Blackbird - Associate Director, Patient Engagement & Insights

About Blackbird:
Blackbird is an integrated development team comprised of Clinical Development, Operations, Regulatory and Patient Engagement within Raven Venture Capital, part of RA Capital Management. Blackbird’s mission to transform clinical trial planning and execution, resulting in lower costs and expedited timelines across RA Capital’s portfolio. Blackbird provides companies with strategic, data-driven clinical study design assessments, operational optimizations, and innovative best practices to minimize inefficiencies and prevent the need to “reinvent the wheel” at each portfolio company.

The Role
As the Associate Director of Patient Engagement & Insights, you will act as a high-level consultant and architect. You will navigate the intersection of health policy, clinical R&D, and management consulting to build relationships, programs, and tools that competitively advantage our portfolio. You will be charged with mapping advocacy landscapes both in the US and abroad, maintaining relationships with both blue-chip and grassroots patient advocacy organizations and making sure our portfolio companies are able to have mutually beneficial interactions with the patient communities they aim to serve. It is expected that you will know how to leverage patient insights, have demonstrated proficiency in best practices for interacting with patients, caregivers and advocacy leaders, and are willing to test novel tactics to ensure patients are top of mind for drug developers. This is an opportunity to join a larger team that is innovating new patient advocacy and engagement tactics with the goal of leveraging patient insights to make sure new medicines are developed with the communities who need them.

Key Responsibilities
1. Portfolio Consultation & Insight Integration
 Strategic Advisory: Act as an internal consultant for portfolio companies, designing bespoke patient engagement roadmaps that align with their specific therapeutic milestones. In some cases, you will be the de facto Head of Patient Engagement at a startup biotech company.
 Protocol De-Risking: Leverage patient insights gather with best practices to translate patient and caregiver lived experiences into actionable protocol modifications that reduce participation burden and accelerate recruitment. You should also be able to operate at a meta-level and apply.
 Cross-Functional Mentorship: Embed patient-centricity within portfolio companies by training their Clinical Ops and Medical Affairs teams on how to use insights to drive business value. In some cases, you will be asked to embed directly with teams and serve as the face of the company for their respective patient communities.
 Speak the R&D Language: Proficiency in biotechnology R&D verbiage and a willingness to have a handle on the technical terms present in a clinical trial protocol. It is an expectation that you know how clinical trials are developed, executed, and completed.
2. Product, Tool & Tech Innovation
 Quantifying Impact: Develop analytical frameworks and KPIs to measure the direct impact of patient engagement on R&D timelines, cost-per-patient, and retention rates.
 Tech Stack Ownership: Lead the implementation of AI-powered technologies and digital health tools to monitor real-world patient burden and sentiment in real-time. You should also be willing to lean into AI-enabled tools beyond the typical corporate technology stack.
 Vendor Governance: Manage vendors’ day-to-day, ensuring project timelines and deliverables are being met, and escalating appropriately when vendor performance falls off-track.
 White-Space Analysis: Map the global advocacy landscape to identify engagement white spaces where Blackbird can establish first-mover advantages for its companies.
 Build Communities: Support the development, or creation, of patient advocacy groups when limited resources are available within target therapeutic areas. You should have demonstrated understanding of how patient advocacy groups function, where they can be helpful to both patients and industry, and how to make sure they are operating at their best.
 Operate at Scale: Move beyond the pipeline. The role is unique in that Blackbird works with a large portfolio of clinic-ready companies who will want to tap into our limited number of resources. You should be able to execute projects at scale that pre-competitively benefit multiple portfolio companies at once.
3. Advocacy & Policy Leadership

 Network Architecture: Build and maintain a network of Key Patient Opinion Leaders (KPOLs) and advocacy executives who can be deployed for business-critical advisory boards.
 Policy Influence: Stay ahead of the curve on FDA/EMA guidance, PDUFA VII, and health equity legislation, ensuring our portfolio companies are not just compliant, but leaders in regulatory trends.
 Thought Leadership: Represent RA Ventures or portfolio companies at major industry summits and be willing to publish insights that challenge traditional patient engagement and advocacy models.

Qualifications
Required Experience & Skills:
 7+ years of progressive experience in patient advocacy, clinical operations, or health policy within a biotech, top-tier CRO, or major advocacy organization.
 Proven Track Record: Experience designing and executing patient advisory boards, focus groups, and surveys that resulted in tangible protocol changes.
 Regulatory Fluency: Deep knowledge of Patient-Focused Drug Development (PFDD) frameworks.
 Metric-Driven Mindset: Ability to move beyond qualitative anecdotes to present quantitative "Patient ROI" investment teams and CEOs.
 Communication: Ability to pitch advocacy and engagement strategies to internal teams, senior management at portfolio companies, and vendor partners justifying spend with clear ROI on time-to-enrollment savings.
 Internal Technology: Proficiency with Microsoft office suite of tools (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), generative AI tools, and productivity tools like Notion and SmartSheet.

Preferred Experience & Skills:
 Advanced Degree: MPH, MBA, or MHA is not required, but preferred .
 Therapeutic Depth: Expertise in Rare Disease, Oncology, or Neurology/CNS is preferred by not required.
 Digital Savvy: Experience with AI-driven patient recruitment platforms or digital sentiment analysis tools.
 Venture/Startup Exposure: Experience working in high-growth, fast-paced environments where agility is a core requirement.
 Global Perspective: Experience managing advocacy relationships in both US and ex-US markets (Europe, APAC, LATAM) to support global filings.