Associate Director – Digital Opinion Leader & Cross-Stakeholder Enablement Lead

At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. This is hard, urgent, selfless work—but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us. 

Job Summary

The Associate Director, Digital Opinion Leader & Cross-Stakeholder Enablement Lead (P4) owns the engagement strategy and enablement capability for Lilly's CMH digital influencer stakeholder ecosystem, turning external signals into clear recommendations, practical frameworks, and cross-functional action. Collaborates across the enterprise to understand partnerships and touchpoints with these individuals, mapping best practices and appropriate use. Ensures that the organization's engagement with Digital Opinion Leaders (DOL) respects their independence and supports their educational mission and role as translators of science, while helping internal teams make thoughtful, well-prioritized engagement choices. Identifies ascending digital voices early and builds engagement approaches for a stakeholder category that is rapidly evolving – leading with strategic judgment in ambiguity to create a clear definition of what good looks like for the organization.

This person is also responsible for overseeing the stakeholder engagement utilization strategy – working cross-functionally with the Stakeholder Business Integration & Coordination team to ensure the top external stakeholders, across all verticals, are being targeted for the best and highest use interactions. This requires understanding and triangulation of stakeholder preferences, business strategies (global, US and IBU) and compliance requirements and partnership with a project manager to track activities and utilization against the strategic plan.
 

Key Responsibilities

Stakeholder Identification & Relationship Ownership

• In collaboration with Ecosystem Intelligence, AI & Technology lead, define identification and prioritization criteria. Provide feedback on identification quality to continuously improve targeting accuracy
• Translate knowledge of and insights around DOL stakeholders into clear recommendations to cross-functional teams on who to engage and where to focus engagement efforts.
• Create connectivity to top global stakeholders by type — determining partnership opportunities, maintaining strategic relationship oversight and ensuring engagement continuity across organization.
• Serve as the internal expert on how to engage these stakeholder types effectively, bringing a clear point of view, practical recommendations, and guidance for action across cross-functional teams and regional affiliates.

Piloting & Innovation

• Partner with CMH teams to design, pilot, and evaluate new engagement approaches for assigned stakeholder types, making explicit recommendations on where to engage based on business needs, strategic value, feasibility, and compliance considerations..
• Codify successful pilots into scalable frameworks, playbooks and operating guidance that other teams can use consistently.
• Continuously scan the external environment for innovative engagement models and emerging best practices, and distill what matters most for Lilly's strategy and choices.

Framework & Toolkit Development

• Develop and maintain engagement frameworks, toolkits, and playbooks for DOL stakeholders — translating engagement philosophy into practical guidance that cross-functional partners and regional affiliates can execute and clarifying what good execution looks like.
• Ensure compliance guardrails and accountability standards are embedded into frameworks.

Training & Capability Building

• Design and deliver training specific to assigned stakeholder categories — building the mindset, judgment and skill of cross-functional teams
• Provide coaching, guidance, and hands-on support for teams applying the frameworks.

Stakeholder Communications & Executive Preparation

• Draft key stakeholder communications, as needed.
• Partner with broader team to support preparation for executive engagements – identifying new stakeholders and opportunities for executive engagement.

Measurement & Reporting

• Track engagement outcomes for assigned stakeholder categories against established metrics — relationship depth, insight quality, co-creation output, and practice impact.
• Report results and improvement recommendations to the Engagement Strategy lead and relevant cross-functional partners.

Stakeholder Utilization Strategy, Oversight and Enablement

• Build and implement cross-functional stakeholder utilization strategy
• Partner with affiliates (U.S. and IBU) to align on stakeholder needs and best use; manage lists of most highly utilized stakeholders and ensure cross-functional teams are aware of use cases
• Collaborate with project manager to track activities against the strategy and utilization requirements/cap

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required

• "Qualified applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Lilly will not provide support for or sponsor work authorization or visas for this role, including but not limited to F-1 CPT, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, J-1, H-1B, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, or L-1."

Preferred Qualifications

Strategic Capabilities

• Minimum 5 years in pharmaceutical or healthcare external engagement, medical affairs, marketing, digital strategy, digital marketing, medical communications or communications roles
• Demonstrated ability to move from analysis to a clear recommendation in ambiguous, fast-changing environments
• Demonstrated strategic judgment in defining new approaches where there is limited precedent
• Ability to synthesize complex inputs into a clear point of view for senior and cross-functional stakeholders
• Experience driving alignment across multiple functions with different priorities and levels of familiarity
• Strong communication, including concise framing of recommendations, tradeoffs, risks, and decisions needed and the ability to engage credibly with both digitally sophisticated external stakeholders and internally with medical affairs and compliance teams who may be less familiar with digital engagement norms
• Ability to define what good looks like in emerging spaces and translate that into practical frameworks, expectations, and actions

Domain Expertise

• Hands-on experience building DOL or digital influencer engagement programs
• Demonstrated understanding of the digital medical education ecosystem — how clinicians use social media, podcasts, and digital platforms for professional learning and peer exchange
• Deep familiarity with social media and digital health content creation
• Familiarity with social media analytics, social listening tools, and digital engagement metrics
• Comfort leading in ambiguity and rapid change — the digital landscape shifts faster than any other stakeholder domain and the role requires both adaptability and judgment
• Background in medical communications, medical education, or health content strategy
• Experience with social listening and NLP-based content analysis tools (Brandwatch, Meltwater, Sprinklr, or equivalent)
• Familiarity with digital engagement platforms — virtual advisory tools, expert network platforms (M3, Sermo), community platforms, or content collaboration tools
• Understanding of compliance frameworks governing pharmaceutical company interaction with HCPs on social media and digital platforms
• Background in the cardiometabolic, obesity, or diabetes therapeutic area
• Familiarity with non-US digital ecosystems — particularly WeChat/DXY dynamics in China, LINE in Japan, and Coliquio/regional platforms in EU

• **"Qualified applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Lilly will not provide support for or sponsor work authorization or visas for this role, including but not limited to F-1 CPT, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, J-1, H-1B, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, or L-1."

Lilly is dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities to actively engage in the workforce, ensuring equal opportunities when vying for positions. If you require accommodation to submit a resume for a position at Lilly, please complete the accommodation request form (https://careers.lilly.com/us/en/workplace-accommodation) for further assistance. Please note this is for individuals to request an accommodation as part of the application process and any other correspondence will not receive a response.

Lilly is proud to be an EEO Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, gender expression, sexual orientation, genetic information, ancestry, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Our employee resource groups (ERGs) offer strong support networks for their members and are open to all employees. Our current groups include: Africa, Middle East, Central Asia (AMECA), Black Employees at Lilly (BE@Lilly), Chinese Culture Network (CCN), EnAble, Evolve, Lilly Indian Network (LIN), Organization of Latinx at Lilly (OLA), Pride (LGBTQ+ Allies), Veterans Leadership Network (VLN) and Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL).

Actual compensation will depend on a candidate’s education, experience, skills, and geographic location.  The anticipated wage for this position is

Full-time equivalent employees also will be eligible for a company bonus (depending, in part, on company and individual performance). In addition, Lilly offers a comprehensive benefit program to eligible employees, including eligibility to participate in a company-sponsored 401(k); pension; vacation benefits; eligibility for medical, dental, vision and prescription drug benefits; flexible benefits (e.g., healthcare and/or dependent day care flexible spending accounts); life insurance and death benefits; certain time off and leave of absence benefits; and well-being benefits (e.g., employee assistance program, fitness benefits, and employee clubs and activities).Lilly reserves the right to amend, modify, or terminate its compensation and benefit programs in its sole discretion and Lilly’s compensation practices and guidelines will apply regarding the details of any promotion or transfer of Lilly employees.

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