Nearly 37 million Americans are currently affected by Chronic Kidney Disease. 37 million.

At Akebia we take that number very seriously and every day we come to work, with the purpose of bettering the lives of each person impacted by kidney disease and the renal community that serves them. 
Our tenacious, passionate employees’ challenge the status quo and work to develop unique therapeutics that have the potential to set new standards of care for people living with kidney disease.

This is life-changing work, and we are all in, are you?

Job Summary:

The Alliance Management team is seeking qualified candidates to support the management and optimization of Akebia’s strategic alliances with industry partners. This will require strategic relationship management, creative problem solving, and thorough diligence. The Director of Alliance Management will work closely with Program Management, SMEs from various functions, and senior management, to support Akebia’s existing global alliances, through multiple stages of development through commercialization. This position will also help kick off new alliances.

Essential Functions & Duties

• Ensure that key goals for alliances are achieved, and the relationship remains productive with partners
• Become an internal expert on partner contracts and facilitate contract/partner related questions with appropriate internal stakeholders
• Effectively manage cross-functional governance committees
• Facilitate internal alignment and readiness prior to engaging partners
• Track partnership effectiveness and identify opportunities to improve communication and collaboration
• Effective communications and follow up on action items for alliances Coordinate and prepare meeting agendas, presentations, meeting minutes/actions along with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure successful team meetings and governance committee meetings with partners
• Identify conflicts and issues as they arise and work diligently with relevant stakeholders to formulate a strategy and drive resolution process in a timely manner, escalating, where appropriate
• Build and maintain relationships with Akebia stakeholders from each functional area (i.e. CMC, regulatory, legal, medical affairs, commercial)
• Build expertise about partner companies, including key contacts, company organization/ leadership, supply forecasts, financials and strategic priorities
• Facilitate ancillary agreements and contract amendments with internal stakeholders and partners
• Prepare contractual deliverables such as quarterly reports, development plans, commercial launch plans, in alignment with internal stakeholders (i.e. finance, accounting, commercial)

Skills & Experience

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required
• Minimum of 10 years in biopharma and/or industry consulting
• Previous experience in alliance management
• Experience working directly with partners or third parties and demonstrated interpersonal communication skills with the ability to build and communicate business rationale.
• Strong leadership and self-direction, high-capacity for learning quickly
• Experience and comfort working and leading within matrixed organizations
• Excellent PowerPoint and Excel skills

Preferred Qualifications

•  Advanced degree (MS/PhD/MBA)
• Experience reading and synthesizing complicated legal agreements.
• Ability to apply good judgment and lead problem solving within the team

Compensation

Targeted Base: $196,697 - 242-979

*Base Compensation for this role will depend on a number of factors including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience, and may fall outside of the range shown. Base pay is only one component of the company’s total rewards package, all regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program or the incentive compensation program (if applicable), as well as equity. Additional benefits include health care, vision, dental, retirement, PTO, etc.

Are you an Akebian?

An Akebian is curious, empathetic, and values making connections to people and ideas. Akebian’s aren’t afraid of diving in and owning a process or a problem, because we all want to deliver a great solution. Akebian’s believe that we are better together because we are all working toward a common purpose – to better the life of each person impacted by kidney disease. Want to learn more about what it means to be an Akebian? Visit our website: www.akebia.com