Associate Director, Patient Marketing Strategy - Neuromuscular Disease

Job Description Summary #LI-Hybrid

Help shape the patient and caregiver experience in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). As the Associate Director, Patient Marketing Strategy, you will develop and execute patient-focused marketing initiatives that support disease awareness, engagement, and launch readiness, helping translate patient, caregiver, and advocacy insights into meaningful educational and marketing programs. Working across Patient Services, Advocacy, Market Access, Medical Affairs, Customer Experience, and agency partners, you will play a key role in strengthening connections with the FSHD community, supporting treatment readiness, and building the capabilities and engagement infrastructure needed to support a successful launch and ongoing patient engagement.

This position will be located in East Hanover, NJ or Cambridge, MA and will not have the ability to be located remotely. Please note that this role would not provide relocation, and only local candidates will be considered. This position will require up to 20% travel as defined by the business (domestic and/or international).

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

• Partner with the Director, Marketing Strategy, to develop and execute an integrated patient and caregiver marketing strategy, including branded promotion, grounded in patient insights, behavioral science, advocacy partnerships, and launch-readiness priorities.
• Develop patient content, unbranded and branded campaigns, educational resources, community programs, support tools, and digital experiences that are insight-led, compliant, inclusive, and aligned to brand and disease-state strategy.
• Develop patient and caregiver disease-state education strategy to increase understanding of FSHD progression, diagnosis, genetic confirmation, care coordination, and the importance of staying connected to appropriate specialist care.
• Lead patient journey mapping, segmentation, behavioral strategy, and patient/caregiver jobs-to-be-done to identify priority barriers, moments of influence, and activation opportunities across the FSHD journey.
• Partner with advocacy organizations, patient communities, caregivers, and key community stakeholders to build trusted, compliant, and meaningful engagement that informs strategy and strengthens the FSHD ecosystem.
• Build patient activation, retention, and engagement programs that support patient re-engagement, informed conversations with healthcare providers, specialist connection, and treatment-readiness behaviors.
• Identify patient, caregiver, and system-level barriers to diagnosis, genetic confirmation, treatment adoption, access, and ongoing engagement; translate insights into clear action plans and measurable interventions.
• Collaborate closely with Patient Services, Patient Advocacy, Market Access, Medical Affairs, Communications, Legal, Regulatory, Compliance, Customer Experience, Insights & Analytics, Field, and agency partners to ensure coordinated execution.
• Define patient marketing priorities, budget needs, agency scope, launch milestones, KPIs, and optimization plans to measure belief shift, engagement, reactivation, diagnosis/genetic confirmation progress, and launch readiness.

Essential Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in related field.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in commercial marketing with either rare disease, specialty, neurology, neuromuscular, genetic testing, or complex chronic condition patient marketing experience.
• Minimum of 3 years of demonstrated experience of leveraging data, analytics, and customer insights to drive personalization at scale.
• Strong cross-functional leadership and ability to collaborate effectively with various stakeholders and teams including Product, Communications, Legal, Regulatory, Compliance and Global.
• Experience developing patient and caregiver disease-state education, unbranded and branded patient campaigns, support programs, or community engagement strategies.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with patient advocacy organizations, patient communities, caregivers, and external stakeholders in a compliant, patient-centered way.
• Experience with patient journey optimization, behavioral insight generation, segmentation, digital engagement, CRM, social/community listening, or omnichannel patient activation.
• Pre-launch and launch experience, including market shaping, patient activation, treatment-readiness planning, and cross-functional launch execution.

Desirable Requirements:

• Master of Science and/or MBA
• Multi-functional experience in pharmaceutical or healthcare

Novartis Compensation Summary:

The salary for this position is expected to range between $152,600 and $283,400 per year.

The final salary offered is determined based on factors like, but not limited to, relevant skills and experience, and upon joining Novartis will be reviewed periodically. Novartis may change the published salary range based on company and market factors.

Your compensation will include a performance-based cash incentive and, depending on the level of the role, eligibility to be considered for annual equity awards.

US-based eligible employees will receive a comprehensive benefits package that includes health, life and disability benefits, a 401(k) with company contribution and match, and a variety of other benefits. In addition, employees are eligible for a generous time off package including vacation, personal days, holidays and other leaves.

EEO Statement:

The Novartis Group of Companies are Equal Opportunity Employers. We do not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Accessibility and reasonable accommodations

The Novartis Group of Companies are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or to perform the essential functions of a position, please send an e-mail to View email address on aiapply.co or call View phone number on aiapply.co and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. Please include the job requisition number in your message.

Salary Range

$152,600.00 - $283,400.00

Skills Desired

Asset Management, Commercial Excellence, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Influencing Skills, Leadership, Operational Excellence, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Product Marketing, Stakeholder Engagement, Stakeholder Management