New Business Lead

Job Summary:

Real Chemistry is looking for a New Business Lead to join our growing team!

Real Chemistry seeks an accomplished and strategically minded Head of New Business to lead the agency’s growth function and drive best-in-class business development for 21GRAMS. In this role, you will establish and refine new business processes, develop a high-performing growth team, and serve as a trusted strategic partner to senior leadership, directly impacting pipeline development, win rates, and revenue growth.

This position is integral to 21GRAMS, part of Real Chemistry, a healthcare advertising and communications firm dedicated to making healthcare more human through innovative, client-centered work conducted with integrity and excellence. You will lead all aspects of new business development, from opportunity identification through pitch execution. You will ensure every team member involved in the pitch process has a seamless, organized experience, fostering collaboration, efficiency and confidence at every stage.

Additionally, you will help own the new client onboarding process, ensuring that day-to-day brand teams are fully equipped with the insights, timelines, and resources needed to service each brand from day one. This critical handoff function bridges the gap between winning the business and delivering exceptional work, setting the foundation for long-term client partnerships.

This role can be remote within the United States or based in any of our U.S. office locations, including New York City, Boston, Chicago, Lambertville, NJ, San Francisco, or Carmel, IN.

What you’ll do:

New Business Process Development

• Establish, refine, and enforce new business processes and standards across the agency
• Create repeatable frameworks for how opportunities are evaluated, pursued, and executed

Growth Team Leadership

• Lead and develop a high-performing new business team
• Ensure every team member involved in the pitch process has a seamless, organized, and collaborative experience

Pipeline Management

• Identify and qualify new business opportunities 
• Manage the full pipeline from initial opportunity through close 
• Track and report on win rates, pipeline health, Saleforce integration, and revenue impact 

Pitch Leadership

• Lead and support pitch efforts across the agency and with Real Chemistry Partners
• Coordinate cross-functional teams through the pitch process 
• Foster confidence and collaboration at every stage of the pursuit

Strategic Partnership with Senior Leadership

• Serve as a trusted strategic partner to agency leadership on all growth matters 
• Inform and influence go-to-market strategy across therapeutic areas including launch planning

New Client Onboarding

• Help own the end-to-end onboarding process for all newly won clients 

• Ensure day-to-day account teams are fully equipped with the insights, context, and resources needed to service each brand from day one 
• Bridge the gap between winning the business and delivering exceptional work

This position is a perfect fit for you if:

• Our Company values, Best Together, Impact Obsessed, Excellence Expected, Evolve Always, and Accountability with an "I", genuinely resonate with how you work and lead.
• You demonstrate the Real Chemistry Can mindset by approaching challenges with optimism, accountability, creativity, and a solutions-oriented attitude, always looking for ways to make a meaningful impact for our clients, colleagues, and communities.
• You are adaptable, resilient, and comfortable adjusting your scope, responsibilities, and priorities in a fast-paced, evolving environment. As our business grows and changes, so do we.
• You are proactive, driven, and resourceful, with strong prioritization skills, intellectual curiosity, and a desire to leverage data to inform decisions and drive outcomes.
• You are energized by innovation and the transformative potential of AI, actively exploring new technologies, identifying opportunities to work smarter, and championing practical, responsible AI adoption that drives meaningful business impact.

What you should have:

• Bachelor's Degree from an accredited institution
• 12+ years of new business, account management, or project management experience in a healthcare advertising setting
• Minimum 5+ years in a leadership or supervisory capacity managing high-performing, cross-functional teams in high-pressure environments
• Demonstrated expertise in pharmaceutical advertising, healthcare communications, or life sciences agency environment with hands-on experience managing teams and new business opportunities
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical promotion standards, FDA/OPDP guidance, and healthcare communications
• Demonstrated ability in data analysis, reporting, and translating metrics into actionable business insights
• Working knowledge of project management methodologies including Waterfall, Agile, and Hybrid approaches, with ability to select appropriate methodology for each pitch opportunity
• Proven track record of leading, developing, and motivating teams to high performance
• Executive-level communication skills—ability to present complex information clearly to C-suite audiences, stakeholders, and clients
• Strong written and verbal communication with ability to adapt messages for diverse audiences
• Strategic thinking and sound judgment, with demonstrated ability to solve complex problems, make decisions under uncertainty, and balance competing priorities

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Deep expertise in pharmaceutical advertising and healthcare communications, particularly with experience in oncology, rare disease, specialty pharmaceuticals, or other complex therapeutic areas
• Demonstrated results from process improvement initiatives with measurable impact on efficiency gains, cost reduction, or quality improvement
• Client relationship management experience at a senior level, including presenting to pharmaceutical and biotech executives

CORE COMPETENCIES & ATTRIBUTES

Professional Competencies

• Strategic Business Leadership: Setting vision and direction; aligning operations with business objectives; thinking beyond immediate execution to organizational capability building
• Process Excellence: Designing, implementing, and continuously improving standardized processes and workflows that scale across new business
• Stakeholder Management: Building and maintaining effective relationships with executives, clients, cross-functional partners, and team members; navigating competing interests
• Organizational Development: Building high-performing teams, developing talent, creating culture, and leading organizational change

Required Leadership Attributes

• Change-Positive, Growth-Oriented

You actively seek smarter, faster, and more effective ways to operate. You are not threatened by AI, innovation, new tools, or new ways of working—you're energized by them. You challenge legacy thinking thoughtfully, experiment with confidence, and view change as an advantage rather than a disruption. You don't defend the status quo because "it works"; you see every process, system, and methodology as a candidate for improvement. You are quick to spot opportunities to expand how we operate collectively and you bring others along on that journey. You stay current with emerging PM tools and methodologies because you're genuinely curious about better ways forward, not because compliance requires it.

• Commercially and Market Aware

You operate beyond internal agency mechanics and understand the bigger picture. You know your clients' business contexts, therapeutic landscapes, and commercial realities well enough to make informed decisions, ask smarter questions, and connect execution to real-world impact. You don't need to be a medical expert, but you are an industry-savvy operator who understands pharma economics, launch timelines, competitive dynamics, and patient access challenges. You ask "why does this matter commercially?" and "what does success look like for the client?" regularly. This commercial acumen informs how you scope projects, allocate resources, and prioritize decisions. You help your team see beyond deliverables to outcomes.

• Confident Driver of Progress

You embrace being a driver, not just a facilitator or administrator. You create momentum, push for clarity and decisions when you see ambiguity, hold teams accountable constructively without micromanaging, and move work forward even when information is imperfect or circumstances are complicated. You don't wait for consensus to take action; you make smart calls and bring people along. You recognize that indecision is a decision, and you're willing to take that on. You drive toward clear wins and celebrate progress, which energizes your teams and builds confidence across the organization.

• Steward of Team Balance and Performance

You actively shape the health of the system, not just the output. You recognize burnout early—in individuals and in teams—and you recalibrate workload, expectations, or resources proactively before people break. You also recognize underperformance with equal clarity and you raise the bar constructively, providing support and accountability. You design operating rhythms, sprint cycles, and governance structures that support both sustainable, high performance and uncompromising standards. You understand that how people feel about their work is as important as what they produce, and that sustainable excellence requires both.

• Ownership Mindset and Creative Agency

You do not wait for permission to elevate the work. You bring forward ideas on how to operate better, propose smarter ways of organizing projects, design stronger plans, and take responsibility for improving outcomes beyond your assigned scope. You see gaps and fill them. You spot inefficiencies and fix them. You don't assume "that's someone else's problem"—you own the enterprise. This doesn't mean doing everything yourself; it means taking initiative to identify what needs to change and driving toward solutions. Your ownership extends to your team's success, your clients' outcomes, and the health of the broader organization.

• Strong Judgment and Prioritization Instincts

You consistently make good calls under pressure and constraint. You distinguish signal from noise in a sea of competing demands. You make smart trade-offs between speed, quality, and risk with sound instinct—not by formula. You prioritize effectively, recognizing what matters most and what can wait. You have good instincts about people, situations, and strategic priorities, and you trust those instincts while remaining open to new information. When you have to move fast, you do. When you need to be deliberate, you are. You know the difference, and you rarely get it wrong.

• Courage and Comfort with Productive Discomfort

You are willing to push when it's uncomfortable and challenge constructively when you see a better path. You hold tension without smoothing it away prematurely; you recognize that some of the best solutions come from sitting with uncomfortable questions rather than resolving them quickly. You make difficult calls when needed—hard conversations, tough decisions, unpopular stands—with confidence rather than approval-seeking. You bring backup (data, reasoning, alternatives) to every discussion. You operate with the confidence of someone who takes responsibility for their decisions and is willing to defend them, but you're also genuinely open to being wrong and course-correcting when new information warrants it.

Pay Range: $250,000-$290,000
The anticipated salary range for this position is listed above. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on job-related, non-discriminatory factors including but not limited to experience, skills, qualifications, geographic location, and internal parity.

In addition to base salary, Real Chemistry offers a comprehensive benefits package and a variety of programs designed to support our employees' well-being, growth, and success.

Real Chemistry reserves the right to update compensation and benefits programs at any time.