Strategic Business Initiatives Leader

Medica is a nonprofit health plan with more than a million members that serves communities in Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Missouri, and beyond. We deliver personalized health care experiences and partner closely with providers to ensure members are genuinely cared for.

We're a team that owns our work with accountability, makes data-driven decisions, embraces continuous learning, and celebrates collaboration — because success is a team sport. It's our mission to be there in the moments that matter most for our members and employees. Join us in creating a community of connected care, where coordinated, quality service is the norm, and every member feels valued.

The Strategic Business Initiatives Leader serves as a senior strategic advisor and execution partner to the Chief Growth & Strategy Officer (CGSO) for the Markets organization and the SVP, Product Strategy and Business Development. This role functions as a chief-of-staff–style leader with a strong grounding in health care strategy, payer dynamics, and enterprise execution.

The role is accountable for helping translate market strategy into action—ensuring priorities are clear, leaders are aligned, and work is moving forward across a complex SVP/VP leadership structure. Working closely with the CGSO, SVP Product Strategy and Business Development and their respective Executive Assistants, this leader enables effective executive presence, disciplined follow-up, and strong information flow up and down the organization.

In addition, the Strategic Business Initiatives Leader plays a key role in planning and facilitating high-stakes internal and external strategic forums, supporting executive communications, and ensuring that both the CGSO and the SVP, Product Strategy and Business Development are visible, prepared, and impactful with both internal teams and external partners.

The ideal candidate brings deep health plan experience, strong strategic judgment, and the credibility to engage directly with senior leaders to drive outcomes. Performs other duties as assigned.

Key Accountabilities:

• Strategic Advisory & Executive Enablement
  • Act as a trusted strategic advisor and execution partner to the CGSO & SVP Product Strategy and Business Development, supporting enterprise‑level
    thinking across Product, Markets, Network, and growth priorities and helping translate enterprise growth and product strategy into clear priorities,
    decisions, and executable plans
  • Partner closely with the Executive Assistant to proactively manage priorities, anticipate decision needs, and ensure follow‑through
  • Act as a trusted thought partner to the CGSO and the SVP Product Strategy and Business Development for key engagements by synthesizing complex information, pressure-testing strategic assumptions, identifying implications and tradeoffs, ensuring decisions are supported by appropriate market, financial, operational, and customer perspectives and framing strategic talking points
  • Enable consistent information flow between the CGSO, SVP Product Strategy and Business Development and direct reports (SVPs/VPs), ensuring alignment, clarity, and accountability
• Health Care Strategy Execution & Follow-Through
  • Drive execution of key Product, Markets and growth initiatives by coordinating work across SVPs, VPs, and functional leaders
  • Follow up directly with senior leaders to ensure commitments are progressing and decisions are escalated appropriately
  • Translate health care strategy, market dynamics, and performance insights into clear action plans
  • Serve as a connective tissue between strategy development and operational execution
• Strategic Partnerships & Executive Forums
  • Plan and support external strategic partnership meetings in collaboration with SVP Product Strategy and Business Development, Market Presidents,
    Marketing, Experience and Network leadership
  • Translate strategic priorities into actionable workplans with defined objectives, milestones, decision points, accountabilities, dependencies, and measures of
    success
  • Lead high-priority, cross-functional strategic initiatives sponsored by the CGSO and SVP to include developing agendas, facilitating discussions, ensuring clear
    outcomes, ownership, and next steps; and coordinating internal preparation and post‑meeting follow‑up to ensure strategic intent is executed
  • Drive initiatives from strategy through execution, proactively identifying barriers, resolving cross-functional dependencies, escalating critical decisions,
    and maintaining momentum against enterprise commitments
  • Support complex, multi‑stakeholder discussions requiring strong health care and payer fluency
• Executive Communications, Materials & Board Support
  • Develop and refine executive‑level materials, that synthesize complex issues into clear strategic choices, recommendations, decisions, risks, and next steps
    including but not limited to monthly and quarterly business reviews, enterprise updates, and contributions to the annual board strategy deck
  • Translate complex strategy, financial performance, and market insights into concise, compelling narratives for senior audiences
  • Ensure consistency of messaging across Markets and Products leadership communications
• Executive Visibility & Organizational Effectiveness
  • Strategically plan the CGSO and SVP Product Strategy and Business Development’s calendars, conferences, and internal engagements to maximize
    leadership presence and impact in partnership with their respective Executive Assistants
  • Identify key moments where the visibility of the CGSO and/or the SVP Product Strategy and Business Development drives alignment, engagement, or culture
  • Continuously improve operating rhythms, meeting effectiveness, and decision clarity across the Markets and Products leadership teams
  • Anticipate issues requiring executive attention and proactively develop options, recommendations, and paths to resolution
  • Lead confidential, sensitive, or highly ambiguous strategic assignments on behalf of the CGSO and SVP
  • Increase executive leverage by ensuring leadership attention is focused on the highest-value strategic decisions and opportunities rather than routine
    coordination
  • Perform other strategic responsibilities as needed to advance enterprise growth, product, and business development priorities

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in a related field
• 10 years of experience and 5 years of leadership experience
• Significant experience in health care strategy, health plan operations, or payer‑side leadership
• Proven ability to operate at the SVP/VP level, influencing without authority and driving work forward
• Strong strategic planning, organizational, and follow‑through capabilities
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; advanced PowerPoint and executive storytelling skills
• Ability to synthesize complex information and make sound judgments in ambiguous environments
• Comfortable serving as both a strategic thinker and hands‑on executor

This position is an Office role, which requires an employee to work onsite at our Minnetonka office, on average, 3 days per week.

The full salary grade for this position is $130,300-$223,400. While the full salary grade is provided, the typical hiring salary range for this role is expected to be between $130,300-$195,510. Annual salary range placement will depend on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, education, work experience, applicable certifications and/or licensure, the position's scope and responsibility, internal pay equity and external market salary data. In addition to base compensation, this position may be eligible for incentive plan compensation in addition to base salary. Medica offers a generous total rewards package that includes competitive medical, dental, vision, PTO, Holidays, paid volunteer time off, 401K contributions, caregiver services and many other benefits to support our employees.

The compensation and benefits information is provided as of the date of this posting. Medica’s compensation and benefits are subject to change at any time, with or without notice, subject to applicable law.

Eligibility to work in the US: Medica does not offer work visa sponsorship for this role. All candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of application. Employment is contingent on verification of identity and eligibility to work in the United States.

We are an Equal Opportunity employer, where all qualified candidates receive consideration for employment indiscriminate of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic.