Director, Sr. Director Alliance Management Alliance Manager

Avidity Biosciences is growing our Alliance Management Team as we expand our platform technology for patients with unmet medical need.  The Avidity Alliance Manager is responsible for leading alliance-related activities in support of realizing long term value for Avidity Bioscience’s external partnerships. The alliance manager will establish a strong working relationship with both internal and external stakeholders, manage key issues, and guide alliance teams to success.  This established leader ensures the joint governance committees are in good health, communicates vision and progress to Sr leadership and internal teams and strategizes best outcomes for the alliance.   The Avidity Alliance Manager partners with business development to support new opportunities and contributes to development of tools, processes, and strategies for broader use in the Alliance Management function. 

Responsibilities:

• Provides ongoing Alliance Management leadership to the company’s alliances
• Leads a cross-functional new alliance / partner launch team to develop trust, key deliverables and execute to ensure that new alliances are implemented successfully
• Understands the relevant contractual agreement(s) in detail, including, strategic intent, obligations, including potential changes in partnership agreements. Identifies issues, including effective conflict resolution, proactively identifies and prepares risk mitigation action plans.   Maintains oversight of the relationship health and communication with the partner, alliance teams and Avidity Biosciences Sr. leadership team   
• Establishes and maintains the joint governance structure; organizes and leads partnership governance meetings and processes. Organizes alliance meetings for the internal team and joint meetings with the partner including developing the agendas, internal briefings, meeting leadership, minutes, and distribution of relevant material.  Facilitates effective functioning of the alliance governance structure
• Monitors and reports on the progress and status of the alliance. Determines the cause, develops, and implements action plans for any identified issues
• Actively monitors alliance processes, guidelines and policies within Avidity and leads change management as needed
• Actively identifies opportunities to improve and grow the value of the partnership
• Minimizes out of scope or out of budget situations. Proactively identifies alliance partner issues, develops and leads recommendations and initiatives for risk mitigation actions in consultation with key stakeholders
• Builds organizational alliance capability to support external partnerships
• Collaborates with other key stakeholders in Corporate and Business Development to ensure alliance management considerations are reflected in the strategic business plans as alliances are initiated, negotiated, and implemented

Requirements:

• Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline and a PhD, MBA, or JD preferred; other advanced degrees, including CAAM or CSAP certification a plus.
• 8-10 years’ experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, managing cross-functional teams in early, mid-to-late stages of clinical development in the biopharmaceutical industry required
• 4-5 years’ experience in an Alliance Management or similar role working directly with alliance partners and as part of an alliance team
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively and strong verbal and written communication with interpersonal skills to influence and lead without authority
• Interact with support functions (legal, finance, business development, program management) to ensure transparency, alignment and prioritization for programs within the portfolio
• Strong knowledge and understanding of global product development and early commercialization in the pharmaceutical industry.
• High level of mastery in basic project management including scope, time, and cost management 
• Exceptional experience in managing cross-functional, global development teams as a program manager
• Must emulate and be a role model for our BeAVID company cultural attributes (Agile-visionary-integrated-diverse)
• Must thrive in a fast-paced, risk-enabled environment with a positive sense of urgency