Patient & Community Educator, Lead

The Director of Patient & Community Educators (PACE), Rare Disease, is a critical and visible leader within the US Marketing Team. The PACE Director will oversee a dedicated national team, engaging caregivers and ensuring strategic direction based on customer and market insights to drive key franchise choices. This role provides disease and product leadership support, ensuring patients, caregivers, and families are well-informed and empowered throughout their disease journey. The PACE Director will facilitate alignment and collaboration among all key stakeholders to meet PACE objectives. This is a field-based role reporting to the Executive Director of Consumer Marketing.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead and manage a team of 6, Patient & Community Educators (PACE) to deliver disease and product education to caregivers.
• Develop and execute strategic and tactical plans for the PACE team to educate patients and their families/caregivers.
• Collaborate with Marketing, Field Sales, Patient Services Hub, Medical Affairs, Advocacy, and other critical functions to establish success factors and objectives.
• Identify, develop, and lead strategic partnerships with relevant external organizations for insight generation and educational outreach.
• Hire, onboard, and sustain a high-performing, diverse team, and develop ongoing training plans.
• Establish targeted work plans for regional team members.
• Develop KPIs and reporting dashboards to track critical business metrics.
• Provide constructive feedback on existing work plans and propose innovative service offerings.
• Participate in the development of materials to increase provider and patient/caregiver awareness of educational services.
• Contribute to the annual business/brand planning process with Marketing and leadership.
• Represent the PACE team on various cross-functional teams.
• Oversee team performance management, including coaching, training, development, and evaluation.

Collaborate with the Executive Director of Consumer Marketing to:

• Develop and execute training and onboarding for new PACE team members.
• Manage the inception and evolution of the PACE team as business needs and market conditions evolve.
• Develop and drive appropriate metrics to measure performance and communicate them to internal stakeholders.

Insight Generation:

• Regularly generate and synthesize insights from caregiver interactions and regional trends/sentiments to report back to franchise leadership team.
• Develop priorities for insight generation related to Rett syndrome, Daybue, and competitive landscape.
• Continually measure the impact of PACE activities and adjust course where necessary.
• Develop and deliver presentations to commercial management and other internal stakeholders.
• Actively collaborates with Field Sales, Patient Services, Medical Affairs, Marketing, Advocacy and other critical internal teams to increase disease-state awareness and early diagnosis.
• Maintain disease-state and product expertise through continuing education and attendance at relevant symposia and conferences.

Brand Planning and Strategy Development:

• Participate in annual brand planning and tactical planning for PACE-led activities.
• Provide critical input in the development of the annual needs assessment for caregiver engagement.
• Outline and manage the annual budget and project timelines for PACE activities.
• Serve as the primary information conduit between the field and home office.

Team Management:

• Lead and develop a team of 6 regional Patient & Community Educators (PACEs)
• Establishes targeted workplans for regional team members.
• Develop SOPs.
• Develop and execute training and onboarding of new PACE team members with support from Acadia’s training team.
• Develops KPIs and reporting dashboards to track critical business metrics.
• Deliver on key objectives established annually and demonstrate accountability for execution and drive results.
• Oversee and guide a variety of personnel actions including, but not limited to, hiring, performance management and promotions.
• Ensures that all actions, both internally and externally working on Acadia’s behalf are in compliance with all laws regulations, policies and demonstrates Acadia values.

Education/Experience/Skills: Bachelor of Science in healthcare field strongly preferred with a minimum of 10 years’ experience in a similar role within the pharmaceutical/biotech industry. Healthcare background and rare disease experience preferred. A master’s degree is a plus. An equivalent combination of relevant education and experience may be considered.

• Customer-facing or field leadership experience (required).
• Experience leading a team to achieve organizational goals.
• Patient-centric mentality with high emotional intelligence and empathy.
• Experience in patient education, clinical settings, pharmacy, or community health education (preferred).
• Rare disease experience (strongly preferred).
• Understanding of HIPAA rules and regulations related to patient privacy.
• Strong written and verbal communication, presentation skills, and comfort around senior/executive leadership.
• Demonstrated history of successful cross-functional collaboration.
• Strong leadership skills, ability to perform in fast-paced environments, and influence without authority.
• Ability to present ideas effectively to various audiences.
• Highly motivated, detail-oriented, and able to work under tight timelines and changing situations.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and interpersonal flexibility.
• This is a field-based role requiring approximately 60% local/regional travel, including weekends. Proximity to a major airport within the territory is essential to ensure quick connectivity to air transport hubs.

Physical Requirements:

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms; climb or balance; stoop, kneel, crouch, see, talk or hear in a standard office environment and independently from remote locations. Employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 20 pounds.   Ability to travel by car or airplane independently overnight up to 60% of the time and work after hours if required by travel schedule or business issues.

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Last updated on Aug 21, 2024