Product Strategist, Consultant - Small Business

Product Strategist, Consultant

The Product Strategy team drives product strategy development and execution for the Small Business market. The role reports to the Senior Manager, Product Strategy.

The Product Strategist, Consultant supports the assigned lines of business, translating market insights, business objectives, customer needs, and regulatory requirements into actionable product strategies. This role is responsible for portfolio direction, product roadmaps, and strategic recommendations that drive growth, retention, affordability, and member experience.

Our leadership model is about developing great leaders at all levels and creating opportunities for our people to grow personally, professionally, and financially. We are looking for leaders that are energized by creative and critical thinking, building and sustaining high-performing teams, getting results the right way, and fostering continuous learning.

Responsibilities

In this role, you will:

Strategic Support and Planning:

• Support the development, maintenance, and execution of product portfolio strategy, roadmap development, and prioritization for assigned lines of business.
• Translate strategic direction into actionable initiatives, business requirements, and implementation plans that support portfolio objectives.
• Identify opportunities to improve growth, retention, operating income, member experience, and affordability.
• Evaluate market trends, emerging customer needs, competitive activity, and regulatory developments to inform strategic recommendations.
• Recommend product enhancements, modifications, new offerings, or product exits.
• Establish success metrics and monitor performance against strategic objectives.
• Present product recommendations, business cases, tradeoffs, and risks to senior leadership.

Portfolio Management and Execution:

• Manage the day-to-day maintenance of assigned product portfolios, including strategic, regulatory, and market-driven updates to product designs, benefits, cost shares, and customer experience offerings.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for product cycle activities, coordinating cross-functional stakeholders to ensure portfolio activities remain aligned with approved strategies, business objectives, and implementation timelines.
• Monitor portfolio performance, market trends, regulatory developments, and customer feedback to identify opportunities for product enhancements and provide recommendations to leadership.
• Coordinate portfolio governance and execution activities, including preparing materials, documenting decisions, tracking dependencies, and ensuring initiatives progress through established governance and decision-making processes.
• Prepare strategic initiatives for implementation and support post-launch monitoring by ensuring accurate product information across systems, filings, communications, and operational processes while identifying and addressing performance or implementation issues.

Regulatory Filings & Compliance:

• Serve as the Product Strategy lead for annual regulatory filing activities, ensuring key deadlines, requirements, and milestones are met.
• Evaluate regulatory changes, emerging mandates, and policy developments to identify risks, opportunities, and impacts to product strategy.
• Partner with Legal, Regulatory, Actuarial, Product Consultants, and filing teams to ensure product strategies, plan designs, and supporting materials are compliant, accurate, and market competitive.
• Identify and escalate filing risks, compliance concerns, operational impacts, and timeline challenges, providing recommendations and executive-ready status updates to leadership.
• Maintain institutional knowledge of filing requirements, processes, and historical decisions while supporting regulatory reviews, discussions, and strategic recommendations throughout the filing cycle.

Competitive Intelligence and Market Analysis:

• Lead market assessments and competitive research efforts for assigned portfolios.
• Evaluate competitor products, pricing strategies, networks, benefit offerings, and market positioning.
• Identify emerging trends, market opportunities, customer demands, and industry disruptions.
• Conduct scenario planning and assess impacts of competitive and market changes.
• Develop strategic recommendations and business cases supported by market insights and performance data.
• Present competitive intelligence findings and implications to leadership and stakeholders.

Operational and Issue Management

• Identify and help resolve operational issues impacting the portfolio
• Own risk and issue resolution management, including cross-functional meetings, risk mitigation and corrective action plans, and status reporting.
• Coordinate across teams to drive timely resolution and escalate risks as needed
• Identify and support development of processes and controls to prevent recurring issues

Qualifications

Your Knowledge and Experience

• Requires bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
• Requires at least 7 years of experience in product strategy, product management, portfolio management, health plan products, or related fields
• Requires experience developing product strategies, roadmaps, and business cases
• Requires deep understanding of health plan products, market dynamics, and regulatory environments
• Requires extensive knowledge of ACA guidelines and health plan product management; experience with Small Business markets strongly preferred
• Demonstrated experience in project management
• Demonstrates strong ownership and problem-solving in ambiguous situations
• Proven ability to translate complexity into action
• Strong analytical, strategic thinking, and problem-solving abilities
• Demonstrated ability to influence stakeholders and lead cross-functional initiatives
• Excellent executive communication and presentation skills
• Experience with competitive intelligence, financial analysis, and strategic planning

Hybrid

This role requires employees to be in-office based on our hybrid workplace model, balancing purposeful in-person collaboration with flexibility. For most teams, this means coming into the office two days each week.

Employees living more than 50 miles from an office location will work with their manager to determine in-office time based on business need.

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About Us

About Blue Shield of California

As of January 2025, Blue Shield of California became a subsidiary of Ascendiun. Ascendiun is a nonprofit corporate entity that is the parent to a family of organizations including Blue Shield of California and its subsidiary, Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan; Altais, a clinical services company; and Stellarus, a company designed to scale healthcare solutions. Together, these organizations are referred to as the Ascendiun Family of Companies.

At Blue Shield of California, our mission is to create a healthcare system worthy of our family and friends and sustainably affordable. We are transforming health care in a way that genuinely serves our nonprofit mission by lowering costs, improving quality, and enhancing the member and physician experience.

To achieve our mission, we foster an environment where all employees can thrive and contribute fully to address the needs of the various communities we serve. We are committed to creating and maintaining a supportive workplace that upholds our values and advances our goals.

Blue Shield is a U.S. News Best Company to work for, a Deloitte U.S. Best Managed Company and a Top 100 Inspiring Workplace. We were recognized by Fair360 as a Top Regional Company, and one of the 50 most community-minded companies in the United States by Points of Light. Here at Blue Shield, we strive to make a positive change across our industry and communities join us!

Our Values:

• Honest. We hold ourselves to the highest ethical and integrity standards. We build trust by doing what we say we're going to do and by acknowledging and correcting where we fall short.
• Human. We strive to listen and communicate effectively, showing empathy by understanding others' perspectives.
• Courageous. We stand up for what we believe in and are committed to the hard work necessary to achieve our ambitious goals.

Our Workplace Model

• For most teams, this means coming into the office two days per week.
• Employees living more than 50 miles from an office location, out of state employees, and employees in certain member-facing roles should work with their manager to determine in-office time based on business need.
• For employees with medical conditions that may impact their ability to work in-office, we are committed to engaging in an interactive process and providing reasonable accommodations to ensure their work environment is conducive to their success and well-being.

The Company reserves the right to require more presence in the office based on business needs, and requirements are subject to change with periodic reviews.

Physical Requirements:

Office Environment - roles involving part to full time schedule in Office Environment. Based in our physical offices and work from home office/deskwork - Activity level: Sedentary, frequency