Director – Healthcare & Life Sciences

Agency:

Portland

Job Function:

Consulting

Job Subfunction:

Business and Change Consulting

Job Description:

Director, Healthcare & Life Sciences

Portland is a global advisory firm, helping companies, foundations, governments and organisations communicate effectively, grow and succeed. We advise clients navigating business and reputational challenges, including regulatory change, political transition, and legal disputes and crises, ensuring they seize opportunities to engage in policy discussions and in the media when it matters most.

Headquartered in London, with a network of team members in critical markets, our advisors are drawn from the worlds of politics, business, law and journalism. Our work is supported by specialist digital, research and creative teams, and backed by Omnicom’s global network and capabilities. Combining political nous and cultural savvy, Portland’s advisers build strategies and campaigns tailored to clients’ needs, delivering outcomes that make a difference.

The Team

Our Healthcare and Life Sciences team is a group of trusted advisors to the world’s most influential healthcare and scientific organisations, helping them navigate the fast-evolving policy, political and media landscape.

The Role

We're seeking an experienced agency leader to work across our portfolio of integrated healthcare communications, public affairs and policy accounts – with a particular focus on UK public affairs and policy programmes. You’ll lead stakeholder engagement, shape policy and media conversations, build corporate reputation amongst high-level policy makers and deliver impactful results.

Key Responsibilities:      

Principle lead on major client accounts, providing senior counsel to clients as a trusted partner  

Leading account teams and providing senior support to ensure on-time, high-quality delivery  

Design and strong oversight of high impact, UK and global strategic and public affairs communications campaigns  

Driving growth of accounts, marketing and new business, developing strategies for business development including leading end-to-end proposal and pitch processes  

People management and recruitment  

Day-to-day commercial performance – revenue, servicing, capacity planning  

Networking and thought leadership to raise the profile of Portland  

Integration across the Portland offer and wider Omnicom network, including partnership working with other Omnicom agencies   

Working as part of a cohesive senior management group  

What we’re looking for:  

Significant experience leading healthcare and life sciences policy programmes for pharmaceutical, biotech and wider healthcare companies, ideally within an agency / consultancy environment   

Strong UK political connections within Government, Parliament and amongst policy officials.  

Excellent knowledge of the UK healthcare policy and parliamentary landscape and expertise in the UK ecosystem, including ministerial engagement, policy developments, access and reimbursement, health system priorities and stakeholder dynamics   

Proven experience leading integrated strategic communications programmes that combine policy, media, stakeholder engagement and digital activity   

Trusted senior advisor who can independently provide counsel to senior clients and stakeholders on complex pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, e.g. VPAG, NICE, MHRA, outcomes from the oversight committee.  

Experience leading stakeholder engagement programmes and advisory groups involving policymakers, healthcare professionals, patient organisations, industry bodies and other relevant audiences   

Commercially minded and able to lead all financial aspects of accounts, including budgeting, servicing, invoicing and resourcing  

Significant experience in leading and winning new business proposals and pitches for healthcare and life sciences companies  

A collaborative leadership style with a strong track record of developing and supporting colleagues and working in partnership across a large agency network / multi-market consultancy    

Demonstrable experience of using AI tools in healthcare communications / policy programmes   

What We Offer

At Portland we offer hybrid working, with our teams working together from the office three days a week. We are committed to development and have an open doors culture where you will have the opportunity to learn from some of the most experienced people in the business.

Our remuneration package also includes our competitive pension contributions, private healthcare or health cash plan, life assurance cover, company contribution to gym membership, wellbeing workshops and activities, company parties, birthday day off, lunch contribution each week and more!





To the extent permissible by local law, Omnicom’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager.

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