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About the Role

Develop the strategy, structure, and plans for patient ambassador programs across pharmaceutical and healthcare clients. Oversee program delivery, ensuring initiatives are authentic, compliant, measurable, and grounded in patient needs.

Responsibilities

Develop patient ambassador strategies and program plans.
Define program audiences, ambassador eligibility criteria, participant roles, engagement channels, and activation models.
Define the program governance structure, decision-making responsibilities, escalation pathways, and quality standards.
Contribute to recommendations regarding branded, unbranded, or blended approaches.
Develop annual and project-specific activation plans across various channels.
Apply disease-state knowledge, patient-journey insights, and health literacy principles to program recommendations.
Establish program timelines, deliverables, KPIs, and reporting plans.
Evaluate program performance and use findings to refine strategy and improve future program design.
Establish the approach and selection criteria for identifying, assessing, and onboarding patients and caregivers.
Oversee ambassador recruitment, screening, and selection.
Review and approve recommendations for ambassador participation.
Set standards for respectful, consistent, and long-term ambassador relationship management.
Provide guidance on sensitive ambassador situations and direct responses to changes in circumstances.
Monitor the overall ambassador experience and identify opportunities to improve retention, support, and engagement.
Oversee the development and delivery of training for patients and caregivers.
Oversee the ambassador story-development process.
Provide direction and quality oversight for ambassador coaching.
Ensure ambassadors are appropriately prepared for participation across various channels.
Establish and reinforce standards for clear communication and avoidance of unsupported claims.
Review training plans and ambassador readiness, providing direct coaching as needed.
Guide team members responsible for day-to-day training and coaching.
Provide strategic direction for story-mining and content development.
Establish narrative approach and content-development standards.
Guide editorial and creative teams.
Review and approve key narratives before client submission.
Advise client teams on regulatory, privacy, consent, disclosure, and fair-market-value considerations.
Partner with client medical, legal, and regulatory stakeholders.
Oversee the agency’s coordination of client MLR reviews.
Establish program-level escalation and quality-control practices for compliance-sensitive activities.
Serve as a primary day-to-day client contact for patient engagement programs.
Lead client meetings, status updates, planning discussions, and program reviews.
Build strong working relationships across client teams.
Manage client expectations, identify potential issues, and work with senior leadership to resolve challenges.
Coordinate multidisciplinary agency teams and external partners.
Support scope development, staffing plans, budgets, forecasts, and financial reconciliation.
Develop recommendations, scopes, and proposals for organic growth opportunities.
Determine team roles and staffing needs for assigned programs.
Manage and develop Directors and other team members.
Establish quality-control expectations and hold teams accountable for consistent execution.
Review deliverables for accuracy, quality, sensitivity, and compliance.
Drive consistent patient-centered practices across accounts and project teams.
Contribute subject-matter expertise, program ideas, and case examples to proposals and new-business pitches.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in communications, marketing, public health, health sciences, behavioral science, social work, business or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
10+ years of experience including direct experience managing pharmaceutical patient ambassador, patient-speaker, peer-support or comparable patient engagement programs.
Demonstrated experience designing patient ambassador program models, selection criteria, training approaches and activation plans.
Experience overseeing multiple programs or a complex patient engagement account.
Strong client-counsel skills and experience presenting strategic recommendations to senior stakeholders.
Experience overseeing the training and coaching of patients or caregivers.
Ability to develop training and coaching standards and processes.
Strong interviewing and story-development skills, including the ability to work with sensitive and emotionally complex health experiences.
Working knowledge of pharmaceutical regulatory and compliance requirements affecting patient-facing communications.
Experience managing client relationships, cross-functional teams, budgets, timelines, and program deliverables.
The ability to balance empathy for ambassadors with accountability to client, program and regulatory requirements.
Strong presentation, facilitation, coaching and interpersonal communication skills.
Sound judgment and the ability to identify when an issue should be escalated.
Experience supporting organic account growth and contributing to new-business development.
Ability to use AI and emerging technologies responsibly and in accordance with client, privacy and regulatory requirements.
An understanding of health literacy, patient journeys and disease-specific communities a plus.
Experience establishing and overseeing patient contracting, consent, content-rights, fair-market-value, payment and documentation processes within healthcare or pharmaceutical programs.

Skills

Patient engagement
Program strategy
Program planning
Ambassador lifecycle management
Training and coaching
Story development
Content development
Regulatory and compliance support
Client and account management
AI and emerging technologies
Health literacy
Patient journeys
Disease-specific communities
Interviewing
Presentation
Facilitation
Interpersonal communication

Location

Remote

Work Type

Full-time

Experience Level

Senior
10+ years

Education Level

Bachelor's degree

Salary/Compensations

$125,000 - $160,000

Benefits

Competitive base salary and bonus opportunity
Health, Dental, Vision
Company paid Life Insurance
Flexible Spending Account
401k (match) plan
Monthly allowance for cell phone, office equipment, etc.
Generous PTO policy
Paid maternity/paternity leave
Professional learning and development opportunities
Workplace flexibility
On-site and off-site social gatherings

About the Company

Ruder Finn is one of the world’s largest independent global communications and integrated marketing agencies, known for bold ideas, sharp strategy, and a culture that pushes what’s next.
Ruder Finn continues to earn recognition for its industry leadership, creativity, and continued growth, including being named Large Agency of the Year at the 2026 PRWeek U.S. Awards and one of PRWeek’s Best Places to Work.

Equal Opportunity

Ruder Finn provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
Ruder Finn will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics.
Ruder Finn believes that diversity and inclusion among our employees is critical to our success as a global company, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool.