Senior Director, Strategy & Business Planning - Evernorth Health Services - Hybrid

Job description

​ Position Summary The Senior Director, Strategy & Business Planning is a critical leadership role supporting the Payer & Strategic Markets organization. This leader will be responsible for planning discipline, financial insight, market awareness, client connectivity, and cross-functional alignment needed to drive growth, retention, operational effectiveness, and long-term business performance. Reporting to the Managing Director, Growth & Strategy, this leader will drive strategic planning, business performance, forecasting, and cross-functional execution across the organization, ensuring priorities are aligned. Through partnering with key stakeholders, this role will be accountable in evaluating opportunities for efficiencies, informing critical decisions, and effectively translating strategy into measurable outcomes. Success in this role requires a forward-looking, trusted people leader with strong business and financial acumen, executive presence, and the ability to build alignment across a highly matrixed environment. This leader must balance strategic perspective with execution discipline—connecting market trends, competitive intelligence, client insights, and enterprise priorities to anticipate future needs, shape growth opportunities, evolve capabilities, and deliver measurable impact. Successful candidates will demonstrate: • Proven people leader with experience building strong teams, fostering shared accountability, and delivering measurable results. • Strong executive presence, communication judgment, and ability to influence senior leaders and cross-functional partners in a complex, matrixed environment. • Strategic thinker who connects business priorities, financial performance, client insights, market dynamics, and operational needs into clear recommendations and action plans. • Forward-looking leader who monitors market, competitive, client, and business signals to identify risks, opportunities, and future capability needs. • Balanced decision-maker with the financial discipline and business judgment to weigh growth, investment, efficiency, expense management, and operational priorities. • Relationship-oriented leader who builds credibility, creates alignment, and moves work from activity completion to meaningful business impact. Key Responsibilities • Lead strategic and business planning across Payer & Strategic Markets, connecting divisional priorities, financial performance, growth opportunities, and execution plans. • Partner with senior leaders and key stakeholders to set priorities, assess opportunities and risks, monitor progress, and drive accountability for measurable business outcomes. • Lead and develop a team supporting business planning, growth enablement, client-facing activities, RFP support, and strategic initiatives. • Support health plan new sales, renewals, sub-client RFP activity, client retention, and divisional growth strategies. • Drive forecasting, business performance reviews, strategic planning routines, and executive reporting to identify opportunities, risks, resource needs, and investment priorities. • Partner with Finance and internal stakeholders to evaluate performance, resource allocation, workforce planning, expense management, growth opportunities, and financial tradeoffs. • Monitor market events, competitive intelligence, regulatory developments, client trends, and industry changes to identify emerging opportunities and risks. • Synthesize client, renewal, RFP, market, and stakeholder insights into actionable recommendations for prioritization, service development, growth strategy, and operating model improvement. • Build strong divisional and enterprise partnerships to align diverse perspectives, balance efficiency and growth, and accelerate business impact. • Develop executive presentations, business cases, strategic recommendations, and decision-support materials for senior leadership. • Lead governance and operating routines that improve visibility, alignment, accountability, and execution of key priorities. • Identify opportunities to simplify processes, improve scalability, strengthen organizational effectiveness, and enhance overall business performance. Qualifications • Bachelor’s degree required; 10+ years of progressive experience in strategy, business planning, finance, operations, consulting, healthcare, client strategy, growth, or related business leadership roles. • Proven people leadership experience, including leading and developing teams responsible for strategic, operational, growth, client-facing, or business development work. • Demonstrated ability to influence outcomes across senior leaders, cross-functional partners, and matrixed teams while leading complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives. • Strong business and financial acumen, including experience with forecasting, business performance management, resource planning, investment decisions, and business case development. • Executive-level communication, presentation, relationship management, decision-support, and synthesis skills, with the ability to translate complex information into clear recommendations and action plans. Preferred Qualifications • MBA or relevant advanced degree; healthcare, payer, PBM, health plan, regulated markets, government programs, or related industry experience. • Experience supporting growth, retention, sales enablement, account management, RFP strategy, client strategy, market development, or related business functions. • Experience partnering across Finance, Growth, Operations, Product, Pricing, Compliance, Marketing, Clinical, or client-facing teams. • Experience using market trends, competitive intelligence, client insights, or business performance data to inform strategy, prioritization, service development, organizational effectiveness, operating model evolution, workforce planning, or business transformation If you will be working at home occasionally or permanently, the internet connection must be obtained through a cable broadband