medical Director Summit (planned for September this year), creating a hands-on touchpoint for medical directors to engage directly with the benefits team and vendor partners.

Lead the year-round colleague benefits education and communications strategy, including the Benefits Hub, OE presentations and education, and ongoing engagement campaigns.

Analyze plan utilization, cost trends, and population health data to inform plan design, vendor decisions, and medical trend mitigation strategy.

Leverage AI, scenario modeling, and predictive analytics to support forecasting, budget planning, and renewal decisions.

Modernize how benefits are delivered and experienced. Adopt AI-enabled tools, automation, and self-service capabilities that improve accuracy, accessibility, and the colleague experience while reducing manual lift on the team.

Push vendors and broker partners on innovation.

Evaluate new solutions, pilot tech-forward offerings where they meaningfully improve value or experience, and hold partners accountable to current capability, not legacy delivery.

Manage, coach, and actively teach the benefits team — on benefits best practices, streamlining and modernizing outdated processes, technical fluency, and analytical capability, including practical use of HRIS and AI-enabled ways of working.

Build and execute the talent strategy and structure required to scale the function as Sound grows.

Partner with the VP People Operations on benefits budget and trend management.

Stay ahead of regulatory developments and market innovations; bring forward recommendations that keep Sound competitive in clinical talent markets.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise across health and welfare benefits, retirement, leave, voluntary benefits, and employee and clinician wellbeing.
• Strong working knowledge of ERISA, COBRA, ACA, HIPAA, Section 125, nondiscrimination testing, 5500 filings, and multi-state benefits compliance.
• Demonstrated track record managing benefits brokers, carriers, and admin platforms.
• Experience leading enterprise-wide benefits initiatives including renewals, plan transitions, vendor changes, and major communications efforts.
• Strong commercial and contract negotiation skills; comfortable challenging vendors on performance and value.
• Able to translate complex benefits topics into clear executive-level narrative.
• Experience designing and executing clinician wellbeing programs that tie back to retention and engagement outcomes.
• Strong data and analytics skills; able to translate plan utilization, claims, and cost data into actionable plan design and budget decisions, and to use scenario modeling and predictive analytics for forecasting and renewal strategy.
• Digital fluency. Comfortable using HRIS, analytics platforms, automation, and AI-enabled tools as part of day-to-day work, and curious about what comes next.
• Genuine desire to teach and develop the team.
• Track record of coaching, training, and upskilling direct and indirect reports, not just delegating to them.
• Experience with UKG (or similar HRIS), benefits administration platforms, and ticketing/case management systems such as FreshService.
• Experience in multi-state, multi-jurisdictional benefits environments, ideally within healthcare, physician services, or multi-site organizations.
• People leadership experience: has managed teams of 3+ direct reports across analyst and manager tiers; has hired, developed, and retained benefits talent.
• Strong written and verbal communications skills; experience designing communications strategy for non-HR audiences.
• Actively connected to a peer network of benefits leaders and organizations — uses external relationships to benchmark, pressure-test ideas, and bring outside thinking back into Sound's plan design, vendor strategy, and wellbeing work.
• Willingness and ability to travel approximately 2x a quarter for site implementations, OE roadshows, and onsite benefits engagement.