Marketing Operations Senior Advisor - Financial & Strategic Planning

Cigna Healthcare • Nashville, TN

6d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Marketing Operations team seeks a Senior Advisor to lead four core pillars of the function: Strategic Planning, Financial Operations, Change Management, and Learning & Development. This role will play a pivotal part in advancing Marketing’s Modernization strategy, primarily through leading planning and budgeting efforts and helping ensure change is adopted across the broader organization. This leader will help translate modernization priorities into practical planning processes, budget discipline, operating rhythms, and adoption approaches that improve how Marketing prioritizes work, allocates investment, and implements new ways of working. The role will partner closely with Business Marketing, COEs, Finance, senior leadership, and the Marketing Operations Process Optimization and MarTech leads to connect strategy to execution, improve visibility into priorities and spend, and support successful delivery and adoption of new processes, AI-enabled ways of working, and Workfront-based planning and execution.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree; advanced degree desirable, or equivalent experience
• 8+ years of experience in marketing operations, strategy, financial operations, process improvement, change management, learning and development, or related business functions
• Strong strategic thinking and systems orientation, with the ability to connect enterprise priorities to operating plans, investments, processes, and outcomes
• Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional initiatives involving planning, governance, budgeting, transformation, or organizational change
• Strong financial acumen, including budgeting, forecasting, reconciliation, reporting, and translating financial data into clear business insights
• Ability to design and improve frameworks, processes, and operating routines that increase consistency, efficiency, and accountability
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders and align diverse stakeholders around decisions and next steps
• Experience building adoption strategies, enabling change, and helping teams transition successfully to new processes, tools, and ways of working
• Experience developing talent, onboarding programs, training strategies, or capability-building initiatives that strengthen organizational effectiveness
• Proven track record of driving results in fast-paced environments with strong project management, problem-solving, and organizational skills
• Highly collaborative, resourceful, and accountable, with strong judgment and follow-through
• Able to balance strategic thinking with operational execution and attention to detail
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity, competing priorities, and evolving organizational needs
• Strong analytical mindset with the ability to identify trends, derive insights, and recommend action
• Effective at leading through influence across multiple teams and levels of the organization
• Committed to building team capability, reinforcing clear ways of working, and improving the employee experience

Nice To Haves

• Ability to work from a Cigna Group office 3 days a week, as directed by the business

Responsibilities

• Facilitate Marketing’s annual and quarterly planning process by establishing governance, standard materials, taxonomies, and planning routines.
• Implement the annual planning process in Workfront Planner with the implementation partner and identify opportunities to streamline, optimize, and automate the process over time.
• Lead and orchestrate the annual marketing planning process end to end, including timelines, milestones, deliverables, and stakeholder alignment.
• Facilitate quarterly planning, business reviews, and planning checkpoints to monitor progress, surface risks, and adjust priorities as needed.
• Translate enterprise and line-of-business priorities into structured marketing plans, investment needs, and success measures.
• Own and evolve the planning frameworks, templates, taxonomies, and supporting artifacts that create consistency, clarity, and standardization across enterprise marketing planning.
• Ensure the marketing planning process and all required planning artifacts are designed, maintained, and operationalized within Workfront Planner to support scalable intake, planning, and portfolio visibility.
• Track and manage all enterprise portfolio submissions for Marketing, ensuring required business cases, needs statements, and supporting inputs are completed, aligned, and submitted on time.
• Partner with Business Marketing, COEs, Finance, and Process Optimization teams to ensure plans are actionable, connected to budget realities, and operationalized in workflows and systems.
• Establish governance routines, dashboards, and reporting that provide leadership with visibility into progress, performance, risks, and decisions required.
• Refine and standardize KPI frameworks, in partnership with Marketing Analytics team members, to ensure plans and investments have clear measures of success and accountability.
• Lead Marketing’s budgeting and financial operations processes, including planning, forecasting, reconciliation, and reporting, to strengthen visibility, discipline, and decision-making.
• Lead annual budget planning and support quarterly projection development with Finance.
• Partner with Finance and Business Marketing budget leads support monthly forecasting cycles across Marketing.
• Provide leadership with insight into spend pacing, risks, opportunities, and tradeoff decisions.
• Connect marketing plans and portfolio decisions to investment outcomes, ROI conversations, and responsible use of capital.
• Support vendor and contract-related financial oversight as needed, including tracking major commitments and surfacing spend implications.
• Enable greater financial rigor across Marketing through education, transparency, and consistent operating expectations.
• Establish and evolve standardized financial management processes, definitions, and reporting frameworks across teams.
• Identify process improvements, automation opportunities, and workflow enhancements that simplify budget management and strengthen compliance.
• Consider SLT and ELT Marketing Scorecards / Dashboards.
• Lead the Change Management function for Marketing Operations, including oversight of the Change Management team and adoption support for new processes, tools, and ways of working.
• Set the change strategy and direct the Change Management Consultant in building stakeholder engagement, communications, and adoption plans for key Marketing Operations and modernization initiatives.
• Assess change impacts across roles, teams, processes, and tools; identify resistance points and readiness gaps; and implement mitigation plans that improve adoption and reduce execution risk.
• Create clear, role-relevant communication approaches that help leaders and teams understand the purpose, value, timing, and expectations of change.
• Ensure change plans are paired with practical enablement, reinforcement, and feedback mechanisms so adoption is sustained beyond initial rollout.
• Lead learning and development efforts that build Marketing capability, support upskilling and new employee onboarding, and reinforce adoption of key processes and tools.
• Assess organizational learning and upskilling needs and define a holistic learning agenda aligned to business priorities, role expectations, and future-state capabilities.
• Design and manage learning programs, enablement materials, and communications that support process understanding, functional excellence, and professional growth.
• Partner with subject matter experts and external vendors to deliver high-value training experiences and curated development opportunities.
• Own and evolve the Marketing new employee onboarding journey, playbook, and foundational training experiences to create a consistent start for new team members.
• Develop education plans that support rollout of new processes, tools, and governance models across Marketing.
• Measure participation, feedback, and effectiveness to continuously improve learning impact and organizational readiness.

Benefits

• Cigna Healthcare, a division of The Cigna Group, is an advocate for better health through every stage of life. We guide our customers through the health care system, empowering them with the information and insight they need to make the best choices for improving their health and vitality.

What This Job Offers

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