Director, Commercial - AI Acceleration and Innovation

Arbeitsbeschreibung

The Director, Commercial AI Acceleration and Innovation will support Kite’s commercial strategy and governance for AI initiatives, ensuring that innovation is purposeful, ethical, and value-driven.

This leader will be responsible for AI opportunity identification and framing, establishing and operationalizing the governance framework that prioritizes and oversees AI use cases across Commercial functions, leads organizational AI fluency in partnership with enterprise teams and support the roll up of the same to enterprise prioritization and governance.

This role closely with partner with Commercial/Medical Functions, GDDI functional teams and Gilead IT, to run communities of practice, intake and prioritize AI initiatives, drive proof of concept execution in partnership with technical teams, measure business impact, and enable transparent reporting through different governance forums.

Key Responsibilities

• Opportunity Identification and Framing:
  Collaborate with functions and functional use case champions to frame AI opportunities, outlining business objectives, feasibility, expected value, data needs, and success metrics.

• Governance Leadership:
  Establish and lead AI governance structures within Commercial functions, ensuring alignment with Gilead and Kite priorities, data policies, regulatory standards, and ethical principles.

• Prioritization and Portfolio Oversight:
  Evaluate and prioritize AI initiatives based on strategic fit, business readiness, and value potential; maintain a living portfolio of AI use cases with defined milestones and KPIs – with inputs from the council.

• Proof of Concept (PoC) Management:
  Partner with Gilead IT and functional teams to design, execute, and monitor projects. Document learnings and outcomes to inform go/no-go governance decisions and scaling roadmaps.

• Value Measurement and Reporting:
  Develop and track KPIs to assess business impact of AI initiatives; report insights and progress to executive sponsors and governance boards.

• Leadership Alignment: Support Leadership alignment on Key AI initiatives for the commercial functions including value story and resource alignment

• Enterprise Governance Support:
  Deliver regular updates and recommendations to the Kite AI Governance Board and Gilead/Kite Leadership, highlighting value delivered, risks mitigated, and opportunities for acceleration.

• AI Literacy and GenAI Enablement:
  Lead AI literacy programs and promote employee productivity through responsible adoption of Generative AI tools across the enterprise.

• Innovation and Community Building:
  Drive a culture of continuous innovation through hackathons, knowledge-sharing sessions, ideation forums, and coordination of an active AI Community of Practice within Kite.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s or PhD in Data Science, Computer Science, Business Analytics, or Business fields.

• Proven experience in AI, data science including 3+ years in strategy, governance and/or enterprise program leadership.

• Demonstrated experience in identifying, prioritizing, and delivering complex projects within large, matrixed organizations.

• Proven ability to partner across business, IT, or data teams to operationalize AI solutions.

• Strong executive presence, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

• Experience in biopharma or healthcare, with exposure to commercial functions

• Proven track record of establishing or leading cross-functional teams

• Deep understanding of AI governance, privacy, and compliance frameworks in regulated industries (life sciences preferred).

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic Influence: Aligns cross-functional teams toward shared AI priorities and drives executive consensus.

• Innovation Mindset: Anticipates emerging trends and translates them into meaningful business solutions.

• Operational Excellence: Builds structured processes for governance, prioritization, and value realization.

• Enterprise Thinking: Sees connections across the organization, integrating data, people, and capabilities to scale impact.

• Ethical Stewardship: Champions

Basic Qualifications:

Bachelor's Degree and Twelve Years’ Experience

OR

Masters' Degree and Ten Years’ Experience

OR

PhD and Eight Years’ Experience

People Leader Accountabilities

• Create Inclusion - knowing the business value of diverse teams, modeling inclusion, and embedding the value of diversity in the way they manage their teams.

• Develop Talent - understand the skills, experience, aspirations, and potential of their employees and coach them on current performance and future potential. They ensure employees are receiving the feedback and insight needed to grow, develop, and realize their purpose.

• Empower Teams - connect the team to the organization by aligning goals, purpose, and organizational objectives and holding them to account. They provide the support needed to remove barriers and connect their team to the broader ecosystem.