Director External Communications

As a major global biopharma company, and one of the UK’s largest listed businesses, GSK generates considerable media interest. Journalists reporting on business, science, health, and politics all cover GSK on a daily basis.

This reporting directly impacts the company’s reputation, products, people and shareholders, and influences our key stakeholders including: healthcare professionals; governments; patients; regulators; investors and analysts.

GSK’s U.S. Corporate Media Relations team are responsible for protecting and strengthening the company’s reputation by managing relationships, news flow and issues with top-tier national and international media organizations. As Director, U.S. Corporate Media Relations, you will be an expert in this audience (the media) and use your experience and skills to manage and develop our key media relationships globally.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop strong relationships between GSK and top-tier global and U.S. corporate media (e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Endpoints News etc.) to build understanding of and confidence in the company’s strategy, including our work to strengthen our pipeline of innovative medicines and vaccines, both via our in-house R&D efforts and business development activity.

• Develop and execute proactive strategies around key news flow regarding the company’s products and pipeline and be an active spokesperson on this news flow with key corporate media.

• Build a strong internal network to source ‘new’ stories – showcasing the company’s scientific innovation and expertise - of interest to corporate media, in support of the above objectives.

• Be a trusted counselor on a) the media, b) story generation and c) media handling to members of the Communication and Government Affairs (CGA) function Operating Committee, other GSK departments and senior executives up to and including the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), as well as other members of the company’s R&D Leadership Team (RDLT) and Executive Committee (ExCom). This includes working closely with these executives, gaining their trust and briefing these executives ahead of (and staffing) media engagements. 

• Anticipate issues where possible and produce issues management plans and materials for key corporate issues (e.g. litigation; restructuring; product safety).

• Handle crisis communications in a calm manner applying judgement and being trusted by executives in such situations.

• Handle out-of-hours calls often in pressurized circumstances.

• Handle highly confidential and price sensitive announcements/issues relating to business strategy including working with senior leaders and Corporate Secretariat as needed.

• Work closely with digital communications colleagues to maximize digital reach of announcements across channels and devise appropriate content.

• Support media strategy and communication plans for key corporate events such as external, media-sponsored medical and corporate conferences.

• Provide communications leadership and support to the US commercial business units to amplify and leverage milestones and campaigns.

• Actively contribute to CGA cross functional initiatives and/or team meetings. Bring external and market insights to the global corporate team.

• Drive media handling best practice through informal guidance and formal training of global CGA colleagues.

Basic Qualifications:

• 10+year's experience in corporate communications or related disciplines, with specialization in media relations.

• Experience in communications planning and delivery, aligning strategy and campaigns to business drivers and broader reputational issues, with measurable outcomes.

• Business acumen and proven experience of working in a fast-paced, global and matrix team.

• Open to change and new ways of working, constantly looking to innovate and improve the way the organization thinks about media relations.

• Bachelor’s Degree

Preferred Qualifications:

• Exceptional judgement and calmness under pressure. Comfortable working at pace with ambiguity and/or incomplete information and applying this in a practical way to proactive and reactive media relations.

• Experience of pharma industry or similarly highly regulated industry is a plus.

• A secondary qualification in journalism or media relations is a plus.

• Strong, dynamic, highly articulate communicator with excellent writing skills, across a wide range of media (including digital and other ‘new’ media platforms).

• Able to operate effectively at senior level – with the required gravitas and experience to gain the confidence of the most senio