Director, Pharma PR (up to £110K, DOE)

Virgo Health is a specialist health communications agency, part of the GOLIN group and the wider IPG network of companies with more than 200 offices around the world as well as hubs in London, New York and Chicago. We are passionate about helping people to make better decisions around health and wellbeing. Whether it’s clinicians selecting the best treatment, patients understanding their disease better or empowering consumers to self-treat, we always make sure that the human aspect is at the heart of what we do. We work with pharmaceutical, diagnostic and consumer health companies, industry bodies, public and private health providers, as well as patient organisations. We support clients across the communications spectrum.

When we choose to work in healthcare, we choose to work in an industry with people at its heart; we celebrate our differences and how we complement each other. But at Virgo, ‘Being Human’ is what unites us, and it’s fundamental to our culture. We show empathy and support for each other to grow our skills, embracing inclusive and flexible ways of working and rejecting outdated workplace culture. We have a brilliant team that works well together to deliver effective content and to celebrate our successes.

As a Director, you will be the go-to person from clients and from teams, providing oversight and guidance, while still getting stuck in with content development and review. You will be involved in strategic planning and issues management, leading strong client relationships and delivering projects and content. You will coordinate actions, managing both up and down, to ensure we are delivering high standards of work to deadlines, ensuring strategy and insight are embedded throughout.

What will you be doing?

• Lead financial and resource management and delivery across account teams
• Drive organic growth of our clients and identify new business opportunities, bringing any opportunities to leadership team
• Recognise wider agency cross-discipline opportunities and take larger role in new business opportunities
• Role model great line management through managing mid-level team members and supporting their career development
• Coach and mentor team members as well as your direct reports to drive development and performance
• Identify and address potential issues and pre-empt solutions, being fully responsible for any issues or errors and finding ways to address them in future
• Continue to build out your leadership with ownership of the day-to-day business operations (finance, culture and client service)
• Continue to play a more of a leadership role across offices and agency as a whole, and look to build opportunities externally to raise the agency’s presence, e.g., networking events, HCA and through editorial
• Apply a high level of commercial and strategic expertise and act as a true partner to clients
• Review of high-level client and competitor materials, including Q&As, plans, reviews/evaluations and execute activations and campaigns from start to finish

What are we looking for?

• Several years’ experience in pharmaceutical PR with a good understanding of data and regulatory communications
• Experience working in an agency, particularly on global accounts
• Good organisational skills and ability to delegate effectively both up and down
• Excellent people-management and leadership skills
• Able to gain client trust and the confidence to lead client management
• Able to quickly understand and interpret scientific data, e.g. congress abstracts, and communicate them succinctly and accurately
• Good financial oversight to build and manage client budgets, playing a key role in account financial management

What do we offer?

• Competitive salary and benefits
• Flexible working
• 6 weeks annual leave
• 2 volunteering days
• Monthly well-being allowance
• A fantastic office space in Shoreditch with a dog-friendly policy
• Clear career progression and leading training programmes developed by our L&D Director