Blackbird - Associate Director, Patient Engagement & Insights

About Raven:
We are Raven, RA Capital’s healthcare incubator. From discovery to delivery, whether we incubate, accelerate or rejuvenate, Raven’s goal is to turn scientific breakthroughs into transformative therapies and get them quickly, safely and efficiently to the patients that need them most. Raven’s experienced scientists, operators, and healthcare innovators have deep sector expertise across therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and services. They have brought hundreds of therapeutics into development, managed hospital systems, optimized clinical trials and navigated payor and regulatory systems to deliver patient impact - and they are ready to work with you.

About RA Capital:
Founded in 2004, RA Capital Management is a multi-stage investment manager dedicated to evidence-based investing in public and private healthcare, life sciences, and planetary health companies. RA Capital creates and funds innovative companies, from private seed rounds to public follow-on financings, allowing management teams to drive value creation from inception through commercialization and beyond. RA Capital's knowledge engine is guided by our Tech Atlas internal research division, and Raven, RA Capital’s company building team, offers entrepreneurs and innovators a collaborative and comprehensive platform to explore the novel and the re-imagined. RA Capital has more than 150 employees and over $10 billion in assets under management.

About Blackbird:
Blackbird is an integrated development team comprised of Clinical Development, Operations, Regulatory and Patient Engagement within Raven Venture Capital, part of RA Capital Management.  Blackbird’s mission to transform clinical trial planning and execution, resulting in lower costs and expedited timelines across RA Capital’s portfolio. Blackbird provides companies with strategic, data-driven clinical study design assessments, operational optimizations, and innovative best practices to minimize inefficiencies and prevent the need to “reinvent the wheel” at each portfolio company.

The Role
As the Associate Director of Patient Engagement & Insights, you will act as a high-level consultant and architect. You will navigate the intersection of health policy, clinical R&D, and management consulting to build relationships, programs, and tools that competitively advantage our portfolio. You will be charged with mapping advocacy landscapes both in the US and abroad, maintaining relationships with both blue-chip and grassroots patient advocacy organizations and making sure our portfolio companies are able to have mutually beneficial interactions with the patient communities they aim to serve. It is expected that you will know how to leverage patient insights, have demonstrated proficiency in best practices for interacting with patients, caregivers and advocacy leaders, and are willing to test novel tactics to ensure patients are top of mind for drug developers. This is an opportunity to join a larger team that is innovating new patient advocacy and engagement tactics with the goal of leveraging patient insights to make sure new medicines are developed with the communities who need them.

Key Responsibilities
1. Portfolio Consultation & Insight Integration
 Strategic Advisory: Act as an internal consultant for portfolio companies, designing bespoke patient engagement roadmaps that align with their specific therapeutic milestones. In some cases, you will be the de facto Head of Patient Engagement at a startup biotech company.
 Protocol De-Risking: Leverage patient insights gather with best practices to translate patient and caregiver lived experiences into actionable protocol modifications that reduce participation burden and accelerate recruitment. You should also be able to operate at a meta-level and apply.
 Cross-Functional Mentorship: Embed patient-centricity within portfolio companies by training their Clinical Ops and Medical Affairs teams on how to use insights to drive business value. In some cases, you will be asked to embed directly with teams and serve as the face of the company for their respective patient communities.
 Speak the R&D Language: Proficiency in biotechnology R&D verbiage and a willingness to have a handle on the technical terms present in a clinical trial protocol. It is an expectation that you know how clinical trials are developed, executed, and completed.
2. Product, Tool & Tech Innovation
 Quantifying Impact: Develop analytical frameworks and KPIs to measure the direct impact of patient engagement on R&D timelines, cost-per-patient, and retention rates.
 Tech Stack Ownership: Lead the implementation of AI-powered technologies and digital health tools to monitor real-world patient burden and sentiment in real-time. You should also be willing to lean into