Global Lead, Business Development & Licensing (BD&L)

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation•Seattle, WA

1d•$262,200 - $406,400•Onsite

About The Position

The Business Development & Licensing (BD&L) team supports the foundation’s Program Strategy Teams (PSTs) by providing transaction and negotiating support for priority agreements with private sector partners. The team focuses on executing agreements for access to key assets for charitable purposes, excluding Strategic Investment Fund transactions. They also work on developing and implementing best practices for engagement and negotiation of private sector agreements. This role, based in Seattle, WA, will support PST goals by identifying and evaluating strategic business partners and licensing opportunities to advance foundation strategies. The Global Lead for BD&L will coordinate and negotiate access to key assets and opportunities with partners, develop agreement structures for innovation projects, and partner with stakeholders focused on digital partnerships with technology companies.

Requirements

Significant leadership experience in business development and licensing experience with 10+ years in relevant and/or related digital technology industry sector.
Minimum of a bachelor’s degree, plus 10+ years of demonstrated experience.
Significant track record of leading and negotiating successful technology-related transactions required (including business terms such as intellectual property, data ownership, sharing, privacy and liability for multi-national technology companies).
Experience leading and partnering with cross-functional business development diligence and agreement teams to completion, including in areas outside of technical expertise and across divisions and geographies.
Ability to negotiate commitments and timelines.
Good knowledge of legal matters related to intellectual property and licensing contracts.
Ability to lead a transaction from term sheet to signature, including agreements that don’t have a standard template in place
Strong interpersonal and influencing skills (preferably with experience navigating within highly matrixed environments and influencing stakeholders with and without authority).
Must have an aptitude to quickly understand innovation, particularly involving new science and technology.
Strong understanding of the basics of the competitive dynamics in the Digital technology industry, including emerging Artificial Intelligence technologies in a breadth of industries including health, consumer finance and education.
Strong analytical capabilities (financial analysis and product P&L modeling preferred).
Skilled facilitator, delegator, and project manager.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills including familiarity with legalese, drafting and review; highly capable of articulating our interests to varied audiences including experience presenting to company executive management teams.
Strong decision-maker, able to appropriately articulate and balance tradeoffs, including in areas of high complexity.
Demonstrated ability to operate with flexibility and creativity at both strategic and execution levels, implementing activities within tactical plans with a high level of complexity and ambiguity.
An inclusive individual who thrives in a team-oriented and highly matrixed environment with experience serving many different internal and external constituencies. Active listening skills.
Results and impact-oriented with a problem-solving mindset.
Humble and collaborative team player who can lead work effectively.
Passion for the foundation’s mission.
Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located. The Foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H-1B, O-1, L-1, E, OPT, STEM-OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.).
As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree preferred including MBA and/or PhD.
Preference for experience in more than one functional area in a multi-national technology company (e.g., business development, product development, product management, marketing, commercialization, finance, legal, and/or intellectual property, etc.).
Preference for experience licensing and implementing public good data sets (e.g. climate and environment, health and other government data sets).
Experience negotiating with multi-national corporations and companies based in low- and middle-income countries is highly desirable, including multi-partner partnerships.
Previous work experience related to AI/digital initiatives and aligning partnership incentives across non-profit and for-profit entities (specifically with technology entities).

Responsibilities

Help structure and co-lead agreement transactions with PSTs that will take innovative digital solutions from the early concept stage through the cycle to commercialization so that data, technology and products can successfully reach the ultimate beneficiaries in our target geographies of those underserved.
Leverage digital experience to develop and lead all aspects of the execution of business development strategies that are aligned with accessing the priorities and interests of PST and/or Functional Strategy (e.g., global access and licensing of products, platform and enabling technologies, services).
Continuing to evolve the foundation’s global access terms such as affordability, access, price, volume commitments which are essential in achieving our PST program goals.
Leverage experience in negotiating multinational technology company agreements with government agencies and developing and implementing programs that support public good data sets that foster collaboration across sectors and disciplines.
Act as the point of contact to organize and help lead agreement transaction teams that will conduct due diligence of potential partners, negotiate agreement terms, gain internal alignment and support, and present clear assumption-based recommendations to executive leadership.
Establish highly effective and collaborative relationships with key internal functions (e.g., Legal, Finance, Strategic Investment Fund, Foundation Strategy Office, Product Launch Team, and Alliance Management) to ensure effective transactional representation to execute the target agreements.
Facilitate high-quality opportunity assessments and due diligence reviews (including benchmark comparable transactions and agreement structures, funding needs, Target Product Profile (TPP), current market conditions and landscape of potential partners for prioritized areas of interest.
Lead partner review and collaboration of the development of agreement recommendation documents to the executive team and governance committee for approval (including the President of the division, Chief Financial Officer, and General Counsel).
Evaluation of key inputs for commercial prospects and strategies with the Product Launch team to facilitate decision-making (e.g., opportunities in both High-Income Countries or solely for Low-and-Middle Income Countries).
Concurrently manage multiple business opportunities across PSTs, with high complexity requiring consistent prioritization of projects and the building of internal alignment between PST and foundation objectives.
Drive robust and timely decision-making through all stages of agreements.
Participate in active development of the foundation’s business development capabilities, processes and the sharing of best practices and lessons learned when engaging with the private sector.
Support the PSTs as thought partners to develop key relationships with technology companies and other partners to enable establishment of partnerships that advance strategic goals.
Identify digital synergies and strategic solutions across the different PSTs and divisions.