Vice President, Head of Portfolio & Program Strategy
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Skills
About the role
Umoja Biopharma is an industry-leading biotech with locations in Seattle, WA and Louisville, CO, focused on transforming the treatment of cancer with a novel integrated immunotherapy platform. Our vision is to develop off-the-shelf therapies capable of treating any tumor, any time. We are a diverse and growing team working in brand-new facilities in downtown Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Colorado, and we are looking for innovative thinkers who are excited by groundbreaking science and technology, and passionate about squaring up to the challenges inherent to cutting-edge drug development. We are committed to our core values and principles that support our overall mission and strongly invite applications from enthusiastic individuals who share our commitment and help position Umoja to deliver on our goals. We at Umoja believe in the importance of stories; we are looking for great people to join our team to help us create more stories for ourselves, for you, and most importantly for patients and their families.
Umoja Biopharma – Your Body. Your Hope. Your Cure.
POSITION SUMMARY:
The Vice President, Head of Portfolio & Program Strategy will serve as a strategic thought partner to the executive team and an enterprise integrator across Umoja's portfolio, responsible for shaping portfolio strategy and enabling the effective advancement of programs through clinical development and toward commercialization.
This leader will establish, lead, and continually evolve Umoja's Portfolio and Program Management function, aligning cross-functional teams around clear priorities, integrated development plans, critical milestones, risks, and resource requirements. The Vice President will strengthen execution discipline, improve portfolio visibility, and enable timely, well-informed, and durable decisions across the organization.
Working closely with executive, functional, and program leaders, this individual will combine strategic portfolio leadership with operational rigor, ensuring teams have clear objectives, accountabilities, decision rights, and realistic execution plans.
This position will ideally be based out of our Seattle, WA office and work onsite at least 2 days/week.
CORE ACCOUNTABILITIES:
Portfolio Strategy & Prioritization
- Drive enterprise-level portfolio strategy in alignment with scientific, clinical, operational, and commercial objectives.
- Lead portfolio prioritization, trade-off, and investment discussions to support effective allocation of resources across programs.
- Establish and maintain an enterprise-level portfolio view that clearly communicates program status, critical paths, stage gates, decision points, risks, opportunities, and resource implications.
- Build and institutionalize portfolio analytics, scenario planning, and risk assessment processes to support executive decision-making.
- Translate complex scientific, clinical, operational, and financial inputs into clear scenarios and actionable recommendations.
- Ensure alignment and integration across R&D, Clinical Development, Clinical Operations, CMC/Technical Operations, Regulatory, Quality, Translational Medicine, Medical Affairs, Finance, and other enabling functions.
Program Leadership & Execution
- Establish, lead, and continually evolve the company’s Portfolio and Program Management function as a high-performing organizational capability.
- Lead cross-functional portfolio and program planning and execution, ensuring program teams operate with clear objectives, integrated timelines, defined milestones, dependencies, and accountabilities.
- Partner with program and functional leaders to develop and maintain integrated development plans, timelines, budgets, and resource requirements.
- Define and establish consistent standards, tools, and processes for program planning, execution, and reporting across the organization.
- Ensure integrated project plans reflect cross-functional dependencies, critical paths, major decision points, and key development milestones.
- Partner with functional leaders to ensure consistent and transparent tracking of timelines, budgets, milestones, risks, and resource requirements at the program and portfolio levels.
- Balance urgency and ambition with realistic, credible, and executable program plans.
Risk, Resource & Capacity Management
- Identify portfolio and program risks early and lead cross-functional development of mitigation and contingency plans.
- Ensure material risks and issues are escalated at the appropriate time with clear implications, options, and practical recommendations.
- Drive integrated resource and capacity planning across programs, identifying constraints, dependencies, investment choices, and potential impacts to portfolio timelines and value.
- Support leadership in evaluating resource trade-offs and prioritization decisions across the portfolio.
- Maintain effective portfolio-level risk registers and mechanisms for monitoring mitigation activities and emerging risks.
Governance & Decision-Making
- Establish and manage governance forums that support portfolio decision-making and program oversight.
- Develop governance practices that enable timely escalation, focused leadership discussions, clear decision rights, durable decisions, and disciplined follow-through.
- Create decision-ready materials that clearly frame key issues, alternatives, risks, implications, and recommendations.
- Establish standardized portfolio dashboards, decision logs, risk registers, and reporting frameworks that provide reliable sources of truth for leadership and program teams.
- Deliver clear, data-driven portfolio and program upda