The Vice President, Project Leadership is responsible for overseeing project delivery, finance management, quality compliance, and strategic resource management while fostering team performance and communication across departments.
When our values align, there's no limit to what we can achieve.
At Parexel, we all share the same goal - to improve the world's health. From clinical trials to regulatory, consulting, and market access, every clinical development solution we provide is underpinned by something special - a deep conviction in what we do.
Each of us, no matter what we do at Parexel, contributes to the development of a therapy that ultimately will benefit a patient. We take our work personally, we do it with empathy and we're committed to making a difference.
The Vice President of Project Leadership is a strategic leader tasked to: create a working environment that demands discipline across all aspects of project delivery; establish a team of leaders with emotional intelligence, and a desire for authentic working relationships. Engages with Department Senior Leadership as a strategic advisor. Success in this role is measured by the delivery of clinical services across the portfolio of studies managed by their Directors and Project Leaders in the areas of finance, utilization, quality, compliance, and delivery.
Key Accountabilities:
Operational Delivery
Project Delivery
- Set expectations and hold Directors and Project Teams accountable to agreed project milestones and key deliverables.
- Intervene when projects are signaling to head off course. Challenge and support Directors and Project Leaders to maintain and evolve a robust operational plan.
- Seek out commonalities across the portfolio where best practices and knowledge sharing can be leveraged.
Finance Management
- Maintain targets for profitability, margin expansion, cash flow, and contractual coverage across all projects within the portfolio.
- Interrogate financial data and the associated relationship with operational delivery.
- Partner with Project Finance to analyze trends and consistent business practice that can be broadly applied not only to the projects within their portfolio, but also to the benefit of region or business segment.
Operational Data Compliance and Analytics
- Drive teams to comply with data entry and accuracy.
- Leverage data and analytics for standard and consistent reporting.
- Advocate for the Department by engaging with supporting business functions when practical use of systems and processes reveal areas for improved efficiency and/or effectiveness.
Risk Management
- Participate in Risk Governance.
- Perform routine surveillance of the portfolio to identify risk trends.
- Facilitate the awareness of these trends across the Department.
- Act as a sounding board for Directors and Project Leaders with particularly complicated scenarios.
Quality Oversight
- Participate in Quality Governance.
- Promote a holistic view of project quality and assess impact on patients, customers, investigators, and key stakeholders.
Communication
- Establish a strong network with cross-functional peers.
- Hold one another accountable for the functional contributions to project delivery.
- Partner with Commercial Leadership to be aware of customer insights, opportunities for growth, market dynamics, and visibility to NBA.
- Promote a culture of direct, purposeful and timely communication in all forms.
Line Management
Manage Employee Performance aligned to Parexel’s Talent Philosophy
- Establish year-round, continuous performance feedback through goal setting, scheduled checkpoints and performance review.
- Strive for excellence with direct reports in project performance and personnel development to strengthen overall project delivery and employee satisfaction.
Strategic Resource Management
- Participate in a robust resource strategy in collaboration with Resource Management, Commercial Leadership, Talent Acquisition, Finance, and Department Senior Leadership
- Liaise between the above-mentioned stakeholders and Directors of Project Management responsible for hiring to ensure the resource strategy is executed accordingly.
- Where appropriate, participate in interview process to identify top talent matching the organization’s business needs and culture.
Training & Compliance
- Participate in the governance of and vision for department training needs and opportunities.
- Maintain a training curriculum that is fit-for-purpose to employee skills and experience.
- Ensure compliance with all systems and processes.
Coaching & Mentoring
- Model and encourage others to be adaptive in approach, understand perception and provide a platform to discuss alternate strategies or ideas.
- Lead by example to enhance the behaviors and actions to support the execution of the projects.
- Motivate others to rise to their potential, recognize their strengths and capitalize on opportunities.
- Drive collaboration within team of direct reports and across regions, bringing opportunities to enhance their network.
Change Management
- Be engaged and knowledgeable of organizational changes to then lead team through successful adoption and implementation.
Continuous Improvement
- Participate in, and where appropriate lead, Department and Enterprise-wide strategic initiatives in partnership with other Functions and the Operational Excellence and Delivery Office.
- May Include periodic review of Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and other controlled documents.
Dependent on account and regional requirements, in addition to the accountabilities listed above, the responsibilities may also include but not limited to:
- Provide account level oversight and account management responsibilities which may include providing portfolio level oversight of small to large, complex clinical trials or clinical trial programs for an account or a grouping of accounts.
- Own the portfolio/account P&L according to budget with revenue recognition and forecasting which includes resource management, timely invoicing and managing Change in Scope (CIS). As needed, negotiate service terms, change in scopes and invoicing requirements with client counterpart
- Be responsible for oversight of profitability of a project(s), program(s) or portfolio, the oversight of quality of project delivery in accordance with the timelines, and the development of the client teams’ relationship, as required, inclusive of client satisfaction.
- May contribute actively in proposal development teams, using their knowledge and experience to develop innovative plans and program architecture.
Skills:
- Strong business and financial acumen.
- Ability to communicate, manage information, and influence decision making up to the Executive Level.
- Ability to influence up, down and across organization; strong interpersonal, collaboration and partnership skills.
- Superior problem-solving, prioritization and decision making – act as tie breaker, making hard trade-off decisions.
- Willingness to be bold and accept accountability for actions.
- Demonstrated ability to deliver what was sold to the customer; anticipate what may not be in the customer’s line of sight and offer a solution-oriented approach.
- Ability to demonstrate value creation and delivery in global matrix environment where there is high accountability without ownership of resources.
- Experience managing in Global Markets.
Knowledge and Experience:
- Strong command of written and spoken English language, local language proficiency as required.
- Expert project management experience, preferably in healthcare, clinical research, or contract research organization.
- Proven track record of developing client relationships at account level.
- Proven substantial leadership in a global, matrix environment.
- Different trial phase experience (including phases I-IV) will be an advantage/is desirable.
Education:
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent level of education (science or medical related field preferred) or proven substantial project management experience. Advanced degree desirable.
EEO Disclaimer
Parexel is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to legally protected status, which in the US includes race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.
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