Director, Opinion Leader and Ambassador Strategy

Role Summary

The Director, Opinion Leader and Ambassador Strategy will lead the development and execution of a portfolio-wide strategy to identify, understand, engage, and cultivate healthcare professional opinion leaders and patient ambassadors across BioMarin's U.S. Metabolic Conditions Business Unit. The role will build durable, compliant relationships with established and emerging external experts; translate stakeholder insights into actionable commercial strategy; and expand the quality, reach, and impact of peer-to-peer education across rare metabolic diseases.

Operating at the intersection of brand strategy, field engagement, peer-to-peer programming, congress planning, and customer insight, the Director will establish a consistent engagement model across brands while adapting plans to the needs of each disease community. The successful candidate will combine the external orientation and relationship-building discipline typical of a Thought Leader Liaison with strong marketing judgment, portfolio leadership, people management, and operational accountability.

Key Responsibilities

• Set and execute the portfolio-wide opinion leader and ambassador strategy across U.S. Metabolic Conditions, aligning stakeholder priorities to brand and business objectives.
• Build trusted, compliant relationships with established and emerging healthcare professionals through targeted field engagement, congresses, advisory forums, and other approved channels.
• Create stakeholder segmentation and engagement plans that define objectives, coordinated touchpoints, relationship milestones, and cross-functional roles.
• Develop and maintain a dynamic stakeholder influence map across disease-state experts, treating physicians, advocacy leaders, patient ambassadors, caregivers, and emerging digital influencers to identify opportunities, gaps, and future engagement priorities.
• Evaluate and leverage evolving digital engagement channels and influence networks to extend the reach, relevance, and impact of peer-to-peer and ambassador engagement programs.
• Capture and synthesize actionable stakeholder insights, translating patterns and implications into recommendations for brand strategy, customer experience, education, and execution.
• Lead HCP speaker bureau and peer-to-peer strategy, including faculty identification, recruitment, training, activation, development, performance assessment, and succession.
• Lead execution of peer-to-peer programs and congress engagements across the portfolio, ensuring coordinated planning, high-quality delivery, and alignment with brand objectives.
• Lead portfolio patient ambassador strategy in partnership with Patient Advocacy and brand teams, ensuring authentic, well-supported, and compliant participation.
• Integrate opinion leader and ambassador priorities into annual brand plans, congress strategy, and meaningful points in the HCP and patient journeys.
• Partner with Medical Affairs and other functions to coordinate stakeholder engagement, maintain appropriate promotional and non-promotional boundaries, and avoid duplication.
• Establish governance, operating standards, KPIs, and insight-sharing practices that improve visibility, decision-making, program quality, and resource allocation.
• Manage team members, agencies, vendors, budgets, contracts, and deliverables with strong development, financial, compliance, and executional discipline.
• Monitor evolving influence models and engagement channels, recommending responsible innovations that improve relevance and reach.

Leadership Responsibility

This is a people-leader role with two direct reports that leads a portfolio capability through external engagement expertise, strategic influence, and cross-functional partnership. The Director is expected to manage and develop these team members in support of opinion leader engagement, peer-to-peer strategy, ambassador programs, congresses, and related operations. The role will set clear priorities, allocate resources across brands, coach for high performance, create development opportunities, and foster a collaborative and inclusive team culture.

Must Have

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• At least ten years of relevant experience in pharmaceutical or biotechnology marketing, Thought Leader Liaison or field engagement, peer-to-peer strategy, professional education, patient engagement, sales, medical communications, or a related commercial discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and execute opinion leader engagement strategies that connect external stakeholder insights to brand and portfolio priorities.
• Strong record of building credible, durable relationships with healthcare professionals and other external stakeholders in a regulated environment.
• Experience leading healthcare professional speaker programs, advisory engagements, peer-to-peer education, patient ambassador initiatives, or comparable external engagement programs.
• Sound understanding of the boundaries between Commercial and Medical Affairs and the ability to manage promotional and non-promotional interactions appropriately.
• Ability to synthesize qualitative input from multiple stakeholders into clear themes, implications, recommendations, and action plans without overgeneralizing individual perspectives.
• Strong strategic thinking, business judgment, executive communication, and influencing skills, with the ability to align senior stakeholders in a matrixed organization.
• Demonstrated people leadership, including setting direction, coaching, performance management, talent development, and creating an accountable, inclusive team environment.
• Experience managing agencies, vendors, budgets, contracts, timelines, and multiple concurrent priorities with disciplined follow-through.
• Ability and willingness to travel frequently for external stakeholder engagements, congresses, internal meetings, and field collaboration, including occasional evenings and weekends as business needs require: up to 40% travel, including attendance at 6+ multi-day congress events.

Nice to Have

• Experience in rare disease, metabolic conditions, genetics, or other specialty markets with small, concentrated, and highly connected HCP and patient communities.
• Experience working in a Thought Leader Liaison, KOL engagement, professional relations, field marketing, or national peer-to-peer leadership role.
• Existing knowledge of geneticists, metabolic specialists, neurologists, nephrologists, cardiologists, or other specialties relevant to rare metabolic diseases.
• Experience building a stakeholder engagement capability or operating model across multiple brands, disease areas, or customer segments.
• Experience integrating field insights with brand planning, customer segmentation, congress strategy, omnichannel engagement, and performance measurement.
• Experience with patient and caregiver ambassador programs, including recruitment, training, storytelling, privacy, accessibility, and compliant program execution.
• Familiarity with customer relationship management systems, insight platforms, speaker bureau systems, Veeva PromoMats, and reporting or visualization tools.
• Advanced degree in business, marketing, life sciences, public health, or a related field.