VP, Head of Commercial Operations

Reporting to the Head of Commercial, the VP, Head of Commercial Operations will be responsible for developing and leading Skyhawk’s commercial operations capabilities, with the ultimate focus on ensuring commercial readiness and optimizing the planning and execution of our commercial launch plan for the company’s lead asset, SKY-0515. This is a critical senior leadership role that will be instrumental in the Company’s continued success.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct key market analytics and develop actionable insights (e.g., Forecasting, Market Segmentation, Customer Targeting, Salesforce Size & Structure, and Field Force Alignment) and partner with our vendors on the implementation and roll out of key commercial infrastructure and processes, including MDM (Master Data Management), Data Warehouse, CRM, Sales & Activity Reporting, Executive Dashboarding and Field Incentive Compensation.
• As part of this highly cross-functional role, it is expected to effectively partner with senior leaders across all corporate and commercial functions (Finance, Legal, IT, HR, Compliance, CMC/Operations, Medical Affairs, Sales, Marketing, & Market Access/ Strategic Accounts) to ensure strategic alignment and business direction.
• Design, build and operate CRM, MDM, and data warehouse to support all commercial and launch business processes; Manage commercial data management systems including master data management, data warehouse, field reporting, field incentive compensation, and business/sales force analytics.
• Lead the Commercial Operations function and assigned staff to oversee sales operations, including salesforce sizing and structure, incentive compensation, alignment, targeting, customer mapping, territory metrics, and customer analytics.
• Drive sales team effectiveness through territory planning/POA (Plan of Action), sales performance tracking, development and delivery of customer engagement, and sales enablement tools.
• Drive cross-functional planning, alignment, and integration preparation for launch readiness across the entire company including IT, Supply Chain, HR, Legal/Compliance, and Finance.
• Lead preparations for governance meetings, business reviews and leadership engagements.
• Partner with Commercial stakeholders to drive strategic decision making and budget planning and management based on key market insights.
• Manage marketing operations and effectively partner with Medical to ensure timely review of promotional materials and congress and conference organization.
• Cross-functional collaboration and support throughout the organization to drive operational priorities and effectiveness in the following areas:
• Support Finance with GTN (Gross-to-Net) calculations/analytics, reporting, and commercial budgeting.
• Support CMC/Operations as key liaison for demand forecasts.
• Support Legal with oversight into commercial contract management.
• Support Market Access & Finance with Government Pricing analytics and administration.
• Support Market Access/Trade Distribution to secure state licensure where appropriate.
• Support Compliance in securing and providing accurate and timely data for key government required reporting (e.g., Sunshine Act Reporting
• Support Business Development through asset diligence, market assessments, business analytics and NPV analyses.

Requirements, Education, Experience & Skills:

• Bachelor's degree required, MBA preferred.
• 15+ years of experience within biotech/pharmaceuticals, with recent focus in commercial operations leadership.
• 10+ years leadership in commercial operations with previous direct experience in relevant functions (e.g., incentive compensation, sales operations, insights, and analytics)
• Proven expert in leading and developing commercial operations functions.
• Launch experience for rare disease indications, highly preferred.
• Must be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to generate, quantify and analyze data in creating appropriate solutions for sales force and marketing optimization.
• Experience selecting and overseeing external vendors and outsourced partnerships.
• Strong ability to engage and motivate people and have the managerial courage to make and stand by difficult decisions.
• Must be a true team player – authentic, humble, able to build a positive team spirit and lead through the ups and downs of drug development, puts success of team above own interests and support everyone’s efforts to grow and develop
• Demonstrated ability to motivate and lead teams and have the managerial courage to make and stand by difficult decisions.
• Experience in and understanding of other commercial functions (e.g., marketing, market access, sales, sales training, business development, etc.) will be an important consideration for this role.
• Must be highly analytical. Must be comfortable formulating and delivering data-driven, fact based analyses of the business and utilizing these insights to propose effective strategies to meet corporate objectives.
• Must be a resourceful, creative problem solver who seeks out, and is receptive to, new ideas and approaches to solving persistent challenges.
• Ability and willingness to work effectively and seamlessly at multiple “altitudes” within the organization. Maintains a “no job is too big or too small” attitude necessary to succeed in a startup environment.
• Excellent interpersonal, oral and written communication skills (including ability to successfully convey insights and recommendations via PowerPoint), including ability to synthesize data and deliver a clear overview of the state of the business, drivers of performance, opportunities and risks, and recommended action plans. Strong executive presence and comfortable presenting to C-Suite and board of directors.
• Demonstrated ability to adapt to changes in the work environment. Manages competing demands. Changes approach or method to best fit the situation. Able to deal with frequent change, delays, unexpected events, or uncertainty/ambiguity with maturity and professionalism.
• Highly skilled in influencing cross-functional teams, including interfacing with key internal and external stakeholders and with scientific and commercial teams.