Associate Director, Project Delivery (Pharma Agency)

at  Avalere Health

Avalere Health is seeking an Associate Director, Project Delivery. We are looking for a candidate with a strong knowledge of agency workflow and financial management, who demonstrates strong verbal and written communication skills, and who can lead and manage a portfolio of business, team in Project Management and operational excellence.
Our ideal candidate will drive a positive and collaborative working environment, and both lead and drive working relationships across agency departments, with clients, and with external partners. This role requires the candidate to have an expert ability to work independently while identifying, analyzing, and resolving problems related to agency workflow, client delivery, resourcing, and budget management. This role also requires expert decision-making skills and the ability to communicate confidently and efficiently with managers and team members across all areas of the agency. Finally, the ideal candidate will possess strong management and leadership skills and be highly organized with strong attention to detail.

DESIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Excellent communication, interpersonal and problem-solving skills, including those with clients and senior agency team
• Able to expertly lead and motivate multi-disciplinary project teams
• Able to expertly manage multiple projects as one cohesive program
• Excellent leadership behavior and ability to act with managerial courage to motivate and influence team
• Able to work expertly under pressure and very comfortable with change and complexity in dynamic environments
• Able to shift readily between the “big picture” and the small-but-crucial details, knowing when to concentrate on each
• Understands, provides input to and gauges the quality of the project requirements and ensures alignment of the solutions
• Able to expertly lead meetings with clients and agency team, and create/deliver persuasive presentations
• Experience in estimating, staffing and managing fee budgets more than $5MM (not including out of pockets)
• Able to persuade and negotiate solutions
• Excellent ability to apply concepts in strategy, marketing and brand management
• Excellent management skills including coaching and mentoring of APMs, PMs and SPMs

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree required
• Masters-level degree a plus
• Detailed knowledge of pharmaceutical brand marketing including broadcast, print, digital and Medical/Legal/regulatory review
• 7+ years experience in project management within a healthcare agency environment
• Expert skill level with MS Office experience, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook strongly preferred
• Expert skill level with MS Project or other project plan software (Smartsheet) strongly preferred
• Expert skill level with production tools and proprietary software (Egnyte, JIRA, Asana, Content Management Systems, online routing, etc.) strongly preferred
• Excellent knowledge of the web and related technologies including (user experience, web development, web services, integration, application management and hosting) strongly preferred
• Strong experience with both traditional/non-digital and digital campaigns (including site, digital experiences, email) strongly preferred
• Excellent experience with project methodologies, including agile, hybrid, and waterfall
• Expert project management skills and experience including:
• Schedule development, management, monitoring and oversight

• Expertly lead and perform all aspects of project delivery from project scoping and definition to successful execution, and lessons learned; be a go-to resource for the Project Management Department and other agency department leads
• Responsible for a portfolio of accounts and associated programs acting as a delivery lead and an overall Project Management department leader
• Effective roadmap planning, problem solving and delivering to drive operational excellence and ensuring adherence to best practices in this area
• As a department leader, drive the cross-functional delivery team and liaise with managers in all departments to achieve business objectives and client satisfaction
• Enhance/create processes and procedures based on business objectives and opportunities to improve, streamline and/or automate agency workflows
• Enforce project standards and business management systems
• Lead/mentor APMs, PMs, SPMs; possibly will have direct reports
• Foster client relationships and represent agency operations and project management in client meetings and planning discussions as appropriate; may require travel to client locations
• Actively lead and contribute to launch planning roadmaps and day of approval plans to ensure operational excellence throughout client PDUFA timeframes
• Create and disseminate project burn reports and escalate/mitigate areas of risk as needed, working collaboratively with Account Management team to proactively address