Sr. Director – Strategy and Growth

Role Summary

Senior Director – Strategy and Growth at Lilly is responsible for articulating the company’s external innovation strategy, identifying and evaluating potentially transformative business development opportunities, and examining the external environment to define implications for Lilly’s BD approach. The role requires collaboration with corporate development, scientific communities, finance, and executive leadership to shape strategic focus and impact external partnerships and growth initiatives. This position may require domestic travel.

Responsibilities

• Articulating our overarching external innovation strategy
• Work across executive, commercial, scientific, finance, and BD leadership to define our overarching external innovation strategy and goals
• Create materials that succinctly articulate this strategy
• Prepare updates on external innovation strategy and highlights for Lilly’s executive leadership and board of directors
• Identifying and evaluating potentially transformative business development opportunities
• Identify potentially transformational opportunities
• Evaluate potential BD opportunities, leveraging scientific, commercial, and finance experts across Lilly and build thoughtful narratives for the most promising opportunities
• Where necessary, build forecasts, drive market research, consider relevant go-to-market models for emerging science
• Partner closely with transactions and finance teams for opportunities with organizational interest in pursuing
• Examining the external environment and industry dealmaking activity, and defining potential implications for Lilly
• Conduct external landscaping (e.g., data on fundraising, deal-making, trial activity, patents, data disclosures)
• Synthesize key trends across external innovation
• Identify implications to Lilly’s BD strategy and approach

Qualifications

• Required:
  • Bachelor's Degree
  • 4+ years of experience in the pharmaceutical or related industry
  • Eligible to be employed in the United States (noVisa sponsorship anticipated)
• Preferred:
  • Graduate degree (MBA, PhD, PharmD)
  • Previous business development experience

Skills

• Leadership: Able to establish credibility and trust across Lilly scientific functions, commercial teams, finance leadership, and executive management; strong collaborative spirit with relationship-building
• Communication: Strong presentation and written/verbal communication skills; ability to simplify complex concepts; inclusive and transparent collaboration
• Bias towards action: Detail-oriented, self-starter with proactive work style; excellent self-management and organizational skills
• Business Insight and Expertise: Strong learning agility; quantitative and qualitative problem-solving; ability to translate insights into implications; deep knowledge of industry pipelines, trends, and transactions

Education

• Bachelor's Degree
• Graduate degree (MBA, PhD, PharmD) – preferred

Additional Requirements

• Domestic travel is required (~15%)