Director, Opinion Leader and Ambassador Strategy

Full Job Description

Who We Are

BioMarin is a leading rare disease biotechnology company focused on genetically defined conditions.

Guided by our purpose to develop medicines that make a profound impact on people’s lives, our global teams have delivered a portfolio of therapies since our founding in 1997. Our revolutionary treatments for conditions like achondroplasia (the most common form of dwarfism), PKU (phenylketonuria), CLN2, a form of Batten disease, and a number of forms of MPS (mucopolysaccharidosis) offer new possibilities for patients and families who previously had few, if any, available options. More recently, with the close of the Amicus acquisition, our portfolio has expanded to include therapies for Fabry disease and Pompe disease, expanding our ability to reach more people living with rare genetic conditions.

Our success comes from our unwavering commitment to excellence, our deep understanding of patient needs, our scientific expertise, and our world-class manufacturing capabilities. At the heart of BioMarin is a dedicated team of the brightest minds in the industry working together to deliver innovative therapies to patients and families around the world.

About Commercial

Be part of the worldwide infrastructure that gets our drugs to underserved patients around the world. Our global sales force solidifies BioMarin’s commercial presence in the United States and Europe and is rapidly growing in other regions, such as South America, EuMEA, and Asia-Pacific.

Role Summary The Director, Opinion Leader and Ambassador Strategy will lead the development and execution of a portfolio-wide strategy to identify, understand, engage, and cultivate healthcare professional opinion leaders and patient ambassadors across BioMarin’s U.S. Metabolic Conditions Business Unit. The role will build durable, compliant relationships with established and emerging external experts; translate stakeholder insights into actionable commercial strategy; and expand the quality, reach, and impact of peer-to-peer education across rare metabolic diseases.

Operating at the intersection of brand strategy, field engagement, peer-to-peer programming, congress planning, and customer insight, the Director will establish a consistent engagement model across brands while adapting plans to the needs of each disease community. The successful candidate will combine the external orientation and relationship-building discipline typical of a Thought Leader Liaison with strong marketing judgment, portfolio leadership, people management, and operational accountability. This role will partner closely with Brand Marketing, Sales, Medical Affairs, Patient Advocacy, Legal, Regulatory, Compliance, Commercial Operations, Analytics, and agency partners to ensure engagements are purposeful, coordinated, compliant, and connected to business and patient needs.

This role will report directly to the Head of Marketing, U.S. Metabolic Conditions, and will have two direct reports.

Key Responsibilities • Set and execute the portfolio-wide opinion leader and ambassador strategy across U.S. Metabolic Conditions, aligning stakeholder priorities to brand and business objectives. • Build trusted, compliant relationships with established and emerging healthcare professionals through targeted field engagement, congresses, advisory forums, and other approved channels. • Create stakeholder segmentation and engagement plans that define objectives, coordinated touchpoints, relationship milestones, and cross-functional roles. • Develop and maintain a dynamic stakeholder influence map across disease-state experts, treating physicians, advocacy leaders, patient ambassadors, caregivers, and emerging digital influencers to identify opportunities, gaps, and future engagement priorities. • Evaluate and leverage evolving digital engagement channels and influence networks to extend the reach, relevance, and impact of peer-to-peer and ambassador engagement programs. • Capture and synthesize actionable stakeholder insights, translating patterns and implications into recommendations for brand strategy, customer experience, education, and execution. • Lead HCP speaker bureau and peer-to-peer strategy, including faculty identification, recruitment, training, activation, development, performance assessment, and succession. • Lead execution of peer-to-peer programs and congress engagements across the portfolio, ensuring coordinated planning, high-quality delivery, and alignment with brand objectives. • Lead portfolio patient ambassador strategy in partnership with Patient Advocacy and brand teams, ensuring authentic, well-supported, and compliant participation. • Integrate opinion leader and ambassador priorities into annual brand plans, congress strategy, and meaningful points in the HCP and patient journeys. • Partner with Medical Affairs and other functions to coordinate stakeholder engagement, maintain appropriate promotional and non-promotional boundaries, and avoid duplication. • Establish governance, operating standards, KPIs, and insight-sharing practices that improve visibility, decision-making, program quality, and resource allocation. • Manage team members, agencies, vendors, budgets, contracts, and deliverables with strong development, financial, compliance, and executional discipline. • Monitor evolving influence models and engagement channels, recommending responsible innovations that improve relevance and reach. • Perform other duties as assigned.

Leadership Responsibility This is a people-leader role with two direct reports that leads a portfolio capability through external engagement expertise, strategic influence, and cross-functional partnership. The Director is expected to manage and develop these team members in support of opinion leader engagement, peer-to-peer strategy, ambassador programs, congresses, and related operations. The role will set clear priorities, allocate resources across brands, coach for high performance, create development opportunities, and foster a collaborative and inclusive team culture.

The Director will regularly engage senior leaders and coordinate work across Brand Marketing, Sales, Medical Affairs, Patient Advocacy, Legal, Regulatory, Compliance, Commercial Operations, Analytics, Finance, Procurement, agencies, vendors, speakers, ambassadors, and congress partners. The role serves as an escalation point for strategic, relationship, program, and executional issues and is accountable for bringing forward clear recommendations and driving timely decisions in a highly matrixed environment.

Must Have • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience. • At least ten years of relevant experience in pharmaceutical or biotechnology marketing, Thought Leader Liaison or field engagement, peer-to-peer strategy, professional education, patient engagement, sales, medical communications, or a related commercial discipline. • Demonstrated ability to develop and execute opinion leader engagement strategies that connect external stakeholder insights to brand and portfolio priorities. • Strong record of building credible, durable relationships with healthcare professionals and other external stakeholders in a regulated environment. • Experience leading healthcare professional speaker programs, advisory engagements, peer-to-peer education, patient ambassador initiatives, or comparable external engagement programs. • Sound understanding of the boundaries between Commercial and Medical Affairs and the ability to manage promotional and non-promotional interactions appropriately. • Ability to synthesize qualitative input from multiple stakeholders into clear themes, implications, recommendations, and action plans without overgeneralizing individual perspectives. • Strong strategic thinking, business judgment, executive communication, and influencing skills, with the ability to align senior stakeholders in a matrixed organization. • Demonstrated people leadership, including setting direction, coaching, performance management, talent development, and creating an accountable, inclusive team environment. • Experience managing agencies, vendors, budgets, contracts, timelines, and multiple concurrent priorities with disciplined follow-through. • Ability and willingness to travel frequently for external stakeholder engagements, congresses, internal meetings, and field collaboration, including occasional evenings and weekends as business needs require: up to 40% travel, including attendance at 6+ multi-day congress events.

Nice to Have • Experience in rare disease, metabolic conditions, genetics, or other specialty markets with small, concentrated, and highly connected HCP and patient communities. • Experience working in a Thought Leader Liaison, KOL engagement, professional relations, field marketing, or national peer-to-peer leadership role. • Existing knowledge of geneticists, metabolic specialists, neurologists, nephrologists, cardiologists, or other specialties relevant to rare metabolic diseases. • Experience building a stakeholder engagement capability or operating model across multiple brands, disease areas, or customer segments. • Experience integrating field insights with brand planning, customer segmentation, congress strategy, omnichannel engagement, and performance measurement. • Experience with patient and caregiver ambassador programs, including recruitment, training, storytelling, privacy, accessibility, and compliant program execution. • Familiarity with customer relationship management systems, insight platforms, speaker bureau systems, Veeva PromoMats, and reporting or visualization tools. • Advanced degree in business, marketing, life sciences, public health, or a related field.

What Success Looks Like Success means a coordinated, insight-led engagement model that strengthens priority relationships, develops credible speakers and ambassadors, improves peer-to-peer education, and delivers actionable insights that shape brand decisions. The Director will demonstrate impact through stakeholder reach and quality, program readiness and effectiveness, cross-functional alignment, compliant execution, and disciplined budget management.

Note: This description is not intended to be all-inclusive, or a limitation of the duties of the position. It is intended to describe the general nature of the job that may include other duties as assumed or assigned.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled

An Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.

Ireland Safety Responsibility Support the organisation’s commitment to environmental protection, injury prevention, and continual improvement of EHS management systems. Actively contribute to a safe and environmentally responsible workplace by identifying hazards, reporting incidents and participating in EHS initiatives and training.

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