Director, Global Patient Advocacy Lead

About the role

This position is part of Alexion AstraZeneca Rare Disease Patient Experience team and is responsible for leading the Global patient advocacy strategy and patient engagement within the Alexion Rare Disease Business unit and may span multiple disease within the current portfolio and pipeline.

Responsibilities

• Drive the global strategy to find opportunities to understand and support the patient journey including accelerating the time to diagnosis, disease awareness and resources, treatment advances, and providing caregiver support to improve health outcomes.
• Enhance strategic alliances with both disease-specific advocacy organizations and those that span across disease area umbrella groups, as well as other rare/ultra-rare disease-oriented organizations in response to patient needs to drive Alexion AstraZeneca Rare Disease global patient advocacy strategic goals.
• Shape and coordinate execution of global patient advocacy strategy and plans disease areas in scope through effective cross-functional partnerships with Therapeutic Area leaders of Alexion’s Medical and Commercial organizations and coordinate with critical internal partners.
• Advance patient-focused drug development, ensuring strategic partnership with rare disease communities in support of R&D programs and clinical trials, working closely with Global Patient Insights and Solutions (GPIS) towards facilitating and implementing early patient engagement and insights activities and supporting clinical trial awareness and recruitment.
• Lead internal thought leaders patient centricity sessions and represent Alexion externally in patient focused congresses and patient meetings to enhance our corporate reputation and connections with patient communities.
• Support collection of patient’ and caregiver’s insights and proactively and routinely sharing and integrating insights from patient advocacy groups to shape programs, research and activities related to Alexion programs.
• Represent Patient Advocacy in the relevant TA cross-functional leadership teams ensuring the patient advocacy perspective is adequately integrated and reflected in internal strategies, plans as well as decision-making.

Requirements

Essential Skills/Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree
• 10+ years of progressive industry/relevant professional experience or 7+ years of patient advocacy experience, including in global/international roles
• Solid knowledge and established connections with the global rare disease advocacy community
• Ability to lead with influence in a complex internal matrix
• Broad knowledge of the biopharma industry; solid understanding of drug development, HEOR, product launch, access and reimbursement, and commercialization and compliant patient engagement
• Robust knowledge of current compliance, legal, regulatory and other issues that impact the biopharma industry and its protocol for patient engagement
• Outstanding interpersonal skills, ability to successfully influence without authority, and effectively work with global colleagues efficiently across functions in a complex organization and business environment
• Strong ability to initiate and maintain partnerships with key internal and external partners and work cross-functionally to identify and prioritize company goals to accomplish with patient advocacy groups
• Excellent project, vendor and budget management to deliver business results

Qualifications

Desirable Skills/Experience:

• Existing relationships with disease-specific organizations such as relevant rare disease groups
• Experience managing product launches and life cycle management in a co-promotion framework
• Proven experience providing leadership and direction to agency partners
• Knowledge of healthcare systems within individual markets, especially ex-US