Executive Director, Transformation Enablement & AI Adoption

The Executive Director, Transformation Enablement & AI Adoption, serves as the senior business leader responsible for accelerating adoption and realizing value from Global Clinical Development’s (GCD) transformation initiatives.

Working in close partnership with the Enterprise Strategy Office (ESO), Clinical Lighthouse program leadership, Research and Development (R&D) IT, Global Clinical Trial Operations (GCTO), Biostatistics and Research Decision Sciences (BARDS), Value and Implementation (V&I), Therapeutic Areas and Compliance functions, this role serves as the business co-lead for the GCD AI Community of Practice and lead of the GCTO AI/ Automation Hub.

The Executive Director’s focus is to accelerate and enable adoption, scale, and sustain transformational initiatives aligned to GCD Clinical Lighthouse priorities.

Primary Responsibilities:

Accelerating adoption and realizing value from GCD’s transformation initiatives:

• Accountable for establishing and sustaining the GCD AI Community of Practice as the primary mechanism for knowledge sharing, capability building, innovation scaling, and organizational learning across GCD.
• Develop and maintain forums to share use cases, lessons learned, reusable assets, prompts, agents, and best practices.
• In partnership with ESO Lighthouse leadership, drive collaboration among Lighthouse initiative leaders, Imagineers, R&D IT, and AI practitioners within BARDS, V&I, Therapeutic Areas, and other functions.
• Ensure transformation initiatives focus on measurable improvements in quality, speed, productivity, portfolio execution, and patient impact.
• Sponsor business adoption strategies that accelerate value realization and sustainable behavior change.
• Ensure visibility and transparency of transformation initiatives through community engagement, reporting, and enterprise communications; includes implementation of OneView project inventory across GCD.
• Foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, continuous improvement, and responsible AI adoption
• Support workforce readiness for AI-enabled and digitally enabled ways of working.
• Establish metrics to measure transformation adoption, proficiency growth, realization of business value, and organizational change effectiveness.
• Provide feedback from adoption metrics, user experience, and implementation outcomes to inform future Lighthouse prioritization and investment decisions.

GCTO AI/ Automation Hub Leadership:

• Lead the GCTO AI/Automation Hub as the central business capability for identifying, prioritizing, building, scaling, and sustaining AI-enabled and automation solutions that advance GCTO operational priorities.
• Provide leadership and direction for the GCTO AI/ Automation Hub and The Digital Process and Data Analysis Team, ensuring their capabilities, resources, and roadmaps are aligned to GCTO priorities and contribute meaningfully to Clinical Lighthouse objectives.
• Establish an integrated intake, prioritization, and governance model for GCTO AI and automation opportunities, with clear business ownership, stakeholder engagement, compliance review, value measurement, and adoption planning.
• Drive delivery discipline across the Hub portfolio, including roadmap management, resourcing, risk management, adoption metrics, value realization, and ongoing optimization of deployed AI and automation solutions.
• Support workforce readiness and responsible AI practices across GCTO by enabling education, hands-on experimentation, use case sharing, and consistent adoption of approved tools, agents, and automation capabilities.

• Bachelor’s degree in a scientific, healthcare, business, technology, or related discipline with a minimum of 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, healthcare, or life sciences industry, including at least 10 years of leadership experience OR
• Advanced degree (Master’s or Doctorate) with a minimum of 10 years of experience in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, healthcare, or life sciences industry, including at least 8 years of leadership experience

Required Technical/ Business Skills:

• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-scale business transformation initiatives.
• Hands-on experience with creating AI-enabled solutions, including agentic builds and technical fluency with the evolving AI capabilities.
• Proven ability to establish and scale new operating models across global organizations.
• Experience translating emerging technologies into business value and operational outcomes.
• Strong understanding of organizational change management, adoption strategy, and value realization methodologies.
• Understanding of clinical development processes and the clinical research operating environment.
• Experience governing large portfolios of strategic initiatives and investment decisions.
• Ability to define meaningful business outcomes, success metrics, and transformation KPIs.
• Experience building communities, networks, and capability development programs that accelerate organizational change.
• Demonstrated expertise in clinical development with a strong track record of leading transformation, digital, or operational excellence initiatives in regulated environment.
• Demonstrated proficiency in emerging digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, automation, advanced analytics, and agentic solutions, with the ability to translate technology capabilities into measurable business value and organizational adoption.

Non-Technical skills:

• Strong stakeholder management and collaboration capabilities, fostering trust and effective partnerships to deliver consistent, high-quality outcomes.
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to communicate with both the technical and business areas.
• Ability to role model the use of AI tools and educate leaders on use of AI for personal productivity enhancements as well as scalable solutions.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence, motivating and guiding cross-functional and virtual teams without direct reporting authority.
• Highly adaptable and resilient, able to prioritize and perform effectively under pressure in a fast-changing environment.
• Works independently with accountability, exercising sound judgment and initiative while maintaining alignment with organizational priorities.
• Effective facilitator of decision-making, coordinating the work of others and driving timely resolution of complex issues, integrating business, operational, and people dimensions into decision-making
• Fluent in English with excellent written and verbal communication skills, able to clearly convey complex or technical information to broad audiences.
• Executive influence and storytelling to Vice President/ Senior Vice President level - driving fast, well-governed decisions across complex stakeholder landscapes.
• Capability to create a high-performance, inclusive culture that attracts, develops, and retains senior talent.
• Strong ability in strategic negotiation and conflict resolution; aligning divergent priorities to enterprise outcomes and enforces clear RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed framework).
• Demonstrated ability to drive large-scale change leadership; designs communications, training, and adoption strategies to standardize ways of working globally.
• Demonstrated disciplined prioritization, focusing teams on critical metrics and initiatives that drive sustained value.

Enterprise Leadership Skills:

• Strategic Planning: Plans strategically by gathering information and identifying key issues, dependencies, and relationships critical to achieving long-range goals; commits to a course of action after developing and evaluating alternatives based on facts, available resources, constraints, and organizational values.?
• Influence: Creates and executes influence strategies that gain commitment to one’s ideas and persuade key stakeholders to take action that will advance shared interests and business goals?
• Change Catalyst: Leads change by driving the organizational and cultural shifts needed to achieve strategic priorities; catalyzes new approaches to improve results by evolving culture, systems, and services; helps others overcome resistance and adopt change., AI Enablement, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Building Capability, Building Trust, Clinical Data Management, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Digital Implementation, Digital Partnerships, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Leadership, Executive Leadership, Influencing Skills, Process Management, Strategic Objectives, Strategic Planning

We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.

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The salary range for this role is

$231,900.00 - $365,000.00

Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.