Senior Director, Corporate Affairs Lead - V&I

AstraZeneca has a longstanding heritage in developing vaccines and antibody therapies that have contributed to global disease prevention and the advancement of immunisation strategies.

AstraZeneca’s Vaccines & Immune Therapies (V&I) Unit is committed to reducing the global health burden of viral and bacterial infectious diseases. We are building an innovative portfolio of transformative products including antibody and vaccines to tackle some of the leading global public health threats. Our portfolio delivers current solutions for patients while our pipeline seeks to advance the science of new modalities to prevent and treat an evolving and increasingly complex disease landscape.

The Senior Director, Corporate Affairs Lead, V&I leads the Global Corporate Affairs (GCA) functional for the V&I Unit at AstraZeneca, which is accountable for R&D, commercial, medical and other related functions. This cross‑functional role spans policy, advocacy and communications and reports to the VP GCA Bio Pharmaceuticals with a dotted line to the SVP V&I Units and sits on both the GCA Biopharma LT and the V&I Senior LT.

The role will collaborate closely with the Director Communications V&I as well as a broad mix of internal stakeholders across the V&I Unit, the Head of Bio Pharmaceuticals Policy and Advocacy, and other colleagues in Global Corporate Affairs, Global Media Relations, Global Medical Affairs, Commercial, Market Access and R&D.

• Leads the Global Corporate Affairs function for V&I, accountable for strategic corporate affairs strategies, plans, SMART goals/clear metrics; works across policy, advocacy and international/external communications from R&D through commercialisation. Leads prioritisation and provides guidance to GCA colleagues and team members.
• Lead policy and advocacy strategies and programmes to drive healthcare policy / system reforms and transform healthcare systems to support access to medicines/vaccines, transform healthcare systems to deliver better standards of care and ultimately market class growth for our disease areas. Includes leading relationships with patient advocacy groups.
• Lead evidence generation, including peer review studies and argumentation to support policymaker decision‑making, working in collaboration with external experts and cross‑functional (corporate affairs, medical, market access, commercial, global/country) teams.
• Effectively represents AstraZeneca and supports leaders representing AstraZeneca with relevant third‑party groups/trade bodies on topics relevant to the V&I portfolio.
• Builds AstraZeneca’s reputation in V&I with priority stakeholder groups including the portfolio/pipeline, key disease areas, scientific platforms and other leadership platforms. Includes working at global stakeholder level and supporting priority regions/countries. Includes leveraging priority platforms/events eg medical congresses.
• Ensure management of potential and/or active issues with the potential to impact AZ reputation and/or business by providing counsel to leaders, managing internal/external stakeholders and delivering relevant communications.
• Partners with leaders to translate the V&I strategy into internal and external communications.

• Graduate (Bachelor’s/Master’s) with 10-15 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry or large-scale NGO/public health body
• Proven track‑record in access to medicines, disease‑level policy reform and impactful patient advocacy relations including multi‑stakeholder campaigning.
• Strong strategic capability.
• Proven ability to serve as an engaged, credible advisor to senior executives and leaders with strong ability to translate strategy into effective communications.
• Self‑starting, independent, entrepreneurial attitude – a smart risk‑taker who thrives on new challenges and on seeing things through to completion with impact.
• Eagerness and ability to collaborate with and mobilise different people and organisations; work effectively in a matrix organisation and ability to prioritise effectively.
• Line management experience (role does not have direct reports but oversees…