Director, Professional Engagement, Sponsorship and Congress Lead - FTPBU

About the role

The Director, Professional Engagement, Sponsorship, and Congress leads a centralized function for the USBU Foundational Therapeutics Business Unit (FTPBU). This individual will be an integral member of the FTPBU commercial team and will be responsible for evolving the vision for the centralized function in partnership with the franchises, defining agile ways of working, and bringing innovation to establish Takeda as the rare disease leader in professional engagements. This leader will foster a culture of trust and commitment to excellence within their team and while partnering with the cross-functional team and external stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Establish and lead a centralized professional engagement, sponsorship, and congresses strategy and execution function for the FTPBU. Develop professional engagement strategy and oversee execution for on-market and pipeline assets, manage internal and external stakeholders, and lead cross-functional teams to help Takeda better serve patients.

• People Leadership: Provide leadership and oversight to a team of individuals who partner with franchises to facilitate strategy development of professional engagement and education, congress strategy and execution, and sponsorship process execution. As a leader within and across franchise marketing teams, support development of self and others to foster a positive culture within the team and with cross-functional partners. Be a back-up for team members as needed and direct manager when requested.

• KOL Development: Identify, cultivate, and maintain long-standing relationships with national and regional KOLs and advisors and develop engagement strategy designed to inform appropriate thought leader partnership to better serve patients and meet identified business needs; this may include engaging with KOLs to provide training on disease state, product and market dynamics for internal teams and training on disease state and product education for external HCPs/ Ambassadors.

• Insight Generation: Monitor KOL insights regarding market dynamics, disease state, current and future treatment patterns, and competitive landscape. Distill these findings and perspectives into insights to share in a structured way with the broader team to inform brand plan and tactical execution. To support insight gathering and education efforts, manage the use of an HCP engagement tracking platform to identify appropriate HCP for specific fee for service activities based on qualifications and expertise directly related to the identified need.

• Strategy and Tactical Development: Based on insight/trend identification, lead the development and implementation of regional strategies, tactics, and/or training solutions in collaboration with franchise, marketing, training, and cross-functional field counterparts. Ensure content, disease state and product messaging, resources, platforms, and execution are aligned with Franchise strategy and strategic imperatives for that audience.

• Congress Planning: Define congress strategy in alignment with brand priorities. Partner with franchises to develop booth and marketing collateral for congresses, schedule customer engagements, manage P2P content and execute product theaters and symposia at national and regional conferences, provide on-site oversite and troubleshoot issues pre-congress through closure.

• Advisory Boards: Manage and execute advisory boards and consultant meetings to gain insights that would inform brand strategies and tactics in alignment with brand priorities.

• Speaker Bureau Management: Speaker bureau planning and management in adherence to all policies and content development that is approved for use via internal review team.

• Sponsorships: Process and manage sponsorship requests consistent with business strategy and compliance requirements.

• Innovation and Best Practice Sharing: Support innovation of commercial ways of working by leveraging technology, customer insights, field observations, and continued education. Engage with internal and external partners to seek insights, best practices, and synergistic opportunities. As part of a centralized marketing function, identify opportunities to share best practices across the FTPBU.

• Cross-functional Partnership: Liaise with legal, regulatory, and ethics and compliance to ensure all activities are compliant with policies and regulations.

• Agency Management: Collaborate/Manage external agencies and consultants/contractors to meet project expectations to be completed on time hold them accountable to agreed standards and contract expectations while showing ability to partner with these parties to ensure prioritization of larger patient, customer, and business needs.

• Budget Management: Assume specific budget management/accountability for Professional Engagement projects and Annual Plan Commitments. Manage spending against budget/forecast and perform all monthly accruals and reporting requirements. Proactively identify trends and insights to optimize spend and as appropriate, program performance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree required with a focus in Biology, Marketing, Strategy and/or Business Administration preferred. Advanced degree (MBA, MA/MS, PharmD, etc.) highly preferred

• 10 years of progressively responsible marketing and sales related functional experience within the bio-pharmaceutical industry required with a minimum of 4 years in marketing experience as well as client/customer relationship management experience highly preferred.

• Experience developing engagement plans for thought leaders / key opinion leader management and ability to comfortably liaise with these customers preferred.

• Experience leading Speaker Bureau strategy, training, content development and execution of national level programs preferred.

• Experience leading and executing congress strategics and tactics, and sponsorship opportunities preferred.

• Strong leadership skills with an ability to set direction, generate commitment, identify, and resolve issues, and evaluate risk. Equally important is the ability to collaborate and work effectively with cross-functional teams with a proven ability to influence without authority.

• Analytical, problem solving and strategic thinking skills.

• Financial management and budgeting capabilities.

• Willingness to travel to various internal and external meetings and conferences that could include overnight stays ranging from one to several nights. Some weekend and/or international travel may be required.