Full-Time

Senior Director

Brand Strategy, Pharma Agency Market Access

Avalere Health

Avalere Health

201-500 employees

Healthcare consulting with advisory, policy, marketing

Compensation Overview

$120k - $190k/yr

Company Does Not Provide H1B Sponsorship

New York, NY, USA

Hybrid

Hybrid/remote options; travel up to 20-30% of time; two weeks/year work-from-anywhere.

Bachelor's, Master's

Category
Consulting (2)
,
Required Skills
Branding/Brand Strategy
Word/Pages/Docs
Excel/Numbers/Sheets
PowerPoint/Keynote/Slides

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Requirements
  • Bachelor’s degree required; graduate degree preferred (e.g., PharmD, PhD, MPH, etc.)
  • 7-10 years in market access strategy or related experience (e.g., payer, health system, pharma direct, etc.), with 3-5 years in agency required
  • Market access agency and/or industry experience required
  • Advanced understanding of market access marketing, strategies, and trends
  • Advanced working knowledge in market access-related research tools, agency offerings, services, products, and solutions
  • Proven success building and launching market access strategies and tactical plans that leverage market research, customer insights, clinical data, and market trends and dynamics
  • Seamless ability to translate Advisory subject matter expertise into Marketing brand/access strategy
  • Proficient at persuasive storytelling and paving the path from compelling strategy to brilliant creative
  • Highly skilled as an interdisciplinary thinker, strategic problem-solver, and focused business leader
  • Curious strategist who keeps abreast of everchanging healthcare landscape and encourages clients to challenge the status quo
  • Crisp and persuasive communications skills, both written and verbal
  • Comfortable with public speaking and demonstrates strong presentation skills
  • Ability to use AI platforms to enhance, but not replace, brand strategic needs
  • Competent in software specific to client/agency processes, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
  • Loves a challenge, relentlessly pursues excellence; self-starter mentality; challenges current practices and standards; open to different ways of thinking/creating; innovative; embraces change; curious; enjoys learning
Responsibilities
  • Direct, develop, and execute comprehensive access strategy to support pipeline and inline assets in maximizing and communicating brand value, and in doing so, establish and reinforce client confidence in our strategic value
  • Conduct and support the analysis of qualitative and quantitative research relating to market access stakeholders and derive meaningful insights
  • Analyze market research, market landscape, and analytics reports as well as track relevant market access congresses/media to identify key audience insights, behaviors and trends that provide critical access engagement opportunities
  • Conduct and support the development of market access stakeholder personas/archetypes, strategy maps, integration into brand plans, positioning, brand identity strategy, creative briefs, and messaging strategy among other critical strategic elements
  • Conduct and support the ideation and execution of access marketing solutions, tactics, and activations that amplify brand/access performance
  • Design and facilitate workshops, training meetings, launch meetings, and other key events on behalf of Access Marketing clients
  • Provide a advanced strategic voice in internal and client meetings, including consistent and visible advisement to clients on emerging access-related trends
  • Leads strategic planning responsibilities on multiple brands and integrated accounts with advanced autonomy and proficiency
  • Contributes to the development of actionable project briefs through translation of insights and strategy execution in partnership with team
  • Contribute to the growth of the Access Marketing offer by helping to define the strategy for RFPs/capabilities and identify organic growth within businesses managed, and, proactively sourcing new business development opportunities as appropriate
  • Support SVP, Access Strategy in market access thought leadership activities by: Staying ahead and informed of the leading market access platforms, trends, and innovations for market access customers, including but not limited to payers, health systems, employers, and others; Keeping pulse on key access trends, drafting expert pieces/POVs, contributing to podcasts/webinars, and leveraging thought leadership into attracting new Access Marketing clients
  • Integrate seamlessly and maintain fluency between Advisory and Marketing disciplines within a matrixed organization, including establishing a productive, coordinated, and seamless partnership with other strategy counterparts
  • Lead collaboratively with account, medical, and creative partners on the delivery of Access Marketing strategy, including ensuring that access strategy aligns to broader business objectives and audience needs
  • Build and grow an external network of strategic partners for collaboration and consultation as needed
  • Supervise direct reports (if applicable) including managing performance and progressive growth
  • Mentor, coach, and counsel strategy team members to facilitate their growth and development
  • Be flexible with travel up to 20-30% of time as needed
Desired Qualifications
  • Management experience a plus

Avalere Health is a healthcare consulting firm that provides advisory, medical affairs, and marketing services to providers, payers, and life sciences companies. Its offerings help clients navigate the healthcare market through a proprietary SenseMaking model that combines data analysis, policy expertise, and market insights. This approach supports areas such as market access and reimbursement strategies, policy analysis, and government affairs, with revenue generated from consulting fees. The company differentiates itself by applying its SenseMaking framework to deliver targeted, data-backed recommendations across the healthcare ecosystem, integrating policy, market, and clinical considerations for each client. Its goal is to help clients make informed decisions, optimize performance, and achieve their business objectives in a complex and evolving healthcare environment.

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Acquired

Total Funding

$140M

Headquarters

null

Founded

2000

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • May 20, 2026 oncology anthology strengthens thought leadership around access and treatment navigation.
  • March 4, 2026 CGP guidance positions Avalere for precision-medicine market-access work.
  • January 23, 2025 policy webinar keeps Avalere visible as drug-pricing rules shift under Trump.

What critics are saying

  • Japan expansion on May 11, 2026 adds execution risk before local revenue proves out.
  • Employee chatter references 2025 layoffs, signaling restructuring pressure inside client-delivery teams.
  • Big pharma can replace agencies quickly; Avalere lacks durable proprietary distribution or clinical IP.

What makes Avalere Health unique

  • Avalere Health combines advisory, medical, and marketing under one integrated 2026 Japan launch.
  • Its March 2026 CGP guidance shows policy-to-commercial expertise across the product lifecycle.
  • Junji Yokokawa and Amar Urhekar signal global operator credibility across healthcare markets.

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Benefits

Health Insurance

401(k) Retirement Plan

Wellness Program

Paid Vacation

Flexible Work Hours

Hybrid Work Options

Company News

Pharmaceutical Executive
May 15th, 2026
Why 75 top pharma execs are ditching fragmented marketing stacks.

Why 75 top pharma execs are ditching fragmented marketing stacks. At the Doceree Makers Summit, leaders from Sanofi, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, and others backed a new pharma marketing operating model to replace fragmented legacy softwares. A coalition of 75 pharmaceutical brand, commercial, and agency executives publicly endorsed a new marketing operations platform, underscoring growing pressure across life sciences organizations to simplify fragmented commercial technology systems and improve omnichannel marketing execution.[1] The announcement was made during the inaugural Doceree Health Decode: The Makers Summit 2026 in New York, where senior leaders from companies including Sanofi, Bristol Myers Squibb,, Avalere Health, and Deerfield supported Daily Command, a platform developed by Doceree.[1] According to Doceree, the executives collectively oversee more than $40 billion in annual pharmaceutical brand spending and are advocating for a more unified operating model designed to replace multiple disconnected systems across commercial functions, including targeting, CRM, analytics, media planning, and medical-legal-regulatory review.[1] "This isn't a product launch. It's the industry deciding, in public, that it is done with the way things are," said Harshit Jain, MD, founder and global CEO of Doceree, in the release.[1] "When seventy-five of the people who actually run pharma's biggest brands stop asking their vendors to do better and start co-building the replacement themselves, that is not a market trend. That is a market correction." The endorsement reflects a broader shift in pharma marketing commercialization. While omnichannel engagement has become a strategic priority, many organizations continue to operate across fragmented technology environments that limit speed, coordination, and consistency in execution. Why is pharma moving past fragmented commercial tech stacks? The Doceree announcement arrives at a time when pharmaceutical companies are continuing to invest heavily in digital transformation initiatives, yet still struggle to operationalize omnichannel strategies at scale. A 2025 Boston Consulting Group analysis found that while 97% of biopharma and medtech leaders view omnichannel capabilities as critical to commercial success, most organizations continue to face structural and operational barriers that prevent full integration across systems and workflows.[2] The report also highlights a persistent gap between ambition and execution. Only 10% of organizations reported having fully integrated data platforms that support omnichannel engagement, while the remaining majority cited siloed systems as a significant constraint.[2] These fragmentation issues can result in duplicated effort across teams, inconsistent reporting metrics, and delays in campaign activation. Why is fragmentation a commercial execution risk? As pharmaceutical companies are increasingly expected to deliver personalized, compliant, and timely engagement across healthcare professionals, patients, and payers, operational inefficiencies are becoming more visible and consequential. When core commercial functions, such as marketing, analytics, field operations, and compliance, operate across disconnected tools, execution slows and coordination becomes more complex. Campaign insights may be delayed or inconsistent, while measurement frameworks can vary significantly between systems. The industry response has increasingly shifted away from simply "adding more tools" toward reevaluating the underlying operational architecture that connects them. How is Daily Command a unified operating layer? Doceree described Daily Command as a shift toward a unified workflow environment intended to consolidate fragmented commercial processes into a single interface.[1] The company characterizes the platform as a "system of work" designed to bring together campaign planning, activation, measurement, and optimization. Daily Command also integrates Doceree's Clinical Intent Suite, which the company says uses behavioral and prescribing-decision signals to inform healthcare marketing engagement strategies.[1] The initiative reflects a broader effort to address inefficiencies in commercial execution by reducing reliance on multiple standalone systems that require manual coordination and data reconciliation. Agency and consulting leaders involved in the announcement highlighted similar challenges in current commercial ecosystems, particularly the operational burden created by disconnected systems and fragmented decision-making workflows. "Every category-defining software company in enterprise has been built on the same insight: own the surface where the work actually happens. In pharma marketing, and especially in full-service agencies like Deerfield, that surface has never existed," said Bill Veltre, Deerfield's chief media officer, in the release. Rather than replacing existing tools entirely, the platform is positioned as a centralized operational layer intended to unify workflows while maintaining interoperability with external partners and technologies. What does this mean for the industry? The Doceree initiative reflects a broader industry shift from expanding fragmented marketing toolsets toward consolidating workflows into more unified platforms. Doceree said Daily Command will enter closed beta in June with five pharmaceutical manufacturers and agency partners, followed by a broader release in July.[1] The coordinated endorsement from senior pharma marketers highlights a clear industry concern: in commercial technology is becoming a structural challenge affecting speed, visibility, and execution across commercialization.

PR Newswire
May 11th, 2026
Avalere Health launches Japan office led by industry veteran Junji Yokokawa

Avalere Health has launched its Japan office in Tokyo, led by industry veteran Junji Yokokawa. The move expands the global healthcare strategic partner's footprint into the Japanese domestic drug market, which is experiencing significant growth driven by oncology, diabetes, immunology and rare disease treatments. The new office offers integrated services combining market access, medical and marketing expertise to support biopharmaceutical companies throughout the product lifecycle. Unlike traditional agencies, Avalere Health Japan was designed from inception to provide end-to-end solutions for navigating Japan's complex regulatory, pricing and patient engagement landscape. CEO Amar Urhekar, who previously spent a decade in senior Asia-Pacific roles with McCann Healthcare Worldwide, said the expansion aligns with Avalere's commitment to reaching every patient possible globally.

PR Newswire
Jan 14th, 2025
Policy Strategists To Debate 2025 Impact Of The New Administration And Market Changes To Healthcare

Avalere, part of Avalere Health, convenes eleven strategistsWASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Eleven leading policy strategists are scheduled to debate how market changes and the Trump administration will shape 2025, impacting drug pricing, health plan design and patient access to needed therapies. The annual live webinar, "2025 Healthcare Industry Outlook: Opportunity Through Uncertainty" is scheduled for Thursday, January 23 at 11:00 a.m. ET

PharmaLIVE
Dec 12th, 2024
Amar Urhekar named CEO of Avalere Health

Urhekar joined Avalere Health in 2023 as Chief Operations Officer (COO) to unify the organization and build a global interdisciplinary offering across the product lifecycle.

MM+M
Dec 12th, 2024
Avalere Health elevates Amar Urhekar to CEO post

Avalere Health promoted COO Amar Urhekar to the CEO post on Thursday morning.