Associate Director, Strategic Planning amp Operations, Rare Disease

📋 Description

• • Serve as the strategic engine behind Otsuka’s Global Medical Affairs Rare Disease portfolio, translating complex science into executable plans that accelerate patient access to life-changing therapies. You will own the 1–3-year roadmap for the entire CNS rare-disease franchise, ensuring every milestone, budget dollar, and resource is laser-focused on unmet medical need.
• • Orchestrate annual medical brand plans end-to-end—translating high-level therapeutic-area strategy into detailed, cross-functional action plans that integrate evidence generation, scientific communication, and digital engagement. You will be the single point of accountability (with commercial partners) for timelines, risk mitigation, and KPI delivery.
• • Drive operational excellence at global scale by continuously auditing workflows, identifying bottlenecks, and deploying technology, AI, and automation to eliminate redundancy. Expect to launch at least two major process-improvement initiatives per year that measurably cut cycle time or cost.
• • Own program-management rigor across all rare-disease initiatives—planning, tracking, and reporting progress to senior leadership via dashboards, executive briefs, and governance forums. Your data-driven narratives will directly influence go/no-go decisions on multi-million-dollar studies and partnerships.
• • Act as the connective tissue between Global Medical Affairs, Global Clinical Development, Global R&D Evidence, Commercial, Finance, IT, and regional affiliates. You will chair recurring sync meetings, resolve competing priorities, and ensure every function moves in lockstep toward shared objectives.
• • Champion budget stewardship for the portfolio—building bottoms-up forecasts, monitoring burn rates, and reallocating resources in real time. You will confidently challenge investment decisions, defend trade-offs to the VP level, and embed a culture of fiscal discipline across 30+ countries.
• • Lead the evaluation, selection, and rollout of next-generation systems (Veeva Vault, KOL mapping platforms, advanced analytics) that turn data into actionable insight. You will partner with IT and digital teams to configure, validate, and train global users, ensuring adoption and compliance.
• • Mentor and upskill a matrixed network of medical operations professionals, sharing best practices, templates, and playbooks that elevate the entire organization’s capability. Your leadership style is influence-without-authority, grounded in respect, curiosity, and an obsession with patient impact.
• • Translate external market dynamics—regulatory shifts, competitive intelligence, patient-advocacy priorities—into strategic scenarios that keep the rare-disease portfolio two steps ahead. You will brief senior leadership quarterly on emerging risks and opportunities.
• • Foster a culture of continuous learning by embedding post-mortems, after-action reviews, and knowledge-sharing sessions into every major deliverable. Your legacy will be a self-improving system that outlives any single program or product lifecycle.