*Important Note*

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will collaborate with Egon Zehnder in the search for a stellar candidate to take up this exciting and challenging appointment. Should you wish to apply for this position, we kindly ask you to submit your CV for consideration via clare.song@egonzehnder.com and lynn.shao@egonzehnder.com. For questions, please contact Clare Song and Lynn Shao.

Applications received through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Careers site will not be reviewed.

Position Summary

Lead team members in the management of portfolios of foundation investments and provide oversight to 50+ external partners globally in a wide array of scientific, innovation, and health expertise areas to ensure measurable progress. As part of this responsibility, this role will lead all aspects of relationships with grantees, contractors and key partners to achieve the foundation's desired impact in a clear and measurable way, including but not limited to providing scientific oversight and strategic guidance. This role also needs to provide scientific project briefings, updates and recommendations to foundation leadership.

Core Responsibilities

Lead the development of an annual strategy across the entire healthcare value chain often with high degree of scientific sophistication, e.g. drug, vaccine and diagnostics R&D, regulatory capacity building, TB delivery transformation, Africa/GMS country engagement on Malaria, primary health systems and insurance reform, and R&D advocacy.

For example, support the ramp up of GHDDI to reach the full capacity and become the epicenter for GH R&D in China and the link to Gates Medical Research Institute. Improve clinical trial capacity to accelerate drug and vaccine clinical development for infectious diseases; support the development of new mechanism to set drug/vaccine pricing and advocate for reimbursement by health protection bureau.

Manage investment plans and budgets, develop, modify and implement strategy. Work with foundation leadership as requested to address cross-cutting issues and improve functions and performance such as:

• Answering key strategic issues like expanding the support for health regulatory system on Pharmacovigilance (PV) by considering pharmacovigilance plans to support specialized expertise and technology to put in place the PV information system that allows E2B R(3) standard data collection, design and put the in-house PV system in use, conduct research and pilot “regulatory cloud” platform to facilitate lifecycle safety monitoring, product improvement, label revision, and other PV policy making.
• Strengthening evidence-based inclusion of new vaccines into China's national immunization program.
• Building on strength in surveillance and response system, we expect a significant opportunity could be in comprehensive surveillance (parasites, mosquitoes, people), working with country programs (CHAMPS, COMSA, Africa CDC) thus linking malaria strengths and agenda to broader surveillance and global health security initiatives.
• Developing an innovative program to improve the quality and affordability of TB services provided by hospitals and to incorporate hospitals into the TB control network.
• Innovating on TB prevention which include new tools, delivery systems, and financing for TB.
• Supporting the development of a health technology mechanism in China to facilitate smooth transition of our R&D pipeline to product introduction into the market.
• Integrate the downstream delivery work in country, including primary healthcare and health insurance related work stream across TB and poverty alleviation.
• Facilitating the building of platforms for China’s global health engagement globally, including China African corporation, China – GMS collaboration for Malaria and other multilateral mechanisms.

Provide strategic guidance in crafting grants and contracts that require complex research or analytics. Handle global measurement, evaluation, and modeling activities to ensure good investment decisions and portfolio trade-offs using tools like Health Technology Assessments (HTA) (e.g., Prevention of Cervical Cancer in China: A Health Technology Assessment; or establishing a health technology mechanism and the HTA reports (PCV, HPV, TB diagnostics).

Accountable for the identification and assessment of key health, innovation and scientific portfolio risks, and the development and management of mitigation/contingency plans at the portfolio level.

Advise, mentor, and support colleagues within the foundation and their grantees in the design, enhancement, and execution of project, initiatives and engagements on grants designed to address key scientific questions like isolation and functional characterization of fully human protective antibodies against tuberculosis, using biomarkers to predict TB treatment duration, structural-based design of HIV vaccine targeting the native conformation of neutralizing epitopes in gp41 MPER, structure-based vaccine design against HIV-1.

Manage partnerships and grantee relationships to achieve impact, for example, by conducting site visits, convening meetings of key partners, monitoring and evaluating components of grants.

Serve as a highly experienced foundation global spokesperson on industry engagement priorities and related issues internally to foundation Co-chairs and leadership and externally to industry and global health partners (e.g., Engage stakeholder and public to enhance understanding of vaccine and improve vaccine confidence).

This role manages people and is responsible for hiring talent needed to achieve our goals, ensuring successful employee onboarding, communicating performance expectations, creating goal alignment, integrating project and change management, giving and seeking feedback, providing coaching, measuring progress and holding people accountable, supporting employee development, and recognizing achievement and lessons learned.

This role is a member of the China Leadership Team.

Leadership and Culture

We believe that energized people, working well together, fueled by great leadership in an inclusive environment in which they thrive, will do phenomenal things.

Core Knowledge and Skills

• Shown ability to lead and influence others. Demonstrated ability to work with efficiency, diplomacy, and flexibility particularly as part of a team. Experience working on teams with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds.
• Knowledge of international development policy and the key issues at a global level.
• Experience in strategic planning and strategy implementation, especially in life science and medical fields, often with high level of complexity and sophistication.
• Demonstrated excellence in scientific writing and data analysis, written and oral communication skills, and experience advocating and communicating with a broad and diverse audience.
• Experience in a role requiring collaboration in a complex organization and working with external organizations.
• Fluency in both English and Chinese.

Education and Experience

• Advanced degree (biology, chemistry, public health, etc.) with 10+ years of senior level experience and leadership roles.

Reports to: Director, China Program

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We’re committed to creating a workplace where employees thrive both personally and professionally. We also believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve—in race, gender, age, cultures and beliefs—and we support this diversity through all of our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve the mission of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to:

• Race
• Color
• Age
• Religion
• Pregnancy
• Sex
• Sexual Orientation
• Disability
• Gender Identity
• Gender Expression
• National Origin
• Genetic Information
• Veteran Status
• Marital Status
• Prior Protected Activity