Blackbird - Senior Manager, Patient Recruitment & Insights

About Blackbird:
Blackbird is an integrated development team comprised of Clinical Development, Operations, Regulatory and Patient Engagement within Raven. Blackbird's mission is to transform clinical trial planning and
execution, resulting in lower costs and expedited timelines across RA Capital's portfolio. Blackbird provides companies with strategic, data-driven clinical study design assessments, operational optimizations, and innovative best practices to minimize inefficiencies and prevent the need to “reinvent the wheel” at each portfolio company.

The Role:

This is a hands-on, execution-focused role at the center of Blackbird's Patient-Centered Innovation team. You will be the team's utility player: partnering with the Associate Director of Patient Recruitment & Engagement and the Director of Patient Engagement & Insights to move projects from strategy to delivery across the full patient engagement lifecycle from recruitment campaigns to advocacy relationships, patient insight programs, and internal tools.

Where the senior members of the team architect strategies for portfolio companies, you will make those strategies real: developing the materials, managing the timelines, coordinating the vendors, engaging with patients and advocates, synthesizing the data, and keeping a large portfolio of concurrent workstreams on track. This is an ideal role for a rising professional who has mastered the fundamentals of clinical trial recruitment or patient engagement and wants broad, cross-functional exposure inside a venture-backed biotech ecosystem — with a clear runway to grow into strategic ownership over time.

Key Responsibilities

1. Recruitment & Enrollment Execution

• Campaign Support: Support the build-out and day-to-day management of central recruitment campaigns for portfolio company trials, including tracking referral quality, monitoring campaign performance, and flagging enrollment risks to senior team members.
• Vendor Coordination: Serve as the operational point of contact for recruitment vendors and digital marketing partners — managing timelines, deliverables, and reporting cadences under the direction of the Associate Director.
• Material Development: Draft and produce recruitment materials, advertisements, and educational resources, translating highly technical clinical trial content into clear, accessible language for patients and caregivers.
• Enrollment Tracking: Maintain dashboards and trackers that monitor enrollment velocity across the portfolio, surfacing early warning signs of trial stalls for the team to act on.

2. Engagement & Insights Support

• Patient Engagement Operations: Coordinate the logistics and execution of patient advisory boards, focus groups, and surveys — from participant scheduling and honoraria to note-taking, synthesis, and readout preparation.
• Insight Synthesis: Aggregate and summarize patient and caregiver insights into clear, actionable deliverables (briefs, slide decks, protocol recommendations) for senior team members and portfolio companies. Support landscape mapping of advocacy groups in target therapeutic areas.
• Advocacy Relationship Support: Help maintain the team's network of patient advocacy organizations and Key Patient Opinion Leaders — tracking touchpoints, preparing meeting materials, and drafting outreach and follow-up communications to keep relationships moving forward.

3. Team Operations & Special Projects

• Project Management: Own the operational backbone of the team: maintain project trackers, coordinate cross-workstream timelines, prepare status updates, and keep a high volume of concurrent portfolio requests organized and moving.
• Portfolio-Wide Deliverables: Support the creation of scalable, pre-competitive resources (toolkits, templates, playbooks) that benefit multiple portfolio companies at once.
• Research & Analysis: Conduct desk research — competitive trial landscapes, advocacy group mapping, vendor scans, regulatory updates — and package findings for team and portfolio use.
• Tool & Technology Support: Assist in piloting and administering the team's technology stack, including AI-enabled tools, recruitment platforms, and internal dashboards.

Qualifications

• Required Experience & Skills: 4–6 years of experience in clinical trial recruitment, patient engagement, patient advocacy, or clinical operations, gained within a biotech, biopharma, CRO, recruitment vendor, or advocacy organization. Industry experience is preferred.
• Execution Track Record: Demonstrated success delivering projects end-to-end — recruitment campaigns, advisory boards, patient-facing materials, or comparable workstreams — on time and with high attention to detail.
• Clinical Trial Fluency: Working knowledge of how clinical trials are designed, executed, and completed, and comfort with the technical vocabulary of a clinical protocol.
• Organizational Excellence: Proven ability to juggle multiple concurrent projects with competing deadlines, keeping stakeholders informed and workstreams unblocked.
• Communication: Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate technical content into plain language and produce polished deliverables for senior audiences.
• Internal Technology: Proficiency with the Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), generative AI tools, and productivity tools like Notion and SmartSheet.
• Work Style: Ability to work independently and manage multiple concurrent workstreams, prioritizing effectively and driving deliverables to completion with minimal oversight.

Preferred Experience & Skills:

• Advanced Degree: MPH, MBA, or MHA is not required, but preferred.
• Breadth Across Functions: Exposure to both the recruitment/operations side and the advocacy/insights side of patient engagement is a strong plus — this role deliberately spans both.
• Vendor Experience: Familiarity with recruitment platforms, patient registries, decentralized clinical trial (DCT) tools, or digital marketing analytics.
• Venture/Startup Exposure: Desire to work in high-growth, fast-paced environments where agility and a "no task too small" mindset are core requirements.
• Therapeutic Area Exposure: Experience in Rare Disease, Oncology, or Neurology/CNS is preferred but not required.