The Foundation
We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, weโre committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.
The TeamThe Gender Equality Divisionโs mission is to ensure women and girls in Africa and South Asia can enjoy good health, make their own choices, earn their own money, and be leaders in their societies. When women and girls have an equal chance to thrive and lead, everyone benefits. We know that women and girls are not a monolith. A womanโs experience and the barriers she faces are different depending on factors like where she lives, how old she is, and how much money her family hasโalongside other factors including her race, caste, and education level. We seek to address these compounding barriers through deep partnership with our grantees. As a philanthropy, our role is to listen to and learn from these experts. We take risks in new areas, prove concepts, and bring these ideas to governments, partner organizations, and private sector companies to scale. The Gender Equality Division builds off our existing strengths as a foundation in areas like global health and data, partnering closely with all our global divisions.
The Maternal, Newborn, Child Nutrition & Health (MNCNH) Team is responsible for an end-to-end approach focused on product discovery, development, introduction, and scale of novel and existing high impact products for women, adolescent girls, and children in low-resource settings. Our approach targets underlying biological vulnerability and seeks to intervene as early as possible in the life course. We fund development on a core set of products that range in type (including drugs, foods, microbes, risk algorithms, and devices), technical risk (from novel concepts to product substitutions), and development phase (from early discovery to late-stage efficacy testing and implementation research). We also support launch and introduction planning of a subset of our core products that are further in the development process to accelerate country adoption and uptake in the global architecture and drive impact at scale. These products target pregnancy risk, maternal undernutrition, prematurity, neonatal encephalopathy, child wasting, child neurodevelopment and maternal morbidity.
Our team is multidisciplinary and includes physician scientists with backgrounds in obstetrics and pediatrics, perinatal epidemiologists, and professionals in neurodevelopment, nutrition research, engineering, global health, strategy development and industry-experienced market and commercialization experts. We emphasize in-country partnership to integrate the local context into research and development.
Our culture shapes our choices about what we do and how we do it. We believe that energized people, working well together, motivated by great leadership in an inclusive environment can do extraordinary things. We expect foundation employees to embody our four agreements intentionally and consistently; show respect, offer trust, be transparent, and create energy.
Your Role
The Portfolio and Platform Lead (PPL) is an established role that aims to improve the foundationโs capabilities in the areas of product development and portfolio management. The PPL plays a critical integrator role, working collaboratively with the Program Strategy Teams (PSTs) and Functional Teams. The over-arching goal of the PPL is to โwork across the matrixโ to ensure that the portfolio of investments related to product development has robust implementation plans that ultimately result in new interventions. The PPL will adapt and apply his/her integrated product development experience and approaches to best suit the complex ecosystem in which the foundation works with various partners including the biotechnology industry, food/nutrition, bacterial therapeutic and beverage companies, product development partners like the Gates Medical Research Institute, academic research institutions, and start-up companies. We are looking for someone with strong product development experience who is ready to apply his/her skills to MNCNHโs diverse product portfolio. This role will work side-by-side with the teamโs Program Officers/Senior Program Officers/Deputy Directors to apply robust product development planning and management to our investments and priority programs.
*This role is a limited-term position for 36 months.
What Youโll Do
- Develop long term portfolio execution plans aligned with teamโs high-level strategy
- Work collaboratively across various foundation teams in the Global Health and Gender Equality divisions to develop and implement integrated product development plans with Foundation partners and grantees
- Work within the Product Development Integrated Development (PDID) framework to ensure adherence to Foundation processes and tools including required documentation, database record management and linkage to the PDID central SharePoint site
- Identify and assess key risks at the portfolio level; develop and manage mitigation/ contingency plans
- Serve as a thought partner to MNCNH team on product development challenges, metrics, standard methodologies, and approaches
- Develop and encourage use of standard approaches, tools, and methodologies for portfolio management across teams to enable effective decision making
- Use product development experience, tools, and project management skills to enable and encourage effective initiative project planning, project costing and forecasting
- Effectively manage relationships with key internal partners within the matrixed organization
- In collaboration with PST and Functional teams, work closely with key external product development partners to enable effective project planning practices and timely visibility of challenges and issues
- Where relevant, manage investments with a predominant product development focus.
- Product management/project management support โ PPLs will be expected to stay up to date on the status and progress of priority initiatives and determine if any need additional product development project management support by assigning an expert project manager to support the implementation of an initiative (e.g., product development, launch, etc.) with specifically stated goals
- Proactively identify areas of misalignment and lead the process of developing plans to โget back on trackโ and refining the portfolio execution plans
- Assess initiative progress and determine the need for intervention of deeper product development project management support
- Communicate information related to the portfolio dynamics that will support strategy development
- Proactively work with peers/ fellow PPLs to ensure a consistent and rigorous approach
Your Experience
- 10+ years of professional experience in the biotech or pharmaceutical industries, and 5+ years of senior level operating experience preferred.
- 5+ years of experience project managing biologics/drugs R&D efforts at the product and/or portfolio levels required (e.g., discovery, development, commercial delivery), having successfully moved products through IND and/or NDA phases. Likely candidate profiles include Research Project Leader, Vaccine Development Leader, Clinical Team Leader, etc.
- BS, MS, PhD in one of the Life Sciences, or relevant experience/advanced degree.
Expert-level knowledge of the following:
- Integrated product development project management (methodology and metrics)
- Portfolio/platform management (in pharma/biotech context) and associated tools
- Project management, implementation planning and associated tools
- Risk assessment and management (mitigation and contingency plans)
- Solid understanding and/or specific knowledge of several elements of product and/or service development and launch (e.g., discovery, development, commercial launch)
- Strong oral and written communications
- Strong meeting and relationship facilitation
- Facility working within a highly matrixed organization
- Strong negotiating skills
**Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.
The salary range for this role is $169,700 to $254,500 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences in Seattle and Washington D.C., where our offices are located. The range for this role in these locations is $185,000 to $277,400 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hire salaries are typically between the range minimum and midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidateโs job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.
#LI-BR1Hiring Requirements
As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Candidate Accommodations
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Inclusion Statement
We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion โ of voices, ideas, and approaches โ and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.
All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.