Vice President & Head of Neuroscience Portfolio Strategy & Alliances
bms
Princeton, NJ, US
Posted Sep 8, 2026
- Other
- Not Applicable
Job description
At Bristol Myers Squibb, our employees often ask, “Who are you working for?”—a question that fuels collaboration, accountability, and urgency in our work. Our purpose-driven culture inspires us to discover, develop, and deliver innovative medicines to prevail over serious diseases. We offer uniquely interesting and meaningful work, opportunities for growth, and a supportive environment that values inclusion, wellbeing, flexibility, and comprehensive benefits. This is work that transforms the lives of patients, and the careers of those who do it.
# **Position: Vice President & Head of Neuroscience Portfolio Strategy & Alliances**
# **Location:** **Princeton Pike, NJ**
# **Reporting to:** **Senior Vice President, Head of Global Medical Neuroscience**
**Working with Us**
Challenging. Meaningful. Life-changing. Those aren’t words that are usually associated with a job. But working at Bristol Myers Squibb is anything but usual. Here, uniquely interesting work happens every day, in every department. From optimizing a production line to the latest breakthroughs in cell therapy, this is work that transforms the lives of patients, and the careers of those who do it. You’ll get the chance to grow and thrive through opportunities uncommon in scale and scope, alongside high-achieving teams rich in diversity. Take your career farther than you thought possible.
Bristol Myers Squibb recognizes the importance of balance and flexibility in our work environment. We offer a wide variety of competitive benefits, services and programs that provide our employees with the resources to pursue their goals, both at work and in their personal lives. Read more: [](https://careers.bms.com/working-with-us)
**Position Summary**
**Bristol Myers Squibb is seeking an enterprise-minded leader to serve as Vice President & Head of Neuroscience Portfolio Strategy & Alliances.**
**This leader will be responsible for shaping and integrating the overarching Neuroscience portfolio strategy across neuropsychiatry and neurology, including dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases. The role will translate individual disease-area and asset strategies into clear portfolio-level choices regarding asset and indication prioritization, investment, resource allocation, sequencing, external partnerships, and enterprise positioning.**
**The leader will also lead the strategic orchestration of BMS's overarching Neuroscience and Brain Health external narrative, enterprise neuroscience congress strategy, strategic alliances, SPARC, and relevant public-private partnerships. Working across Medical, Research and Development, Commercial, Corporate Affairs, Investor Relations, Business Development, Alliance Management, and other enterprise functions, this leader will ensure that BMS presents a coherent neuroscience ambition and focuses its resources and external engagement on the opportunities with the greatest potential impact for patients.**
**This is a highly visible, matrixed leadership role requiring scientific credibility, portfolio judgment, business acumen, and the ability to align senior leaders around consequential choices.**
**Key Responsibilities**
**Integrated Neuroscience Portfolio Strategy and Prioritization**
- Lead the development and ongoing evolution of the integrated Neuroscience portfolio strategy across neuropsychiatry, dementia, and other neurodegenerative diseases, grounded in scientific opportunity, unmet patient need, clinical practice, and the external treatment landscape.
- Integrate disease-area and asset strategies into a cohesive Neuroscience portfolio ambition, identifying strategic priorities, interdependencies, portfolio gaps, evidence needs, and opportunities for differentiation.
- Bring a distinct Medical and scientific perspective to cross-portfolio assessments, including the patient journey, evolving standards of care, clinical meaningfulness, evidence requirements, external stakeholder needs, and the feasibility of changing medical practice.
- Lead cross-portfolio assessments and scenario planning to inform choices among assets, indications, evidence-generation opportunities, external collaborations, and investments.
- Develop transparent prioritization frameworks that incorporate unmet patient need, strength of scientific rationale, clinical potential, probability of success, competitive differentiation, evidence requirements, feasibility, strategic fit, and enterprise value.
- Partner with Disease Area Heads, Research, Development, Commercial, Finance, and enterprise portfolio teams to formulate recommendations regarding asset and indication prioritization, resource allocation, portfolio sequencing, acceleration, expansion, partnering, or deprioritization.
- Ensure that portfolio recommendations reflect both internal asset potential and the external realities of clinical practice, patient needs, scientific advancement, and the evolving competitive environment.
- Reassess portfolio priorities as scientific evidence, development milestones, clinical practice, competitive conditions, external opportunities, and enterprise priorities evolve.
- Provide the Neuroscience Leadership Team and relevant governance bodies with clear, decision-ready recommendations, including the scientific and medical rationale, patient implications, strategic trade-offs, risks, and resource requirements.
**Neuroscience and Brain Health Scientific Narrative and External Medical Strategy**
- Lead the development of the overarching Neuroscience and Brain Health scientific narrative, connecting BMS's disease areas, assets, scientific platforms, evidence, partnerships, and patient priorities into a coherent expression of the company's scientific ambition.
- Ensure that the narrative is scientifically rigorous, clinically relevant, patient-centered, and appropriately grounded in the maturity and evidence supporting the portfolio.
- Define the core scientific and medical themes that should guide BMS Neuroscience engagement with healthcare professionals, researchers, scientific societies, patient and advocacy communities, academic institutions, consortia, and other health-system stakeholders.
- Partner with Disease Area Heads and asset teams to ensure that individual disease and asset narratives contribute to—and remain consistent with—the broader Neuroscience and Brain Health scientific strategy.
- Identify scientific, evidence, and external-understanding gaps that could limit differentiation of the Neuroscience portfolio and work with the appropriate teams to address them.
- Translate the scientific narrative into clear strategic guidance for scientific exchange, evidence generation, publications, medical education, congress engagement, partnerships, and other external Medical activities.
- Partner with Corporate Affairs to ensure that the scientific and medical foundations of the portfolio are accurately reflected in the broader enterprise Neuroscience narrative and external communications.
- Provide scientific and medical context to Investor Relations, Commercial, Government Affairs, and other functions while respecting their ownership of investor communications, brand positioning, policy engagement, communications channels, and functional execution.
- Ensure that insights generated through external scientific and patient engagement inform the ongoing evolution of the Neuroscience portfolio strategy and scientific narrative.
**Enterprise Neuroscience Congress Strategy and Oversight**
- Own the overarching enterprise congress strategy for Neuroscience across priority global, US, and regional scientific meetings.
- Establish the Neuroscience congress portfolio, including congress tiering, investment priorities, enterprise objectives, target audiences, expected outcomes, and leadership engagement.
- Convene and align Medical, Development, Commercial, Corporate Affairs, Investor Relations, Congress Excellence, and other relevant teams around an integrated strategy for major neuroscience congresses.
- Ensure that scientific disclosures, medical education, external engagement, executive participation, media activity, investor communications, competitive intelligence, and partnership discussions collectively advance the portfolio strategy and Neuroscience narrative.
- Provide strategic oversight across congresses to prevent fragmented asset-level execution and ensure appropriate balance across current brands, pipeline assets, disease areas, and longer-term scientific ambition.
- Establish clear pre-congress objectives and post-congress reviews, ensuring that scientific, competitive, stakeholder, and partnering insights are translated into portfolio actions.
- Represent BMS Neuroscience in select high-level scientific forums, leadership meetings, and external engagements, as appropriate.
**Strategic Alliances and External Engagement**
- Define the Neuroscience alliance and external-engagement strategy based on portfolio priorities, capability gaps, scientific opportunities, and patient needs.
- Identify where alliances with academia, biotechnology companies, industry partners, foundations, advocacy organizations, consortia, and other external stakeholders could accelerate or strengthen the portfolio.
- Serve as the Neuroscience strategic sponsor or senior representative for selected high-priority alliances and collaborations.
- Partner with Business Development, Alliance Management, Research and Development, Legal, Finance, and other functions to evaluate opportunities and establish appropriate strategic objectives, governance, performance measures, and decision pathways.
- Ensure that alliance activity is connected to defined portfolio needs rather than pursued as a collection of independent external relationships.
- Conduct regular strategic reviews of priority alliances to assess scientific progress, portfolio relevance, value realization, risks, and the need to expand, modify, or conclude the collaboration.
- Ensure that knowledge and capabilities generated through alliances are integrated into Neuroscience strategy and internal decision-making.
**SPARC Leadership and Strategic Oversight**
- Provide strategic oversight of SPARC within Neuroscience, ensuring that its priorities and activities are aligned with the broader Neuroscience portfolio and Brain Health ambition.
- Define the role SPARC should play in advancing scientific collaboration, stakeholder engagement, patient impact, and solutions to system-level barriers in neuroscience.
- Establish clear objectives, governance, measures of impact, and connections between SPARC activities and BMS's disease-area and portfolio strategies.
- Ensure that SPARC generates actionable insights, relationships, and initiatives that can inform portfolio strategy, evidence generation, external engagement, and public-private collaboration.
- Represent SPARC internally and externally and ensure appropriate engagement from senior BMS leaders and external partners.
**Public-Private and Precompetitive Partnerships**
- Identify and shape public-private and precompetitive partnerships capable of advancing the broader neuroscience ecosystem in areas such as biomarkers, diagnosis, clinical-trial infrastructure, data standards, disease understanding, patient identification, and research methods.
- Evaluate potential partnerships based on their alignment with portfolio priorities, scientific value, patient impact, feasibility, and the distinctive contribution BMS can make.
- Serve as a senior BMS representative in selected national and international partnerships, consortia, and multilateral initiatives.
- Partner with relevant enterprise functions to establish fit-for-purpose governance, funding principles, performance measures, and decision pathways.
- Ensure that participation in public-private partnerships produces clear scientific, strategic, ecosystem, or patient value and that resulting insights are incorporated into internal strategy.
**Strategic Intelligence and Portfolio Insights**
- Integrate scientific, clinical, competitive, market, stakeholder, policy, and partnership intelligence into Neuroscience portfolio decision-making.
- Identify emerging scientific advances, external assets, technologies, policy developments, and changes in standards of care that could create opportunities or risks for the portfolio.
- Develop concise executive perspectives on the implications of external developments for BMS's portfolio, investment priorities, partnerships, and external positioning.
- Ensure that insights from congresses, alliances, SPARC, scientific leaders, patient organizations, and other external stakeholders are systematically captured and translated into action.
**Enterprise Leadership and Organizational Impact**
- Serve as a senior strategic partner to the SVP, Head of Global Medical Neuroscience, the Neuroscience Leadership Team, and enterprise leaders involved in Neuroscience.
- Chair or lead appropriate cross-functional portfolio, alliance, external-strategy, and congress governance forums.
- Create clarity regarding decisions, recommendations, ownership, execution responsibilities, and escalation pathways across the matrix.
- Lead and develop a high-performing team with capabilities spanning portfolio strategy, strategic alliances, external engagement, and enterprise integration.
- Foster a culture of scientific rigor, transparency, constructive challenge, disciplined prioritization, and accountability for outcomes.
- Represent the broader interests of the Neuroscience portfolio, balancing individual asset and functional priorities with what will generate the greatest impact for patients and BMS.
**Decision Scope**
The Leader is accountable for:
- Developing the integrated Neuroscience portfolio strategy.
- Leading portfolio-level prioritization and resource-allocation recommendations.
- Establishing the strategic architecture of the Neuroscience and Brain Health narrative.
- Defining the enterprise Neuroscience congress strategy.
- Establishing the Neuroscience alliance and external-engagement strategy.
- Providing strategic oversight of SPARC and neuroscience public-private partnerships.
- Convening the appropriate functions and ensuring that portfolio decisions translate into coordinated execution.
Formal investment, development, business-development, disclosure, communication, and resource decisions will continue to follow established BMS governance and functional decision rights.
**Qualifications & Experience**
- Advanced clinical, scientific, or relevant technical degree required; MD, PhD, PharmD, or equivalent strongly preferred. MBA or demonstrated equivalent business and portfolio experience is desirable.
- Typically 15 or more years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, with substantial leadership experience in one or more of the following: portfolio strategy, neuroscience research and development, Medical Affairs, commercial strategy, business development, strategic alliances, or enterprise strategy.
- Strong understanding of neuroscience drug development and the scientific, clinical, regulatory, access, and adoption challenges affecting neuropsychiatric and neurological diseases.
- Demonstrated experience making or shaping portfolio choices across multiple assets, indications, development stages, or disease areas.
- Proven ability to evaluate strategic trade-offs and translate scientific and clinical complexity into clear investment and resource-allocation recommendations.
- Experience leading enterprise-level strategy across multiple functions in a global, highly matrixed organization.
- Demonstrated success developing or governing strategic alliances, external collaborations, consortia, or public-private partnerships.
- Experience shaping an external scientific or portfolio narrative and aligning diverse internal stakeholders around consistent enterprise positioning.
- Experience leading integrated strategy for major scientific congresses or similarly complex, high-visibility external platforms is strongly preferred.
- Strong financial and business acumen, including experience evaluating investment options, opportunity costs, resource requirements, risks, and expected value.
- Exceptional executive communication, judgment, and influencing skills, including the ability to challenge constructively and create alignment among senior leaders with different functional priorities.
- Established scientific credibility and the ability to build trusted relationships with researchers, clinicians, patient leaders, policymakers, external partners, and other senior stakeholders.
- Demonstrated commitment to patient-centered innovation, scientific integrity, inclusive leadership, and the development of high-performing teams.
**Measures of Success**
Success in this role will be demonstrated by:
- A clear and consistently applied Neuroscience portfolio strategy that enables explicit choices across assets, indications, partnerships, and resources.
- Faster, more transparent, and better-integrated portfolio decision-making.
- A coherent and credible BMS Neuroscience and Brain Health narrative understood across internal and external stakeholders.
- Enterprise neuroscience congress strategies that generate defined scientific, reputational, stakeholder, competitive, and business outcomes.
- A focused portfolio of alliances and public-private partnerships with measurable strategic and patient value.
- SPARC priorities and activities that are visibly connected to the Neuroscience strategy and produce actionable impact.
- Strong alignment among Medical, Development, Commercial, Corporate Affairs, Investor Relations, Business Development, and other enterprise partners.
*If you come across a role that intrigues you but doesn’t perfectly line up with your resume, we encourage you to apply anyway. You could be one step away from work that will transform your life and career.*
**Uniquely Interesting Work, Life-changing Careers**
With a single vision as inspiring as “Transforming patients’ lives through science™ ”, every BMS employee plays an integral role in work that goes far beyond ordinary. Each of us is empowered to apply our individual talents and unique perspectives in an inclusive culture, promoting diversity in clinical trials, while our shared values of passion, innovation, urgency, accountability, inclusion and integrity bring out the highest potential of each of our colleagues.
**On-site Protocol**
BMS has a diverse occupancy structure that determines where an employee is required to conduct their work. This structure includes site-essential, site-by-design, field-based and remote-by-design jobs. The occupancy type that you are assigned is determined by the nature and responsibilities of your role:
Site-essential roles require 100% of shifts onsite at your assigned facility. Site-by-design roles may be eligible for a hybrid work model with at least 50% onsite at your assigned facility. For these roles, onsite presence is considered an essential job function and is critical to collaboration, innovation, productivity, and a positive Company culture. For field-based and remote-by-design roles the ability to physically travel to visit customers, patients or business partners and to attend meetings on behalf of BMS as directed is an essential job function.
BMS is dedicated to ensuring that people with disabilities can excel through a transparent recruitment process, reasonable workplace accommodations/adjustments and ongoing support in their roles. Applicants can request a reasonable workplace accommodation/adjustment prior to accepting a job offer. If you require reasonable accommodations/adjustments in completing this application, or in any part of the recruitment process, direct your inquiries to [adastaffingsupport@bms.com](https://myplace.bms.com/personal/danielle_francisco_bms_com/Documents/Documents/Talent%20Attraction%20Brand/Launch%20Plan/Assets/Job%20Descriptions/FINAL/Final%20Versions%20in%20DAM/FINAL%20for%20Workday/Final%20Versions/adastaffingsupport@bms.com). Visit [