Global Policy Lead, Disease Area Policy
About this role
At Roche you can show up as yourself, embraced for the unique qualities you bring. Our culture encourages personal expression, open dialogue, and genuine connections, where you are valued, accepted and respected for who you are, allowing you to thrive both personally and professionally. This is how we aim to prevent, stop and cure diseases and ensure everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Join Roche, where every voice matters.
The Position
External Affairs International (EAi), part of the Roche Pharma CEO Office, ensures the company can shape the policies, funding decisions, and market conditions that determine how healthcare innovation is valued and rewarded. We influence globally where strategic priorities are defined and enable locally where business impact is delivered. Through focused advocacy and a connected global network, EAi builds trusted relationships with governments, multilateral institutions, and global partners, develops third-party advocates, and forges alliances that protect and grow Roche’s business while improving patient access to innovation.
The Opportunity
The Global Policy Lead, Disease Area Policy is a high-impact strategic expert responsible for designing and driving Roche’s policy strategies across priority Therapeutic Areas (TAs). Reporting to the Global Disease Area Policy Team Lead, you serve as the definitive policy expert, ensuring that the external policy environment and healthcare systems deliver rapid and sustainable access to innovation. This role requires a unique blend of technical policy mastery, commercial acumen and strategic diplomacy to navigate complex supra-national environments, influence senior stakeholders, and orchestrate global-to-local disease area policy alignment without the need for direct hierarchical authority.
Responsibilities
- Drive the development and implementation of the global policy strategy portfolio and performance metrics across priority TAs, ensuring full alignment with global, regional, and affiliate functions.
- Define the long-term global disease area policy vision, strategy, objectives and crafting sophisticated policy projects, evidence, tools and positioning that addresses the needs of patients, medical professionals, and the business.
- Act as a primary catalyst for shaping policy environments by architecting external engagement and advocacy frameworks for a broad cross-section of disease area policy and health system stakeholders, while identifying and mitigating barriers to access among governments and NGOs.
- Serve as the primary global point-of-contact for disease area policy, providing timely and expert direction to the business
- Partner strategically across Roche regions and affiliates to ensure consistent application of health policy expertise, enabling local implementation of disease area policy strategies, and to drive the External Affairs mission through the organization.
- Lead the development of portfolio-wide content, analytical tools, and disease area policy strategies that translate complex external policy and healthcare challenges into actionable business insights and tactics.
- Manage high-impact global strategic policy initiatives and project workstreams, ensuring resource transparency and evidence-based recommendations to enable high-level business decision-making.
- Support organizational growth by sharing global health policy expertise and educating cross-functional peers to foster a culture of functional excellence and innovation.
- Who You Are
- You hold a Master’s degree, MBA, or equivalent in Political Science, Public Policy, Public Health, Healthcare Management, or a related field.
- 8+ years of experience in health policy or public affairs within the life sciences sector or government,with a deep mastery and knowledge of disease area policy, health system and access environments.
- A recognized leader with a demonstrated ability to influence senior executives and policymakers through technical policy expertise, credibility, diplomacy, and a track record of driving tangible outcomes.
- You maintain an established network of relationships with global public institutions and trade associations (e.g., EFPIA, PhRMA) critical to driving policy and health system impact. objectives.
- Experience in collaboration and partnership in multi-stakeholder consortia, aimed at policy advocacy and evidence generation.
- You excel at distilling complex external global policy and health system trends into actionable strategies, identifying risks and opportunities to the Pharma portfolio while maintaining a focus on measurable outcomes and impact.
- You thrive in decentralized, networked organizational models, bringing agile ways of working to life through empowered decision-making and a creative mindset.
- You model nimbleness and innovation, with a strong background in coalition building within multicultural and multi-stakeholder environments.
- You possess strong communication and presentation skills, with an ability to exhibit professional maturity, confidence and competence. You effectively communicate to senior leaders, making the case for others to effectively and expeditiously make important business decisions.
- Excellent written and verbal English
About Roche
A healthier future drives us to innovate. Together, more than 100’000 employees across the globe are dedicated to advance science, ensuring everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Our efforts result in more than 26 million people treated with our medicines and over 30 billion tests conducted using our Diagnostics products. We empower each other to explore new possibilities, foster creativity, and keep our ambitions high, so we can deliver life-changing healthcare solutions that make a global impact. Let’s build a healthier future, together. Roche is an Equal Opportunity Employer.