Vice President, Health Communications

About Ketchum

As a global communications consultancy with 100 years of experience, Ketchum is a trusted partner who is equal parts creative and analytical. Ketchum is a place where all perspectives and points of view are welcome and encouraged. We are a collection of communications specialists, content creators, creatives, researchers, data analysts, media pros, digital strategists, issues and crisis counselors, and tech nerds.

And we love when those worlds collide to create the very best teams and solutions for our clients. We work with the world's leading brands, emerging start-ups, and everything in between. We are beyond proud to have created some of the most celebrated and award-winning campaigns in our industry. We're just crazy enough to think we can impact the world - and how it responds to ideas - through communication.

We encourage our employees to be curious, brave, inspiring, and a force for good. Let's talk. Come belong at Ketchum!

We are looking for a Vice President (Pharma) to join our Health team!

An ideal candidate is someone with a strong background in the pharmaceutical industry, possessing the ability to provide senior counsel and strategic planning to account teams and clients. This person should be a hands‑on strategist.

Provide senior‑level account planning and serve as the strategic liaison among clients, account teams, and industry group leaders.

Act as primary client contact for client business units, continually fostering the client‑agency relationship to build trust and become a valuable resource to the client.

Demonstrate expertise and understanding of clients' marketplace and business with experience managing communications to support data and regulatory milestones.

Design and implement strategic programs and solutions, identifying and alerting teams and clients to trends.

Demonstrate strong quantitative and analytical abilities to define measurable objectives, assess campaign metrics, and report.

Demonstrate and develop presentation, negotiation, and problem‑solving skills; demonstrate ability to develop a full range of materials, including media materials, byline articles, client correspondences, and reports.

Successful track record at building and presenting new concepts and programs for clients and business development opportunities, including earned, social, and digital programming.

Collaborate with specialists across earned media, paid media, social media, strategy, creative, and more.

Encourage and create a can‑do working environment while reinforcing the importance and value of each team member's contributions.

Reinforce Ketchum values, ethics, culture, and critical success factors.

Maximize utilization of team members through effective recruitment, employee goal‑setting, appraisals, development plans, etc., in addition to working with human resources in dealing with personnel matters.

Function as a key player in pursuing new business opportunities and in leading the proposal and presentation processes.

Encourage and train account teams on developing incremental business while guiding them in how to recognize and develop new business opportunities with clients.

Stay on top of PR trends in the industry, bringing them to the attention of clients and associates.

Maintain team billability and productivity requirements; monitor for account profitability.

Work with the financial manager to ensure client budgets are comprehensive, actual costs are monitored and approved, and billed accounts receivable are collected in a timely manner.

We're looking for required skills, and they can come from any combination of education and experience. Diversity of thought and background is encouraged. Typical qualifications include:

Bachelor's degree in Communications, Public Relations, Journalism, English, Marketing or a related field preferred. Master's degree in a communications field is desirable.

At least 8+ years of experience of agency and / or corporate public relations experience.

Proficiency in using AI tools like ChatGPT for research, content creation, and task automation is required.

The salary range…