Senior Director, Kidney Area Field Leader - Central

Role Summary

The Senior Director, Area Field Leader (AFL) is a second-line sales leader responsible for leading, developing, and coaching a team of 5-6 Regional Field Leaders (RFLs), each managing a team of 6-8 Kidney Territory Account Managers (KTAMs) or sales representatives. The team focuses on educating and building awareness with nephrologists and Kidney Centers of Care in a pre-launch setting, shifting to kidney product education, account management, and demand generation in a post-approval setting. The role reports to the Vice President, Field Sales & Strategic Customer Engagement, U.S. Commercial, Kidney, and oversees approximately 40 field-based employees across 5-6 regions. The Senior Director must live within the geographic area they lead (Central US).

Responsibilities

• Leads recruiting and building out of 5-6 regional field teams; hires, coaches, and retains a high performing team, drives results while living the Vertex values
• Establishes sales & access goals, contributes to the shaping of forecasts based on market insights
• Supports business goals and maximizes patient impact by leveraging data analytics and field insights and providing strategic guidance and clear execution direction to the Regional Leads and their teams
• Provides consistent field input, including strong collaboration with the US Kidney Marketing Team to shape approaches that positively drive performance
• Partners compliantly with other field team members and headquarter colleagues to proactively analyze and address customer needs, market dynamics, and trends that support brand and portfolio objectives
• Identifies area, territory, and institution specific opportunities and barriers, in partnership with cross-functional partners, to ensure success
• Tracks team performance and holds leaders accountable against expectations; leads the team to adjust execution as needed in response
• Tailors coaching to Regional Leaders and their specific development goals to positively impact outcomes for patients
• Creates a positive and collaborative team culture within assigned geographic area and across the nation
• Participates in cross-functional leadership meetings/events, cultivating engagement and alignment with those partners to support key initiatives
• Role models ethics and integrity to support our culture of compliance and earn trust with external stakeholders

Qualifications

• Required: Bachelor’s degree
• Preferred: Master’s degree
• Required: 12+ years of experience in healthcare/biopharmaceuticals marketing, sales or an equivalent combination of experience and education
• Required: 5+ years of supervisory/management experience, including direct experience leading teams as a 2nd line leader, or an equivalent combination of experience and education
• Required: Significant customer engagement experience, including leading regional sales teams in a highly competitive specialty care or rare disease space
• Preferred: Kidney/renal experience

Skills

• Fosters the highest level of teamwork and collaboration; excellent coach
• Experienced in executive level customer service; exemplary communication skills
• Ability to proactively think of creative solutions to achieve desired results when faced with barriers, engaging with appropriate team members and escalating issues effectively
• Excellent communication skills
• Demonstrated understanding of the legal, regulatory, and compliance environment, ability to model expected behavior for the team and shape policies

Education

• Bachelor’s degree; Master’s degree preferred

Additional Requirements

• Employee will be required to establish certain customer credentials and requirements, which include, but may not be limited to, successful completion of training, background screens, drug testing and vaccinations
• Must live and work within the territory. Depending on the territory’s geography and work requirements may also be required to live within a reasonable distance to a major airport
• Valid driver’s license and in good standing
• Travel by car or airplane up to 80% of the time and work after hours as required by business needs