Director, Medical Value & Enablement

Novartis • East Hanover, NJ

6d • $185,500 - $344,500

About The Position

The Director, Medical Value & Enablement (MVE) is a highly autonomous strategic advisor, thought leader, and transformation architect within US Medical Affairs. With minimal day-to-day leadership oversight, the Director identifies enterprise-critical opportunities, frames complex and ambiguous challenges, develops original points of view, and creates executive-ready strategies from concept through measurable value realization. The role leads through expertise, influence, and sound judgment rather than positional authority, rapidly synthesizing external trends, internal data, stakeholder insight, and emerging AI capabilities to challenge assumptions, generate differentiated solutions, and make clear recommendations.

The Director retains strategic accountability at the MST, Disease Cluster, portfolio, and/or COE level while orchestrating execution across NOCCs. The role is accountable for strategic coherence, decision quality, fit-for-purpose design, stakeholder adoption, capability uplift, and sustained business, organizational, and patient-impact value. The Director leads strategic planning and complex transformations; defines value theses and impact measures; identifies, shapes, and prototypes AI-enabled opportunities; leads change and adoption; creates executive communications; and partners with execution teams while providing strategic direction and escalation leadership.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in business, life sciences, or healthcare required.
• At least 10 years of cross-enterprise experience in pharmaceuticals or healthcare across differing roles, including strategy, transformation, organizational effectiveness, or capability leadership in a complex matrix environment.
• Demonstrated advanced AI fluency through recognized certification, applied experience, or a portfolio of AI-enabled solutions that improved decisions, workflows, capabilities, or measurable outcomes.
• Proven ability to lead complex, cross-functional transformation from opportunity identification and strategy through design, build, adoption, and measurable value realization.
• Ability to independently frame ambiguous challenges, develop evidence-based points of view, create strategies and solutions from a blank page, and advance work with minimal day-to-day oversight.
• Strong strategic-design capability, including operating models, capability roadmaps, change strategies, implementation approaches, and value-measurement frameworks.
• Advanced ability to use quantitative and qualitative data, analytics, external evidence, and stakeholder insight to generate executive-level recommendations and inform decisions.
• Highly agile, adaptable, and composed in fast-paced environments; able to anticipate needs, make sound decisions with incomplete information, and adjust direction as conditions evolve.
• Advanced intellectual and technical curiosity, learning agility, courage, and sound judgment; constructive challenge, reflection on impact, responsiveness to feedback, and commitment to continuous growth and strengthening others’ capabilities.
• Ability to operate collaboratively and transparently across functions, teams, and organizational boundaries, integrate diverse expertise, build shared ownership, and advance enterprise outcomes.
• Strong knowledge of Medical Affairs strategy, stakeholder needs, and the broader healthcare environment.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree in organizational leadership, data and analytics, or a related discipline.
• Prior agency consultancy experience.
• Direct Medical Affairs experience.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a trusted, highly autonomous advisor to the respective Vice President and leadership team, setting the strategic agenda within the role’s mandate and advancing priorities with minimal day-to-day oversight.
• Frame ambiguous business questions, identify root causes, establish hypotheses, and develop original, evidence-based points of view that challenge conventional thinking and expand strategic options.
• Lead strategic planning across MSTs, Disease Clusters, portfolios, and/or COEs, translating enterprise and US Medical Affairs priorities into choices, integrated plans, decision rights, and measurable outcomes.
• Create strategies, business cases, roadmaps, frameworks, and executive recommendations, including developing work from a blank page and iterating rapidly using relevant expertise, judgment, and data.
• Anticipate emerging needs and risks, make timely recommendations with incomplete information, and maintain momentum in fast-changing environments.
• Own and orchestrate complex, cross-functional transformations from opportunity identification and strategy through design, activation, adoption, and multi-year value realization.
• Design future-state operating models, decision rights, capability architectures, and implementation roadmaps that are practical, scalable, and fit for Medical Affairs.
• Apply fit-for-purpose transformation, capability, and change methodologies, including design, capability maturity assessments, and behavior-change approaches.
• Establish strategic hypotheses, stage gates, dependencies, risk boundaries, and course-correction mechanisms while managing quality, compliance, and enterprise risk.
• Mobilize senior leaders and cross-functional partners around outcomes, choices, accountabilities, and critical decisions.
• Define a value thesis for each priority, linking strategic choices and activities to stakeholder outcomes, organizational performance, and patient impact.
• Build value-realization frameworks connected to KPIs, leading and lagging indicators, adoption measures, and executive dashboards; use data to test assumptions and make impact visible.
• Integrate quantitative analysis, qualitative insight, external evidence, and stakeholder feedback to identify patterns, assess progress, and surface risks and opportunities.
• Recommend trade-offs, stop or redirect low-value work, scale effective work, and establish ownership for sustained benefits.
• Scan healthcare, technology, data, AI, and industry developments and translate relevant trends into strategic implications and actionable opportunities for US Medical Affairs.
• Identify, prioritize, and shape AI, automation, analytics, and digital use cases based on business need, data readiness, feasibility, scalability, adoption potential, risk, and expected value.
• Design and prototype practical AI-enabled workflows, decision-support tools, and scalable solutions with AI, data, digital, analytics, technology, and functional experts, maintaining established human accountability.
• Build organizational AI fluency by translating complex concepts into practical applications, informed decisions, and new ways of working across the US and NOCCs.
• Develop and lead integrated change and adoption strategies, including stakeholder engagement, leadership alignment, communications, readiness, capability building, reinforcement, and value sustainment.
• Diagnose change and adoption barriers and design targeted interventions using judgment and fit-for-purpose models.
• Equip leaders and teams with narratives, tools, decision support, and capability-building experiences that accelerate adoption and embed behavior change.
• Establish adoption indicators, feedback loops, and course-correction mechanisms; clarify ownership, dependencies, and change accountabilities across functions.
• Build credible enterprise influence and trusted partnerships that enable collective impact beyond the immediate role or function.
• Translate complex information, data, and strategic choices into concise executive narratives, recommendations, presentations, visual frameworks, decision materials, and impact summaries.
• Independently create executive-ready content from a blank page, integrating diverse inputs into coherent points of view and delivering strategic updates that clarify implications, choices, risks, and required actions.
• Create functional organization communications, announcements, and change materials, including drafting, formatting, stakeholder review, publishing, and execution.
• Design and facilitate senior-leadership discussions, cross-functional working sessions, and programs that result in informed decisions, alignment, accountability, and action.
• Lead pillar strategic planning, prioritization, and portfolio oversight for the assigned MST, Disease Cluster, portfolio, or COE; translate priorities into outcomes, strategic choices, roadmaps, decision rights, and measures of success.
• Provide execution partners with context, strategic direction, timely decisions, and escalation leadership while avoiding unnecessary involvement in tactical delivery; retain accountability for strategic coherence, design quality, adoption, and value realization while leveraging NOCCs for tactical execution.
• Provide cross-functional project partnering or cover peer MVEs during planned absences.

Benefits

• Performance-based cash incentive.
• Depending on role level, eligibility to be considered for annual equity awards.
• Comprehensive benefits package for eligible US-based employees, including health, life, and disability benefits.
• 401(k) with company contribution and match.
• Vacation, personal days, holidays, and other leaves.

What This Job Offers

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