Senior Executive Director of OCIO Business Development (SED)

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Posted Job Title

Senior Executive Director of OCIO Business Development (SED)

Job Profile Title

Director F, Business and Finance, Innovation

Job Description Summary

Reporting directly to the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO), the Senior Executive Director of OCIO Business Development (SED) will support the CIO in overseeing the activities and initiatives of the Office of the Chief Innovation Officer (OCIO), with a focus on the business development, fund management and technology acceleration efforts being led on behalf of the University by the OCIO. In this role, the SED will work towards strengthening the interactions between Penn (and its twelve schools) and external partners in the areas of research and development, technology translation, new business creation, incubation and funding initiatives, and commercialization. By helping to facilitate these types of strategic partnerships in close alignment with the many interdisciplinary programs, resources and faculty across the University, the SED's coordinated efforts will lead to an increased cadence of valuable new technologies and business opportunities.
A major emphasis of the role focuses on identifying, attracting and supporting opportunities to build large, multi-faceted R&D partnerships between Penn and the private sector that advance the translation of Penn ideas and intellectual property and attract substantial amounts of funding into the institution and/or lead to co-location of strategic resources (e.g. GMP manufacturing in combination with Penn Medicine's extensive clinical development capabilities). Working with the CIO, the Managing Director of the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) and other key stakeholders at Penn, the SED will help to define and implement a strategic outreach plan to connect programs and research projects across the University with third party sponsors. This will require the development of productive connections between Penn's faculty and external corporate interests to jointly pursue areas of common interest through formal business relationships. It will also require the development of a deep understanding of faculty and programmatic research interests across Penn to productively bridge to potential areas of interest expressed by the private sector. The SED will conduct these types of business development activities in close partnership with PCI through well-defined connections with PCI's business development professionals and programs to ensure seamless strategic coordination between OCIO and PCI. The SED will be expected to work collaboratively and smoothly with PCI to connect potential partnership opportunities with the appropriate personnel and resources required for a given business development relationship, which may include licenses to Penn o