Strategy Lead, Portfolio and Planning, Specialty Care GBU

About the role

Join the team transforming care for people with immune challenges, rare diseases, cancers, and neurological conditions. In Specialty Care, you’ll help deliver breakthrough treatments that bring hope to patients with some of the highest unmet needs. The Strategy Lead, Portfolio & Planning shapes how the Specialty Care GBU sets its longer-term direction and manages its portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate the Specialty Care GBU through its annual strategic planning cycle, from the early portfolio review through the strategic plan, executive review, operating plan and budget, and into brand planning across the franchises.
• Set and run a standardized, high-quality planning process, with clear timelines, inputs, and outputs, so the GBU plans consistently and to a high standard year on year.
• Work hand in hand with the franchise teams and with key functions, in particular Medical Affairs, Market Access, and Finance, to align inputs and produce a coherent GBU plan.
• Connect the GBU’s planning to the corporate cycle and to leadership and executive reviews, so decisions and priorities carry through into the following year’s plans and resourcing.

Long-Range Strategy

• Lead the development of the GBU’s longer-term strategic direction across its therapeutic areas, framing where the GBU should focus and grow.
• Bring market, competitive, and scenario analysis into the strategy, anticipating the shifts that matter most for the portfolio.
• Translate complex strategic analysis into clear narratives and choices for GBU leadership.

Portfolio Understanding & Governance

• Play a coordinating leadership role in how the GBU understands and evolves its portfolio, with a particular focus on the internal portfolio across the franchises.
• Bring a single, GBU-level view of the portfolio together to support prioritization and investment trade-offs across the therapeutic areas.
• Support the governance of the portfolio, helping leadership weigh where to invest, sustain, or step back, and keep the rationale clear and consistent.
• Maintain the cross-therapeutic-area comparability and rigor that sound portfolio decisions depend on.

Thought Partnership

• Serve as a thought partner to the Global Head of Strategy & Operations on the GBU’s long-range strategy and portfolio.
• Prepare the strategic content and analysis that leadership and executive reviews depend on.
• Capture and share good practice across the franchises to raise the standard of strategic planning in the GBU.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree required; scientific or business field is preferred.
• An advanced degree in life sciences (MD, PhD, or PharmD) and/or an MBA is preferred.

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years of progressive experience in pharmaceutical or biopharma strategy, portfolio management, or strategic planning, ideally with exposure to specialty therapeutic areas.
• A track record of running or coordinating strategic planning cycles and portfolio reviews in a large, matrixed organization.
• Strong portfolio and analytical capability, including prioritization, investment trade-offs, and scenario analysis across a multi-asset portfolio.
• Experience working closely with Medical Affairs, Market Access, Finance, Commercial, and R&D, and the credibility to align them around a common plan.
• Experience gained in a top-tier strategy consulting environment is an advantage.

Skills & Competencies

• Strategic acumen: turns complex market, scientific, and portfolio inputs into clear strategy and choices.
• Portfolio fluency: comfortable with portfolio prioritization, value and risk assessment, and the trade-offs across a therapeutic-area portfolio.
• Scientific grounding: able to engage credibly on mechanism, clinical rationale, and competitive landscape across the GBU’s therapeutic areas.
• Process leadership: brings structure, standardization, and rigor to a complex, multi-team planning cycle.
• Influence: strong communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the credibility to align franchise and functional teams without direct authority.

Leadership Skills

• Strategic thinking: connects long-range direction, the planning cycle, and portfolio choices into one coherent story for the GBU.
• Relationships and influence: politically astute, builds trust across franchises and functions, and role-models collaboration.
• Result orientation: brings rigor and pace, anticipates issues, and keeps the focus on the choices that matter most.
• Agility: comfortable with ambiguity and able to adapt quickly in a fast-paced, matrixed global environment.