Specialist US Medical Affairs Congress Planner

Specialist, US Medical Affairs Congress Planner

Do you want to be part of an inclusive team that works to develop innovative therapies for patients? Every day, we are driven to develop and deliver innovative and effective new medicines to patients and physicians. If you want to be part of this exciting work, you belong at Astellas!

Astellas Pharma Inc. is a pharmaceutical company conducting business in more than 70 countries around the world. We are committed to turning innovative science into medical solutions that bring value and hope to patients and their families. Keeping our focus on addressing unmet medical needs and conducting our business with ethics and integrity enables us to improve the health of people throughout the world. For more information on Astellas, please visit our website at www.astellas.com.

This position is based in Northbrook, Illinois. Hybrid work from certain states may be permitted in accordance with Astellas' Responsible Flexibility Guidelines. Candidates interested in hybrid work are encouraged to apply.

Purpose:

The Specialist, US Medical Excellence will be a team member of the US Medical Education and Communication team focusing specifically on the medical aspect of congresses and external meetings. The Specialist is accountable for leading MA-US congress strategy and scientific engagement planning, ensuring Astellas has an aligned, compliant, high-impact presence at priority congresses ensuring medical independence. This role builds and operationalizes a future-forward congress strategy that strengthens scientific exchange, elevates MA credibility, enables Field Medical, and ensures coordination across internal stakeholders.

This position owns MA-US congress strategy and ensures a congress program is well-governed, measurable, execution-ready, and aligned to pipeline evolution and medical priorities.

Essential Job Responsibilities:

External Engagement Strategy & Planning

• This role also helps to ensure that MA-US external engagement at meetings is not just "attendance," but a deliberate, governed, and value-driven medical strategy channel.
• Support MA-US external engagement planning across priority scientific forums, external meetings, and congresses
• Ensure external engagement plans align with MA-US objectives, scientific priorities, and stakeholder needs
• Drive year-round readiness by applying a consistent approach to external engagement planning, execution coordination, and outcomes capture

External Engagement

• This role is responsible for enabling MA-US to show up externally with consistency, quality, and scientific credibility by supporting:
• Strategic external meeting planning (beyond logistics), ensuring MA-US engagement objectives are defined and measurable
• Coordination of MA-US external engagement activities at external meetings, including scientific exchange enablement and presence planning
• Stakeholder engagement readiness, including ensuring the right medical resources, roles, and support materials are aligned for external engagement
• Engagement optimization, leveraging post-meeting insights, feedback, and metrics to improve future external engagement effectiveness
• Internal alignment and visibility, ensuring MA-US leaders and stakeholders have clarity on external engagement plans, priorities, and expected outcomes.

Strategic Congress Planning and Cross-Functional Alignment

• Lead planning across MA-US stakeholders to ensure congress activities are aligned and non-duplicative: medical communications and content planning, field medical engagement readiness, development/pipeline alignment where applicable, non-promotional coordination as appropriate
• Enable strong decision-making around what MA should (and should not) do at congresses, using a risk-aware, value-based approach

Scientific Engagement Enablement

• Coordinate congress readiness activities supporting scientific exchange including field enablement needs and content access pathways, consistent scientific narrative alignment, congress playbooks and role clarity
• Serve as a connector across internal teams to drive integrated execution while preserving compliance guardrails

Compliance, Governance, and Industry Standards (Core Requirement)

• Serve as a congress governance SME, ensuring MA congress presence adheres to internal policies and documentation expectations, industry standards for scientific exchange, appropriate boundaries across medical vs other activities, audit-ready documentation and approvals
• Partner closely with the Medical Education & Communication steam to ensure congress workflows, templates, tracking, and evidence are complete and inspection-ready

Congress Execution Oversight & Vendor Partnership

• Align with CEE team and any applicable cross-functional stakeholders to collaborate on congress execution planning and vendor engagement where required, including congress workback schedules and milestone tracking, deliverables coordination across stakeholders, risk tracking, issue escalation, and rapid resolution
• Ensure congress execution is consistent, high-quality, and aligned to the strategy and plan

Measurement, Reporting, and Continuous Improvement

• Define congress success measures and establish consistent reporting practices across priority congresses
• Drive continuous improvement through after-action reviews, stakeholder feedback, and performance insights
• Build institutional knowledge via congress playbooks, best practices, and repeatable frameworks

Budget & Financial Management

• Drive efficiency while protecting scientific quality and stakeholder needs

Ad-Hoc and Emerging Initiatives

• Support ad-hoc MA-US initiatives tied to scientific engagement and communications planning
• Provide leadership support to emerging, high-priority congress opportunities or rapid-response scientific needs

Critical Knowledge & Skills

• Deep understanding of congress strategy, scientific engagement models, and MA governance
• Strong compliance mindset; ability to build guardrails into workstreams and documentation
• High executive presence with strong decision-making and prioritization skills
• Cross-functional leadership and influence without direct authority
• Strong operational planning and risk management discipline
• Ability to build future-forward approaches