Executive Director, Policy Development & Strategy

Job Description

The Executive Director, Policy Development and Strategy is a key leadership role in the Global Public Policy Strategic Planning & External Engagement team, with responsibility for ongoing monitoring of policy and geo-political trends, and proactively directing policy development activities to mitigate risk and leverage opportunities in support of our company's business priorities.

Reporting to the Associate Vice President, Strategic Planning & External Engagement, this person will be responsible for facilitating proactive and impactful engagement on global cross-cutting policy and political concerns that will impact our company and industry and serving as a strategic partner to the Associate Vice President (AVP) on engagement across  Global Public Policy (GPP) and the broader enterprise on above product policy and political issues, working closely with the Executive Director, Global Policy and Multilateral Engagement and therapeutic area and regional policy teams.

The Executive Director will work with the AVP to identify potential synergies across therapeutic area and regional policy advocacy plans and develop a global view of policy priorities for GPP. The Executive Director will direct development of internal and external policy positions on above-product issues with the potential to impact our company and targeted efforts on these issues in global industry associations and business groups. Additionally, the Executive Director will create and maintain digital tools to support best-in-class strategic planning and performance management across the policy function and work with the AVP, Strategic Planning & External Engagement leadership team (LT) and Director, Strategic Operations Team to conduct regular, actionable analysis and generate insights to improve efficiency and impact of strategic plan execution. The role is based in US (Washington, DC, Rahway, NJ), Belgium (Brussels), or Switzerland (Zurich, Lucerne, Geneva).

Scope of work and core responsibilities include:
Leadership:

• Guide and manage the Policy Development and Strategy team, ensuring high performance, collaboration, and alignment with organizational objectives.
• Provide mentoring and guidance to team members, fostering their professional development and growth.
• Develop a high-performance culture within the team, promoting proactivity, accountability, innovation, and excellence.
• Collaborate with GPP and cross-functional teams and stakeholders to contribute to strategic engagement initiatives.

Strategic Planning and Capabilities: 

• Develop and execute global strategy for monitoring global, cross-cutting policy and geopolitical risks and opportunities, working collaboratively with GPP and cross-functional teams, and direct the creation of proactive and actionable intelligence to inform global policy priorities, tactical plans, and business strategy.
• Assess current strategic planning platform and tools, identify and execute plan for enhancing  user experience and enabling more rapid and efficient analysis of activities and progress  for GPP LT performance management and decision-making. Direct maintenance of platform, building and leveraging relationships with IT and other corporate functions as appropriate.
• Partner with AVP, Strategic Planning & External Engagement LT, and GPP LT to develop annual Executive Team policy engagement plan.
• Direct a team of policy subject matter experts (SME) with responsibility for proactively identifying and assessing policy and industry trends, emerging areas for cross-cutting policy development, and for generating and sustaining relationships with global thought leaders, US-based international policy think tanks, and consultants on key policy concerns including artificial intelligence (AI), climate and environment, health care policy, and supply chains and localization.
• Develop acumen on cross-cutting business topics, including manufacturing and localization, AI, go to market approaches, and build internal relationships with senior SMEs in Research and Development, Manufacturing, and Human Health in order to effectively leverage knowledge and network to support policy development and external engagement opportunities.
• Direct and provide oversight of process for developing and updating public-facing policy positions on company websites. Develop efficient SOPs for creating new positions, updating existing positions, and securing appropriate stakeholder approvals. Represent GPP in presenting positions for approval to Strategic Policy & Sustainability Council.
• Serve as the GPP representative in senior-level cross-functional working groups and leadership teams focused on above product policy-relevant issues, including participation in in-person headquarters meetings as needed.
• Provide timely, conc