Strategic Partnerships Director

About CareMessage

CareMessage is a social enterprise and the largest patient engagement platform for low-income populations in the United States. We deliver personalized health education and care coordination through text messaging — reaching patients where they already are, in the language they speak, at the moments that matter most. Unlike technology built for large health systems and adapted down, CareMessage is designed from the ground up for organizations serving low-income, historically marginalized communities.

Powered by the Health Equity Engine™, the platform enables organizations to combine messaging, data, and interoperability to increase access to care, improve clinical outcomes, and address social drivers of health. With 22 million patients reached since 2013, CareMessage is the only patient engagement solution proven to improve health equity at scale. The team, many with lived experiences in these communities, leverages a nonprofit model to reinvest revenue into impact. CareMessage is the partner of choice for organizations committed to advancing health equity.

Why Join Us

Many of us have had the experience of doing good work or building great products, but wondering if it is truly making an impact. At CareMessage, our mission is clear: improve health equity for low-income populations across the United States. Every role here connects directly to that purpose. We care deeply about the communities we serve, and we also hold a high standard for performance, collaboration, and integrity.

Our ideal team members:

• Deliver meaningful, measurable results
• Invest in their teammates and build trust
• Seek feedback and continually grow
• Stay steady and solutions-oriented in ambiguity
• Lead with integrity and responsibility
• Communicate with clarity and empathy

If you are motivated by impact, energized by collaboration, and ready to do some of the most meaningful work of your career, we encourage you to apply.

About the Role

CareMessage reaches more than six million patients across nearly 500 safety-net organizations in 45+ states and territories. We are hiring a Strategic Partnerships Director (L4) to help CareMessage build, manage, and scale a high-value partner ecosystem across the healthcare safety-net. This is a senior individual contributor role for a partnership operator who has built partner ecosystems, managed growth through partners, negotiated complex partner agreements, and converted relationships into measurable pipeline, revenue, product leverage, and mission-aligned impact.

This person will focus on partnerships that affect distribution, customer acquisition, expansion, pricing, packaging, partner-led ARR, integration readiness, sponsored programs, market intelligence, and patient outcomes. The initial portfolio may include programmatic partners, commercial partners, platform/gatekeeper partners, embedded or integration partners, and emerging growth channels such as health plans, ACOs, CINs, payers, HIEs, PCAs, HCCNs, and regional networks.

The right candidate understands that partnership work is not relationship management alone. It requires commercial discipline, operational rigor, executive judgment, product and technical fluency, AI-enabled scale, and the ability to create 1+1=3 outcomes across CareMessage, partners, customers, and patients. They will report to the Chief Revenue Officer and work closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, Customer Experience, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Strategy, Marketing, and executive leadership.

Who You Are

You are a senior partnership builder who has created or meaningfully scaled a partner ecosystem in a SaaS, healthcare technology, digital health, health services, or similarly complex market. In your most recent or most relevant role, you managed growth through partners with measurable outcomes tied to partner-sourced pipeline, partner-influenced ARR, co-sell motions, sponsored programs, expansion, or new-market access.

• You know how to negotiate and drive value through commercial models, partner agreements, revenue share, referral fees, co-sell rules, sponsored program terms, and mutual success criteria without compressing base revenue or creating unclear ownership.
• You understand the difference between activity, access, and a real partnership operating motion.
• You can turn conversations into partner briefs, mutual plans, QBRs, scorecards, pipeline attribution, renewal or reset decisions, and customer-ready execution.
• You are comfortable working across executive, Sales, Product, Engineering, CX, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Marketing, and external partner teams without direct authority.
• You have used AI, automation, data, or workflow tooling to scale partner operations, synthesize market signal, manage follow-up, support QBRs, improve partner enablement, or reduce manual coordination.
• You are deeply motivated by the dual mandate of this role: driving SaaS partner outcomes through revenue and growth while advancing patient impact, including access to care, care gap closure, clinical outcomes, and health equity.

Responsibilities

• Partnership Strategy and Portfolio Ownership
  • Own CareMessage’s growth-enabling partnership portfolio across partner type, strategic objective, business-line impact, operating model, economics, risk, owner, and next step.
  • Operationalize the Partnerships Playbook, including partner taxonomy, selection principles, gating model, partnership briefs, decision rights, QBRs, scorecards, and sunset criteria.
  • Manage a regular partnership operating rhythm that makes partner health, risk, economics, customer impact, product commitments, and next steps inspectable by the CRO and KFL team.
  • Maintain a clear view of current and emerging partnership categories, including programmatic partners, commercial partners, platform/gatekeeper partners, embedded/integration partners, sponsored/funder-linked partners, and new growth channels.
• Commercial Partnership Development and Growth
  • Source, evaluate, develop, negotiate, and manage partnerships that can create market access, partner-sourced pipeline, partner-led ARR, referrals, co-sell opportunities, sponsored programs, customer expansion, or other measurable growth outcomes.
  • Build partner-specific business cases that connect CareMessage’s SaaS value proposition to partner incentives, customer workflows, patient outcomes, and sustainable economics.
  • Partner with Sales Leads to convert partner relationships into qualified opportunities, account mapping, co-sell motions, referrals, and partner-enabled customer conversations.
  • Define partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline attribution in partnership with Revenue Operations.
  • Manage negotiation and commercial terms for partnerships that affect pricing, distribution, customer acquisition, expansion, partner-led ARR, revenue share, referral fees, partner fees, or sponsored-program economics.
• Partner Lifecycle Management and Success
  • Create mutual action plans and success criteria for priority partners.
  • Run QBRs and partner health reviews for priority partnerships, including commercial outcomes, referrals, implementation outcomes, customer feedback, patient impact, product signal, and next-step accountability.
  • Develop partner enablement materials, partner playbooks, joint messaging, referral guidance, co-sell workflows, and internal handoff documentation.
  • Reset, pause, renegotiate, or wind down underperforming partnerships when value is not materializing or when risk exceeds expected return.
  • Ensure partner work is not dependent on ad hoc follow-through.
• Technical, Product, and AI-Enabled Operations
  • Partner with Product and Engineering to assess roadmap impact, integration scope, data/security posture, implementation burden, post-launch support needs, and product boundaries before commitments are made.
  • Partner with Customer Experience (specifically Professional Services) to ensure partner-driven opportunities are implementable, supportable, and aligned with customer workflows.
  • Use AI, automation, CRM, partner relationship management tools, meeting intelligence, and structured data capture to scale partner operations, synthesize market signal, improve follow-up, generate executive-ready briefs, and reduce manual coordination.
  • Build a repeatable operating system for tracking partner commitments, product asks, commercial dependencies, data-sharing risks, implementation readiness, support burden, and decision logs.
  • Help CareMessage distinguish scalable product and data opportunities from one-off partner requests that would create roadmap drag.
• Cross-Functional Governance and Decision Rights
  • Partner with CRO/Finance on pricing, margin, partner economics, revenue share, referral fees, sponsored programs, pipeline attribution, ARR treatment, and renewal/reset scenarios.
  • Partner with Legal and Compliance on privacy, security, data-sharing, funded-program risk, messaging risk, contracting, customer authorization, and BAA/DUA needs.
  • Partner with Strategy and Marketing when partnerships affect mission expression, brand, category positioning, external claims, intervention boundaries, conferences, or field-building work.
  • Escalate decisions appropriately when partnerships involve enterprise commitments, executive-level relationships, material technical investments, mission/brand sensitivity, or legal/compliance risk.
  • Prepare clear partner briefs and recommendations that allow KFL and executive decision-makers to make fast, informed go / no-go / pilot / reset decisions.
• Market Intelligence and Strategic Recommendations
  • Monitor partner movement, platform ecosystems, payer/VBC dynamics, EHR marketplaces, outsourcing patterns, data-access opportunities, partner competitors, and emerging safety-net network structures.
  • Translate partner signal into practical recommendations for GTM strategy, product readiness, pricing, packaging, messaging, enablement, conference strategy, and annual planning.
  • Help CareMessage evaluate where to build, partner, buy, pause, or stop based on mission fit, technical feasibility, commercial coherence, long-term value, and patient impact.
  • Create institutional knowledge so partner learning survives individual conversations and becomes part of CareMessage’s operating model.

What Success Looks Like

• Partner-sourced qualified pipeline created.
• Partner-influenced ARR, partner-led revenue, or partner-enabled expansion outcomes.
• Conversion from partner introductions/referrals to qualified opportunities and closed-won revenue.
• Quality and completeness of partner portfolio tracker, briefs, mutual plans, scorecards, QBRs, and decision logs.
• Reduction in ambiguous ownership, unscoped commitments, roadmap drag.