Senior Director, ExploR&D External Partnering

At Lilly, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We are a global healthcare leader headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Our employees around the world work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. We give our best effort to our work, and we put people first. We’re looking for people who are determined to make life better for people around the world.

Purpose

At JP Morgan 2024, Dave Ricks announced Lilly Catalyze360, our external innovation organization dedicated to biotech collaboration which is comprised of three pillars: Lilly Ventures, providing capital direct to biotechs and via a fund-of-funds investment strategy; Lilly Gateway Labs, a best-in-class network of biotech incubators; and ExploR&D

Within ExploR&D our mission is unleash Lilly’s world-leading capabilities and know-how to accelerate the science of our biotech collaborators to value inflection, and to patients. Through a unique model that mixes dedicated headcount and flexible use of functional and therapeutic area expertise, we will provide the knowledge and services to enable our collaborator’s programs.  Through our work we ensure Lilly is networked with the brightest scientific minds around the world to continue to make Lilly smarter, create value for Lilly and the entire scientific ecosystem, and position Lilly as a partner of choice for biotechs to fuel our industry-leading pipeline with best external innovation.  With the pace of technological disruption accelerating, ExploR&D also affords Lilly an agile way to pilot and deploy new technologies and vendor solutions that can increase the speed and efficiency in the way drugs are discovered and developed, both for our biotech collaborators, and by providing de-risked opportunities to evolve how Lilly and LRL operates. 

The Senior Director, ExploR&D External Partnering is a pivotal leader within the ExploR&D team, responsible for identifying, evaluating, and securing collaborations with the most innovative companies across the globe. This individual will leverage a deep understanding of breakthrough scientific discoveries to align external opportunities with Lilly's strategic goals. The role is instrumental in shaping the future of Lilly's pipeline by sourcing cutting-edge science and technologies, and fostering collaborations that that accelerate the development of transformative therapies.

This role reports to the Head of ExploR&D.

Key Responsibilities

• Portfolio-level Vision:
  • Apply scientific knowledge and drug discovery expertise to influence the overall scientific strategy of ExploR&D and Catalyze360.
  • Partner with the leadership team to continue to evolve the ExploR&D portfolio strategy, including disease, technology and geographic focus areas, project selection criteria, and annual project acquisition goals.
• External Innovation Search:
  • Build and nurture strong relationships with companies, venture groups, and Industry leaders to identify collaborative opportunities that align with our mission.
  • Serve as an ambassador for ExploR&D, increasing awareness of our offering and value proposition externally through meeting attendance, panels, presentations and collaboration with corporate communications on key external messaging.
  • Develop landscapes of high priority areas and identify and assess promising external assets, technologies, and platforms in alignment with Catalyze360 strategic interests.
• External Innovation Evaluation and Collaboration Design:
  • Bring a deep scientific acumen to evaluate potential partnerships, with the ability to critically assess new technologies, platforms, and innovations that could address unmet needs within Lilly’s therapeutic areas.
  • Partner with internal and external stakeholders to develop the scope of collaborations, including scientific, operational, and strategic aspects, to ensure that partnerships are delivering value to our innovation partners, match our organization’s capabilities and capacity, and deliver on the mission and strategic goals of the Catalyze360 organization.
• Scientific Leadership and Strategic Alignment:
  • Assess potential partnerships, ensuring they align with Lilly's vision of advancing science at scale, expanding the company’s research portfolio, and fueling its industry-leading pipeline. Focus on creating value both for Lilly and the broader scientific ecosystem.
  • Stay up to date on recent advances in biomedical research, Lilly R&D strategy, and Therapeutic Areas (TAs) scientific strategy; Build and maintain contacts w