Associate Director, Agile Strategic Learning Lead

Bristol Myers Squibb • Princeton, NJ

2d • $172,550 - $209,090 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Worldwide Commercialization Learning (WWCL) Centre of Excellence (CoE) is seeking an experienced, agile-minded learning leader to serve as Associate Director, Agile Strategic Learning Lead. The WWCL CoE designs and builds the skills content and learning pathways used by every market BMS operates in and by home office functions globally. This role owns and leads WWCL CoE’s pooled Senior Manager capability, a flexible, cross-portfolio team of Senior Managers, Agile Strategic Learning Partners who are deployed dynamically against the CoE’s highest-priority work. This is a people leadership role: the Associate Director holds direct line management responsibility for the Senior Manager, Agile Strategic Learning Partner team, and is responsible for their development, performance, and effective deployment across the full breadth of CoE Skills team priorities. This role is internally oriented: the role’s focus is leading the Senior Manager team and define and build the mechanics of the operating model itself; tiering, prioritization, capacity, and skills-matching so that the right resource is aligned to the right work at the right time. This role works in close, ongoing partnership with the Senior Director, Worldwide Commercialization Learning Strategy & Operations and Enterprise LEAP Performance, ensuring the pooled Senior Manager team's capacity, delivery, and demand data directly inform Enterprise LEAP performance, value case, and vendor governance outcomes. This role introduces and stands up those mechanics in practice, in partnership with LEAP, and leads their ongoing evolution as the CoE's portfolio, technology landscape, and business priorities change, particularly as AI reshapes what is possible in learning design and delivery, bringing recommendations to the Senior Director, WWCL Centre of Excellence for endorsement. This includes drawing on workforce strategy and organizational design principles, and partnering with HR and IT, to identify and build net-new approaches where no established methodology yet exists. The BMS-LEAP delivery partnership is itself newly established, having launched within the past year and still in the early stages of piloting what it can reliably deliver for learning content and resources. This role sits at the center of discovering, in practice, how that partnership works for the WWCL portfolio, feeding what is learned back into both the operating model design and Enterprise LEAP performance reporting.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree or Project Management certification preferred
• 8–10+ years of experience in learning, commercialization, or capability development, ideally within life sciences; experience launching global programs required
• Demonstrated people leadership experience, including managing and developing a team through a flexible, project-based, or matrixed resourcing model
• Proven experience operating a portfolio-level prioritization and governance process (demand intake, tiering, resource allocation) across competing business priorities
• Strong understanding of agile ways of working and pooled/flexible resourcing models within a learning or capability development function
• Experience with global delivery partners (e.g., LEAP/GCC or equivalent) and multi-partner delivery ecosystems, including managing service levels and escalation pathways
• Comfortable working with operational and resourcing data (capacity, utilization, demand) to support enterprise performance reporting and value tracking, partnering effectively with strategy and operations leadership
• Experience or strong interest in workforce strategy and organizational design, applied to operating models where established methodology does not yet exist
• Familiarity with how emerging AI and content-creation technologies are reshaping the boundary between what the CoE prototypes internally and what LEAP produces, and comfort recommending adjustments to delivery-ownership guardrails as that boundary shifts
• High level of data, digital, and AI fluency; able to identify and champion AI-enabled ways of working across a broad team
• Exceptional influencing and consulting skills; able to operate credibly at senior levels and resolve trade-offs in complex, matrixed global environments
• Demonstrated ability to hold guardrails and quality standards (e.g., strategic focus vs. production work) while managing multiple concurrent stakeholders
• Proven ability to drive delivery accountability and high performance both through direct reports and through others without direct line management authority

Nice To Haves

• advanced degree or Project Management certification preferred

Responsibilities

• Ensure every project entering the portfolio completes the standard intake process (stakeholder/sponsor, audience, business objective, timeline, link to enterprise priorities, dependencies, compliance requirement) before resourcing is considered and allocated.
• Apply CoE prioritization criteria consistently, distinguishing Priority (business importance), Tier (delivery/ownership model), and Resource (level of effort) as three independent dimensions
• Maintain and present the CoE Book of Work, providing a single, transparent, shared portfolio view across all Associate Directors
• Introduce and operationalise the CoE's agile pooled resourcing mechanics into live practice with LEAP, building on principles established by CoE leadership, and recommend refinements to the Senior Director, WWCL Centre of Excellence for endorsement
• Lead the ongoing evolution of these mechanics as the CoE's portfolio, technology landscape, and business priorities change, drawing on workforce strategy and organizational design principles to identify new approaches to resourcing and capacity optimization
• Partner with HR and IT to identify and capitalize on emerging AI and technology capabilities that enable net-new approaches to resourcing, skills-matching, and operating model design where no established methodology yet exists
• Continually reassess where CoE-produced prototypes end and LEAP-produced assets begin, as AI-enabled content creation tools reshape what each side can efficiently deliver, and recommend adjustments to the CoE's tiering and delivery-ownership guardrails accordingly
• Ensure resourcing and prioritization decisions protect the throughput, consistency, and quality of learning solutions before they are deployed globally, recognizing that most CoE-produced content reaches markets and home office functions with minimal local adaptation
• Hold direct line management responsibility for the Senior Manager, Agile Strategic Learning Partner team, including performance management, coaching, and career development
• Match Senior Managers to projects based on skill fit, specialist knowledge (e.g., therapy area, field capability, platforms & AI adoption, leadership development), capacity, and project phase, in partnership with the Central PM role
• Ensure assignments are phase-specific rather than project-long, with a minimum assignment block of two weeks, and that resource is assigned across functional Associate Directors
• Lead regular portfolio reviews to rebalance Senior Manager capacity, resolve over/under-capacity issues, and re-assess shifting priorities
• Maintain transparent capacity visibility for all Associate Directors, ensuring the pooled model builds trust and predictability across the CoE
• Uphold the CoE’s operating guardrails across all pooled Senior Manager work: prototype rather than produce, send systematized/templated work to LEAP, and maintain a strategy-to-creation ratio (target 70% strategy / 30% creation)
• Ensure Senior Managers, where appropriate are not undertaking formatting, graphic cleanup, or multiple-version production, protecting the CoE’s strategic mandate and directing that work to LEAP
• Partner with functional Associate Directors to ensure work is resourced appropriately and that tiering, priority, and resource decisions remain independently assessed
• Champion adult learning principles, AI-enabled ways of working, and consistent quality standards across all portfolio areas served by the pooled team
• Escalate enterprise-impacting prioritization and capacity trade-offs to the LEAP Interlock Lead and relevant enterprise stakeholders.
• Ensure Senior Managers provide LEAP with clear requirements, SME nominations, review cycles, and delivery readiness confirmations in line with LEAP governance intake standards
• Monitor delivery performance and partnership health across the pooled team’s LEAP-engaged projects, surfacing risks and systemic issues
• Partner closely with the Senior Director, Worldwide Commercialization Learning Strategy & Operations and Enterprise LEAP Performance, translating pooled Senior Manager capacity, utilization, and delivery data into inputs for Enterprise LEAP performance reporting, business case validation, and realized savings tracking
• Support the enterprise vendor/supplier management model by supplying accurate, consistent demand, tiering, and resourcing data from the pooled Senior Manager portfolio to inform value tracking methodologies
• Track and report lead and lag indicators of operating model success (e.g., tiering applied at intake, prototype turnaround time, Skills-only vs. LEAP-only workload ratio, capability uplift, reuse rates, cost avoidance)
• Provide the Senior Director with a forward-looking view of the active demand pipeline and portfolio health, contributing to CoE governance forums
• Stay abreast of AI-enabled learning technologies and ways of working, bringing evidence-based recommendations to scale effective practices across the pooled team

Benefits

• wellbeing support
• retirement and financial protection benefits
• insurance offerings (medical, dental, vision, life and disability)
• Flexible Time Off (FTO)
• 11 paid company holidays each year
• 160 hours of paid vacation annually for new hires
• 3 optional holidays
• paid sick leave
• up to two paid volunteer days per year
• summer hours flexibility
• leaves of absence for medical, personal, parental, caregiver, bereavement, or military needs
• annual Global Shutdown between Christmas Day and New Year's Day

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level