Global Meetings & Events Service Head

Gaithersburg (US), Wilmington (US), Cambridge (UK)

At AstraZeneca every one of our employees makes a difference to patient lives every day. Our science lives beyond our labs - our global perspective means we use talent and expertise from all over the world to make our medicines a success. A new and exciting Global Meetings and Events (GME) team is has been formed within the Global Business Services (GBS) organization. This team is responsible for implementing and delivering events through a global Strategic Meetings Management Program (SMMP) across AstraZeneca. Events include Congresses, advisory boards, investigator meetings, sales training, brand launches and more across all therapeutic areas and multiple business functions.

The GME Service Head is responsible for the global strategy, delivery, and operations of a best-in-class meetings and events planning to drive business impact. This position will drive AstraZeneca’s Meetings & Events strategy and deliver our vision to realize one consistent approach for implementing outstanding meetings across all markets and functional areas of the business. Over the past 3 years the deployment of this new capability across the organization with a focus on people, process and technology has set in place the foundations. In the next phase of the SMMP journey there will be a move to focus on service excellence, innovation, measuring and enabling business impact and greater links to Omnichannel. This role requires excellent leadership, communication, interpersonal, and influencing skills to position the capability as best in class within the organization and externally. The GME Head is responsible for driving compliance and controls in a high-risk area, ensuring adherence to revised meetings policy, delivering an elevated customer experience for our meeting owners and their audiences, and enhancing our decision-making abilities across meetings and events categories.

The GME Service Head will optimize for our meeting and events planning services, driving value through cost effectiveness, capacity release, compliance risk mitigation, and enhanced customer experience. These services include but are not limited to: demand management, meeting planning and agency management, preferred venue compliance, corporate meeting card execution, budget and reconciliation, business analytics and compliance reporting. The GME Service Head will lead the evolution of our global meetings and events strategy, and drive continuous improvement and innovation in how we deliver these services. This will include a focus on business analytics to proactively find opportunities for improvement in key performance indicators, as well as methods to create a more seamless customer experience, ensuring integration of meeting participants with other business activities and programs where they interact with AstraZeneca.

Leadership behaviors and core responsibilities:

Outstanding team leadership and people development skills:

• Lead an enterprise-wide geographically diverse team (Circa 90 FTE based globally including an offshore operational team)
• Identify future talent requirements for the business and develop strong workforce plans to attract, retain, develop, and promote GME team members.
• Create an entrepreneurial work environment, which supports appropriate risk-taking to drive innovation, while learning quickly and adapting to unexpected results.
• Develop and consistently challenge organizational design over time to ensure maximum value generation while maintaining a nimble and efficient organization.
• Demonstrated people leadership capabilities, including performance management and reviews, succession planning, talent assessments, and workforce planning.

Strong communication, interpersonal, and influencing skills:

• Lead communication and change initiatives with senior leadership across AstraZeneca markets and functional areas.
• Influence enterprise wide to educate internal and external stakeholders on AstraZeneca’s meetings policy, our SMMP program, and changes in ways of working.
• Manage the performance and accountability of suppliers through strong governance and collaboration with clearly articulated set of realization metrics.
• Partner with key business areas integral to success: Compliance, IT, Procurement, Corporate Transparency, and Market Leadership to drive the end-to-end strategy and service delivery.
• Establish industry and vendor relationships for benchmarking and knowledge sharing.

Business savvy, analytical thinking, problem solving and effective decision making:

• Ability to identify critical business issues within a complex environment, then effectively making decisions and owning the outcomes across all aspects of the program.
• Actively connecting teams across boundaries (e.g. functional, cultural, geographic), to increase organizational performance, productivity and problem solving.
• Develop and implement corrective action resulting from quality control recommendations, customer feedback or supplier performance.

Results orientation with consistent track record in successful delivery on large-scale programs:

• Lead successful meeting and events execution, using internal employee resources and external partnerships to meet business needs, compliance requirements, accepted services levels, and cost efficiency expectations.
• Identify enterprise level continuous improvement opportunities across delivery, operations, compliance and event travel processes
• Lead and monitor process performance measures and ensures best practices, operational / continuous improvement actions are implemented.
• Conduct performance reviews with Senior Leadership and stakeholders, to review delivery and propose opportunities for greater value generation and risk mitigation.
• Demonstrate influence within health care industry meetings & events category;

Required Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree
• 10+ years’ experience implementing, building, and leading geographically diverse, cross-functional teams
• Knowledge of meeting planning industry and SMMP experience
• Strong leadership skills with an ability to set a vision, lead change, and to lead, mentor and develop people
• Strong executive presence with ability to exercise sound business judgment, clear decision-making, and execution leading to better outcomes
• Demonstrated experience building trusted relationships with Sr. Leadership and key partners
• Excellent interpersonal skills, strong influencing, negotiating, conflict resolution skills
• Ability to coordinate action across dispersed workforce including supplier partners
• Ability to travel internationally (~30% Travel)

Desirable Experience:

• Pharmaceutical industry experience
• Experience supporting a global company in Global Business Services initiatives around Meetings & Events, Corporate Card and Travel management
• Experience with meeting industry technology (Cvent, StarCite)

Why AstraZeneca?

At AstraZeneca we’re dedicated to being a Great Place to Work. Where you are empowered to push the boundaries of science and unleash your entrepreneurial spirit. There’s no better place to make a difference to medicine, patients and society. An inclusive culture that champions diversity and collaboration, and always committed to lifelong learning, growth and development. We’re on an exciting journey to pioneer the future of healthcare.

So, what’s next?

• Are you ready to bring new ideas and fresh thinking to the table? Brilliant! We have one seat available, and we hope it’s yours.

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