Global Lead, Health Ecosystem & Innovation

Sanofi•Morristown, MA

13h•Hybrid

About The Position

Sanofi's Medical Innovation team is committed to harnessing the best of the external world to accelerate our mission. Within the Medical Strategy, Transformation and Excellence team, the Medical Innovation function serves as the enterprise incubator for high-impact innovation across Medical Affairs. The team operates at the intersection of science, technology, and strategy — building future-state capabilities, testing breakthrough solutions, and partnering with GBUs and Digital teams to ensure innovation translates into measurable impact for patients and the business. The Global Lead, Health Ecosystem & Innovation is the gateway through which the best of the external world enters Sanofi's Medical Innovation pipeline. This role is responsible for building and managing Sanofi's external innovation ecosystem — identifying, engaging, and partnering with health tech start-ups, academic institutions, Digital Therapeutics (DTx) companies, patient-finding platforms, and innovation accelerators that bring "outside-in" innovation to Sanofi's medical strategy. As an incubator within the Medical Innovation Lab, this leader scouts and brokers external innovations, build partnerships, and defines integration frameworks before handing mature solutions to GBU operational teams.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in Medical Affairs, Business Development, Digital Health, or Healthcare Innovation with a focus on external partnerships and ecosystem development within pharmaceutical, healthcare, or health technology sectors.
Demonstrated track record of building and managing external innovation partnerships with start-ups, academic institutions, or DTx companies in a pharmaceutical context.
Experience with patient-finding platforms, real-world evidence partnerships, or digital therapeutics ecosystem development.
Strong external network in digital health, life science venture, or health-tech innovation communities.
Strategic ecosystem builder with a proven network in the digital health, start-up, and academic innovation communities relevant to biopharma.
Experienced in brokering and managing complex external partnerships, including opportunity evaluation, use case design, and performance governance.
Deep understanding of Digital Therapeutics, patient-centric innovation, and real-world evidence strategies in pharmaceutical development and medical affairs.
Entrepreneurial mindset with the ability to identify high-potential external opportunities and translate them into structured, actionable innovation partnerships with clear business cases.
Ability to engage credibly with start-up founders, academic researchers, innovation accelerator leaders, and internal senior stakeholders with equal effectiveness.
Ecosystem Intelligence: Maintains a current, actionable understanding of the digital health and health-tech innovation landscape relevant to Sanofi's therapeutic areas, identifying signals of strategic relevance before they become industry standard.
Partnership Architecture: Designs multi-stakeholder innovation partnerships that deliver measurable medical value while managing complexity, risk, and the cultural differences between pharma and start-up environments.
Patient-Centricity: Grounds external innovation strategy in genuine patient needs, ensuring innovations improve care journeys and patient-relevant outcomes across therapeutic areas.
GBU Orientation: Translates enterprise innovation goals into GBU-specific partnership strategies, ensuring external innovations meet real commercial and medical needs rather than innovation for its own sake.
Entrepreneurial Agility: Navigates ambiguity in early-stage partnership development, pivoting quickly while maintaining strategic focus and governance discipline.

Nice To Haves

Advanced scientific degree (MD, PhD, PharmD, or Master's in life sciences or related field) preferred; additional qualifications in Business, Health Innovation, or Digital Health are a strong plus.
Familiarity with AI applications, digital health platforms, and DTx regulatory and commercial models strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Define and own the Health Ecosystem & Innovation roadmap, bringing "outside-in" innovation from start-ups, academia, digital health, and patient communities into Sanofi's medical innovation pipeline.
Build and manage a strategic external innovation ecosystem encompassing start-up partnerships, academic collaborations, Digital Therapeutics (DTx) alliances, and patient-centric data platforms.
Lead the Patient centric strategy, building capabilities that improve Sanofi's ability to identify, understand, and engage patient communities in support of medical and evidence-generation objectives.
Identify, evaluate, and broker partnerships with digital health start-ups and DTx companies whose capabilities complement or enhance Sanofi's medical portfolio and patient engagement strategy.
Build and maintain a dynamic map of the external health innovation landscape, including competitive intelligence across digital health, AI-powered medical tools, and DTx.
Represent Sanofi at external innovation forums, accelerators, and academic conferences, serving as the company's ambassador to the health innovation ecosystem.
Function as the primary incubator for external medical innovation partnerships — manage the full pipeline from opportunity scouting through due diligence, KPI definition, and handoff to GBU operational teams.
Design and manage structured test and learn use case programs with external partners, establishing clear success criteria, governance frameworks, and escalation pathways.
Collaborate with the Global Head of Medical Innovation, GBU leadership, and Digital Partners to assess and prioritize external innovation opportunities based on medical value, technical feasibility, and strategic fit.
Present curated external innovation opportunities to the Medical Innovation Council, providing structured assessments of strategic fit, risk, and potential impact.
Partner with Legal, Compliance, and Procurement to ensure external partnerships are structured, governed, and executed in accordance with Sanofi's standards.
Ensure external partnerships are designed to deliver actionable use cases — not one-off engagements — with clear KPIs, milestones, and handoff criteria to the broader Medical Innovation team.
Serve as the embedded health ecosystem partner to Medical GBUs, ensuring the external innovation pipeline reflects GBU-specific therapeutic area priorities and evidence-generation needs.
Collaborate with the Global Lead for Scientific Platforms to ensure external content and education innovations are integrated into platform strategies.
Collaborate with the Global Lead for Medical Intelligence to connect patient-level data innovations with intelligence and predictive analytics platforms.
Partner with R&D, Commercial, and Digital teams to identify cross-functional innovation opportunities that span medical, clinical, and commercial objectives.
Represent the Health Ecosystem function in the Medical Innovation Council, contributing to DAI governance on external partnership investments and approvals.
Serve as an internal ambassador for health ecosystem innovation, educating Medical Affairs colleagues on emerging external trends and partnership opportunities.
Ensure all external partnerships, DTx collaborations, and patient data initiatives comply with applicable healthcare regulations, data privacy standards and ethical research principles.
Develop governance frameworks for evaluating, onboarding, and managing external innovation partners within a regulated pharmaceutical environment.
Stay current on the evolving digital therapeutics regulatory landscape, patient data governance standards, and start-up partnership models in biopharma.