Director of Business Development

Fenway Health · Boston, MA · 2 wk ago

On-siteBusiness DevelopmentFull-time

About the Role

Fenway Health is building a Strategy Office to drive bold, intentional growth in a rapidly changing healthcare landscape. As a mission-driven organization serving LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities, Fenway operates in an environment shaped by shifting funding streams, evolving reimbursement models, and an uncertain federal policy climate. The Director of Business Development will shape Fenway’s future by evaluating new service lines, partnerships, and affiliations—and translating complex data into clear, actionable insights for executive leadership and the Board. This is a high-impact strategy position focused on identifying the right opportunities and ensuring Fenway grows with purpose.

This is a rare opportunity to build something from the ground up. As part of a new, CEO- and Board-sponsored function, the Director will create the analytical foundation that guides Fenway’s growth strategy—developing the models, tools, and processes that make deliberate decision-making possible. Starting as an individual contributor, this role is designed to grow into leadership, with a clear path to building and leading a team as the function expands.

Authority and Decision Rights

This role has no direct reports and no independent budget. Its authority comes from a defined set of decision rights and from the Chief Strategy Officer’s sponsorship.

Decides directly: the analytical method, the model architecture, the assumptions carried into every business case, and the content of the recommendation that reaches the Executive Committee. No one edits the recommendation on its way up.
Recommends: go/no-go on every opportunity, the ranked growth priorities, and which opportunities Fenway declines.
Escalates: unresolved diligence issues, disagreement with Finance or Operations over assumptions, and any recommendation opposed by a functional leader—to the Chief Strategy Officer, and from there to the Executive Committee, which is the forum of record for growth decisions.
Convenes: cross-functional diligence teams under a charter issued by the Chief Strategy Officer. Participation by functional leaders in a chartered diligence team is an expectation, not a favor, and the Chief Strategy Officer is accountable for making that convening power real.
An honest no is protected: a recommendation not to proceed carries the same standing as a recommendation to proceed and reaches the Executive Committee unedited. This role is expected to reach conclusions the institution does not want and is protected in doing so.

Responsibilities

Market Insight and Strategic Planning

Keeps Fenway Health’s picture of its markets current: who we serve, who else serves them, payer mix, demand and utilization trends, and the policy and payment environment.
Turns market insights into a short, ranked set of priorities that tells Fenway where to look for growth, ensuring opportunities are pursued intentionally rather than reactively.
Supports the annual strategic planning cycle and the Board’s strategy calendar, including preparing materials and pulling together input from Finance, Operations, and The Fenway Institute.
Connects growth priorities to the Community Health Needs Assessment and the Community Health Improvement Plan, integrating the mission case and the business case.

Business Cases and Financial Models

Finds, develops, and investigates opportunities of strategic importance to Fenway Health, including new service lines, pharmacy program strategy, payer opportunities, education programs, partnerships, and affiliations.
Builds the business case for new opportunities, modeling revenue, costs, staffing, space, start-up losses, and steady-state margin.
Develops a base case, a low case, and a high case for every model; shows how outcomes change with key assumptions and sets clear go/no-go points.
States plainly what would have to be true for an opportunity to fail, not only what has to be true for it to work.
Maintains a single view of the full pipeline through decision, including a record of what Fenway declined and why.
Analyzes payer terms, rates, and mix as inputs to models, working with Finance and the managed care function to ensure revenue assumptions are credible.
Compares opportunities on the same basis every time: return, margin impact, capital and systems required, mission impact, execution risk, regulatory exposure, and reputational and community-trust risk. Reputational and community-trust risk is scored explicitly on the same scale as other factors.

Partnership and Affiliation Analysis

Leads the financial modeling for partnerships and affiliations, including the effect on the profit and loss statement, margin, and balance sheet, with particular attention to reimbursement and pharmacy.
Helps identify and evaluate potential partners and leads evaluation discussions with the Chief Strategy Officer.
Coordinates Finance, Legal, and outside advisors through due diligence, tracking open issues and their resolutions.
Presents opportunities and analysis to leadership and the Board in plain terms, ensuring non-finance directors can act on them.

Decision Support and Handoff

Prepares materials and facilitates discussions for Executive Committee and Board decisions on growth.
Sets baseline projections and measures for every recommendation, against which ventures will later be judged.
Participates in post-launch reviews to assess model accuracy and uses findings to improve future models.
Works in partnership with the Director of Project Management, who leads delivery of approved ventures. This role owns the business case, go/no-go criteria, and baselines; the Director of Project Management owns delivery against those baselines, readiness certification, and handoff to Operations.
Escalates disagreements about venture performance to the Chief Strategy Officer for resolution.

What Success Looks Like

This role is judged on outcomes rather than activity. The following measures apply in the first year and beyond and form the basis of the annual performance conversation:

Fenway chooses where to look for growth. A ranked, current view of the market and a short list of growth priorities exists, and leadership uses it.
Opportunities are pursued on purpose rather than evaluated reactively.
Every growth decision reaching the Board rests on a model a director can interrogate. Assumptions are visible, cases are bounded, failure conditions are stated before the vote, and non-finance directors can act on the information presented.
Fenway can account for what it declined. The decline record is complete enough to explain reasoning to funders, regulators, partners, or itself years later.
The models get more accurate over time. Post-launch reviews identify errors, which are documented to improve future models.
The mission constraint holds under pressure. Opportunities that would make money but cost trust are identified before they are pursued, not after.

Confidentiality and Conflicts of Interest

This role has regular access to confidential information about partnership and affiliation discussions, including details about other organizations. The Director must maintain strict confidentiality and disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest—including past, current, or prospective relationships with any organization under evaluation—in accordance with Fenway Health’s conflict of interest policy.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience required, in finance, economics, business, healthcare management, or a related field; master’s degree (MBA, MHA, or MPH) strongly preferred.
Eight or more years in corporate development, business development, strategic finance, healthcare consulting, or healthcare investment banking; ten or more years preferred. This role requires building board-facing investment cases from a standing start, with no established method to inherit.
Demonstrated experience building financial models and business cases that informed real decisions, with examples the candidate can walk through.
Comfort working independently and building from scratch, without a team or an established process in place.
Working knowledge of healthcare reimbursement (Medicaid, Medicare, and managed care); FQHC, 340B, and HRSA experience a plus.
Ability to explain complex financial analysis clearly to leaders and Board members.
Strong analytical, written, and verbal communication skills.
Ability to work well with Finance, Operations, clinical leaders, Legal, and regulators.
Demonstrated ability to work effectively with LGBTQ+ communities, people living with HIV, and populations that have faced barriers to care, and to reflect that understanding in analysis and recommendations. Qualifying evidence includes:
- Prior professional work serving these populations;
- Sustained volunteer, advocacy, or governance service with organizations that do;
- Lived experience the candidate chooses to bring; or
- Demonstrated fluency, in a work sample or case discussion, in how obligations to these communities constrain a business decision.
This is a screened requirement rather than a preference. Candidates who meet it through the last form are expected to build depth in the first year, and Fenway Health will invest in that.
Understanding of how mission obligations shape business decisions in a safety-net setting, including where Fenway Health will decline an opportunity that would make money.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience in community health centers, FQHCs, health systems, or safety-net healthcare.
Experience supporting partnership, affiliation, or transaction decisions and the integration that follows.
Experience with service-line growth, ambulatory care, telehealth, or education programs.
Knowledge of 340B pharmacy.

Physical Requirements

Ability to meet the following with or without reasonable accommodation: sit at and use a computer workstation for extended periods.