The posting
Title:
Director, Key Opinion Leader Marketing, Rare Disease
Company:
Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals Inc.
About Ipsen:
Ipsen is a mid-sized global biopharmaceutical company with a focus on transformative medicines in three therapeutic areas: Oncology, Rare Disease and Neuroscience. Supported by nearly 100 years of development experience, with global hubs in the U.S., France and the U.K, we tackle areas of high unmet medical need through research and innovation.
Our passionate teams in more than 40 countries are focused on what matters and endeavor every day to bring medicines to patients in 88 countries. We build a workplace that champions human-centric leadership and fosters a culture of collaboration, excellence and impact. At Ipsen, every individual is empowered to be their true selves, grow and thrive alongside the company’s success. Join us on our journey towards sustainable growth, creating real impact on patients and society!
For more information, visit us at https://www.ipsen.com/ and follow our latest news on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Job Description:
Ipsen’s Rare Disease franchise has been expanding through both organic growth and acquisitions. From a marketing standpoint, there is a critical need for excellence in strategic planning and excellence in execution to clearly define how we will best drive education of appropriate healthcare providers, deliver successful launches, and innovate for patients in complex and competitive therapeutic areas.
The Director, Key Opinion Leader Marketing, Rare Disease is a strategic leader within the U.S. Rare Liver Marketing team, responsible for defining and advancing the peer-to-peer engagement strategy across the portfolio. This role serves as the architect of Ipsen's external expert engagement ecosystem, shaping how scientific leaders, advocates, and peer influencers are engaged to advance disease-state education, support earlier diagnosis, inform brand strategy, and drive adoption across existing and future portfolio assets. This role requires deep expertise in external expert engagement, peer-to-peer education, and congress strategy, as well as the scientific acumen, executive presence, and cross-functional leadership necessary to influence senior stakeholders and drive portfolio-wide impact.
This role owns the strategic direction and governance of speaker bureau excellence, KOL engagement, peer to peer education, and congress activation across the U.S. rare disease portfolio. This individual ensures a coordinated and highly credible external engagement approach that elevates Ipsen's scientific leadership and commercial impact.
This is not a field or remote role, it's based in our Cambridge, MA HQ.
WHAT - Main Responsibilities
Peer Engagement Strategy
- Own and evolve the enterprise peer-to-peer engagement strategy across the U.S. Rare Disease portfolio, ensuring alignment with portfolio growth objectives, competitive dynamics, and future launch priorities
- Establish portfolio-level KOL, speaker, and advocate engagement frameworks, segmentation approaches, and investment priorities that maximize scientific influence and educational impact
- Build a credible, science-driven peer to peer offering aligned to portfolio priorities including tools and resources for TLL team
- Prioritize peer-to-peer programs and channels to expand reach and frequency across key stakeholders
- Build and manage congress roadmap, capabilities, and continually improve associated processes
- Ensure a single, cohesive peer to peer experience aligned to brand strategy and priorities
- Shape how peer influence is leveraged across the customer journey to support disease-state awareness, diagnosis acceleration, treatment adoption, and launch readiness
Portfolio Leadership & Governance
- Own and continuously evolve the portfolio speaker bureau strategy, governance, and operating model, ensuring alignment to business priorities and maximizing the impact of peer-to-peer engagement investments
- Establish governance and oversight for speaker engagement, contracting, fair market value rates, utilization, and HCP transparency practices across the rare disease portfolio.
- Define and lead the portfolio congress strategy, including prioritization of investments, scientific engagement plans, sponsorship opportunities, and cross-brand activation designed to maximize organizational impact
- Direct the design and execution of integrated congress and peer-to-peer engagement plans that advance disease-state education, strengthen scientific leadership, and support portfolio growth objectives.
- Lead strategic partnerships with agencies and external vendors, ensuring delivery of innovative, high-impact engagement programs while optimizing resource allocation and return on investment.
- Partner with Medical, PRC, Legal, and Business Ethics to establish governance frameworks and ensure compliant execution of peer engagement activities across the portfolio.
Insights, Measurement & Leadership
- Serve as the organization's center of excellence for peer engagement strategy, establishing standards, governance, and best practices across the rare disease portfolio
- Define KPIs and measurement to optimize speaker and congress program performance and ROI
- Own portfolio speaker bureau and congress budget planning and resource allocation
- Ensuring on-time and on-budget delivery of congresses, and sponsorships
- Synthesize insights from KOL interactions, congress engagement, speaker bureau activity, and competitive intelligence to inform portfolio strategy, launch planning, and business decision-making
- Establish clear governance, decision-making, and prioritization across the team and partners
- Drive alignment with Brand, Sales, TLL, Medical, PRC and Business ethics
- Influence senior leadership through data-driven recommendations regarding market dynamics, emerging scientific trends, KOL sentiment, and external stakeholder priorities
HOW - Knowledge & Experience
Knowledge & Experience:
- Significant experience (12+ years) of commercial pharma experience, including U.S. peer-to-peer, speaker, or HCP marketing roles in rare disease and/or specialty markets
- Proven success managing a speaker bureau, delivering peer-to-peer programs and working with KOLs
- Proven experience planning and executing local, regional, and national congresses
- Experience building peer-to-peer and speaker programs in rare or ultra-rare diseases
- Strong understanding of medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) requirements governing peer to peer programs
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills along with the ability to influence others
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functionally and influence senior stakeholders
- Strong scientific/medical aptitude and experience including knowledge of complex therapeutic areas and dynamic treatment landscapes
- Mentally agile and solutions-oriented, with the ability to navigate ambiguity, adapt quickly, and drive practical solutions in a dynamic environment
- Ability to work with multiple internal cross-functional teams and successfully manage multiple projects simultaneously
- Knowledge of regulations associated with promotion and industry-supported scientific education activities.
- Working within an environment of strict compliance to all appropriate regulatory guidelines
- Demonstrated success in project, vendor, and experience managing large budgets
- Ability to travel up to 40% including to relevant congresses and events
Education / Certifications:
- Bachelor’s degree (BA/BS) required; Advanced degree (MBA, PharmD, MSc) preferred
Language(s) (essential):
- Fluent in English.
Compensation
The annual base salary range for this position is $190,500 - $265,000
This job is eligible to participate in our short-term incentives program. At Ipsen we are proud to offer a comprehensive employee benefits package, including 401(k) with company contributions, group medical, dental and vision coverage, life and disability insurance, short- and long-term disability insurance, as well as flexible spending accounts. Ipsen also provides parental leave, paid time off, a discretionary winter shutdown, well-being allowance, commuter benefits, and much more.
The pay range displayed above is the range of base pay compensation within which Ipsen expects to pay for this role at the time of this posting. Individual compensation within this range depends on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, prior education and experience, job-related knowledge and demonstrated skills.
We are committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels heard, valued, and supported; where we embrace “The Real Us”. The value we place on different perspectives and experiences drives our commitment to inclusion and equal opportunities. When we include diverse ways of thinking, we make more thoughtful decisions and discover more innovative solutions. Together we strive to better understand the communities we serve. This means we also want to help you perform at your best when applying for a role with us. If you require any adjustments or support during the application process, please let the recruitment team know. This information will be handled with care and will not affect the outcome of your application. Ipsen is an equal opportunity employer that strictly prohibits unlawful discrimination. We recruit, employ, train, compensate, and promote without regard to an individual’s race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin/ancestry, age, mental/physical disability, medical condition, marital status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
