Head of Patient Recruitment
Description
Our client is a well-funded and rapidly scaling clinical-stage biotech company developing innovative therapies for patients with serious and underserved rare diseases. The organization is entering an important new chapter of clinical advancement and organizational growth: advancing multiple programs through later-stage development while simultaneously broadening its pipeline and building the infrastructure of a maturing biotechnology company.
They are now seeking an experienced, patient-centric leader to serve as Head of Patient Recruitment and Retention. This person will establish and lead a new specialized function dedicated to optimizing patient recruitment, engagement, and retention across its expanding clinical portfolio. This newly created leadership position will have enterprise-wide responsibility for developing and executing innovative, patient-centric strategies that accelerate clinical trial enrollment, improve retention, and reduce barriers to participation across the company’s portfolio. This is a highly visible opportunity for an experienced patient recruitment leader to build the function and strategy rather than inherit an established model, while directly influencing the successful development of potentially transformative therapies for patients with significant unmet medical needs.
For an experienced clinical trial recruitment and patient engagement leader who combines strategic vision/thinking with a strong willingness to operate hands-on in a rapidly growing biotech environment, this represents a rare/compelling opportunity to establish a critical capability from the ground up while directly influencing the speed and success with which potentially meaningful new therapies reach patients.
Location
Boston Area
Features
ATTRACTIVE FEATURES ABOUT THIS POSITION AND COMPANY:
- Unique “Ground-Floor” Strategic & Hands-on Opportunity: As the company's first dedicated leader focused on Patient Recruitment & Retention, you will establish and define the strategy, capabilities, partnerships, processes for this critical new function and recruitment engine that serves a whole franchise.
- Perfect Time to Join: With an advancing clinical portfolio and increasing organizational scale, the company is investing in specialized capabilities that can strengthen clinical execution today while creating infrastructure for the future.
- Architect of a New Specialized Function: Rather than stepping into someone else's model, you will have meaningful latitude to define the company's approach to Patient Recruitment & Retention and build the capabilities necessary to support its future
- Best of Both Worlds: Join a company which offers a rare combination of biotech upside / high-impact/ entrepreneurial feel, as well as pipeline breadth / strong financing / financial runway.
- High Impact & Visibility: Take on a highly visible role with direct influence on some of the company's most important clinical development priorities. Working across an advancing portfolio that includes increasingly complex global clinical programs, you will have significant ownership and visibility in shaping how the organization identifies, reaches, recruits, and retains patients in its clinical trials.
- Differentiated Pipeline of 1st-in-class assets: Many of the company's programs involve rare and underserved patient populations that require thoughtful, innovative approaches to patient identification, referral, engagement, and retention.
Responsibilities
- Serve as the company’s internal subject-matter expert for patient recruitment, engagement, and retention, providing strategic guidance to program and study teams during protocol design and feasibility.
- Develop, own, and execute the patient recruitment and retention strategies across the company’s clinical development portfolio (early-stage to late/pivotal programs).
- Translate clinical development plans and enrollment objectives into comprehensive, indication-specific recruitment and retention strategies.
- Develop proactive enrollment plans based on disease epidemiology, patient populations, geographic considerations, site capabilities, competitive trial landscapes, and patient journeys.
- Develop innovative/proactive/data-driven recruitment strategies and creative approaches for rare and difficult-to-identify patient populations where traditional recruitment approaches may not be sufficient.
- Diagnose enrollment challenges and implement creative solutions that materially improve recruitment performance.
- Develop a deep understanding of patient journeys, referral pathways, diagnostic challenges, treatment patterns, and barriers to clinical trial participation.
- Partner closely with Clinical Operations, Clinical Development, Biostatistics, Patient Advocacy, Medical Affairs, and other functions to ensure that the patient perspective is incorporated throughout clinical trial planning and execution, and to assess protocol feasibility and identify eligibility criteria or visit burdens that may affect enrollment or retention.
- Design and oversee multi-channel recruitment campaigns, including digital, social media, patient advocacy, referral networks, and site-level outreach.
- Help establish scalable processes, capabilities, and infrastructure as the clinical portfolio expands.
- Develop proactive recruitment forecasts, KPIs, dashboards, and leading indicators that enable the organization to identify enrollment risks early and intervene before they impact development timelines.
Qualifications / Requirements
DESIRED BACKGROUND & EXPERIENCE:
- Bachelor’s degree in life sciences, health sciences or related field.
- 10+ years of relevant and progressive clinical operations/trial management experience – with a focus on patient recruitment and retention – for a pharmaceutical and/or biotech company.
- Experience building or scaling patient recruitment capabilities within a growing organization.
- Proven capability of developing an enterprise recruitment strategy while personally driving execution as necessary; a strategic thinker who can also roll up their sleeves to execute.
- Experience with rare disease, hematology, bleeding disorders or other complex specialty development areas involving small and difficult-to-identify patient populations that require highly targeted strategies.
- Experience supporting late-stage and/or pivotal clinical trials with meaningful enrollment timelines and operational complexity.
- Deep understanding of patient recruitment methodologies, site engagement, referral pathways, patient advocacy organizations, digital recruitment, and patient-support solutions.
- Demonstrated ability to diagnose enrollment challenges and implement creative solutions that materially improve recruitment performance.
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