Dir., Strategy Realization

Merck; Rahway (NJ); Hybrid; USD 173,000 - 273,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Long-term incentive

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Merck, Rahway, NJ, seeks a Director, Strategy Realization to advise the MAH IT Leadership Team and translate strategy into enterprise-wide alignment. This role shapes priorities, communicates business value, and enables transformation through change leadership and stakeholder engagement.

It excludes product strategy while supporting organizational readiness and execution of strategic initiatives. The position demands strong experience in strategy translation, enterprise transformation, and

Qualifications

• Strategy realization
• Organizational effectiveness
• Change leadership including communications
• Executive advisory experience
• Stakeholder alignment
• Enterprise transformation
• Business strategy execution
• Chief of Staff or leadership enablement experience

Responsibilities

• Strategic Alignment & Organizational Clarity: Partner with the CIO and MAH IT Leadership Team to reinforce a clear understanding of organizational priorities and strategic direction.
• Ensure enterprise and technology priorities are consistently understood across teams, stakeholders, and leadership levels.
• Help simplify complex strategic initiatives into actionable themes that support organizational alignment and decision making.
• Identify and address areas where competing priorities, initiatives, or stakeholder expectations create confusion or fragmentation.
• Support the leadership team in maintaining alignment around key transformation objectives and business outcomes.
• Leadership Advisory & Strategic Enablement: Serve as a trusted advisor to the MAH IT Leadership Team on organizational alignment, stakeholder perspectives, and change implications.
• Support leaders preparing for key enterprise interactions, e.g. business reviews.
• Provide insight into how strategic priorities are understood across the organization and where additional focus or clarification may be required.
• Help leaders navigate organizational challenges associated with transformation, growth, and evolving business priorities.
• Strengthen alignment between leadership intent and organizational understanding.
• Strategic Impact Translation: Help connect technology initiatives, transformation efforts, and organizational priorities to business outcomes.
• Ensure business stakeholders have a clear understanding of how MAH IT investments support growth, innovation, customer value, and operational performance.
• Surface and consolidate evidence of strategic progress, business impact, and organizational success across MAH IT.
• Support the consistent interpretation of strategic objectives and outcomes across business and technology stakeholders.
• Strengthen leadership visibility into how IT initiatives are contributing to enterprise goals.
• Change Leadership & Organizational Readiness: Support major transformation initiatives by helping leaders build understanding, alignment, and readiness for change.
• Reinforce adoption of strategic priorities, organizational changes, and new ways of working.
• Monitor organizational understanding of key initiatives and identify opportunities to improve clarity and alignment.
• Help ensure organizational changes are understood in the context of broader MAH IT strategy and business objectives.
• Foster consistency in how major initiatives are interpreted across the organization.
• Enterprise Stakeholder Engagement: Support communication and visibility between MAH IT and enterprise leadership teams.
• Ensure MAH IT priorities, achievements, risks, and opportunities are represented consistently across enterprise forums.
• Build strong connections across business, technology, and functional stakeholders to improve understanding and trust.
• Help create a consistent external and internal perception of MAH IT as a strategic business partner.
• Success Measures: This role will be successful when:
• Employees demonstrate a clear understanding of MAH IT priorities and strategic direction.
• Leadership and stakeholder groups maintain consistent alignment around organizational priorities and business outcomes.
• Strategic initiatives achieve stronger adoption and organizational support.
• Enterprise stakeholders have confidence in MAH IT priorities, progress, and contributions to business performance.
• The CIO and MAH IT Leadership Team spend less time creating alignment and more time advancing strategic priorities.

Skills

Agile Environments

Business Strategies

Change Leadership

Change Management

Executive Presence

Organizational Alignment

Organizational Effectiveness

Organizational Strategy

People Analytics

People Leadership

Strategy Execution

Strategic Thinking

Stakeholder Engagement

Strategic Initiative

Job description

Job Description

Role Summary

The Director, Strategy Realization serves as a strategic advisor to the MAH IT Leadership Team, responsible for ensuring that organizational strategy is clearly understood, consistently communicated and updated, and effectively translated into enterprise-wide alignment.

This leader helps create a shared understanding of MAH IT priorities, transformation efforts, status, and business value across employees, business partners, and enterprise stakeholders.

The role combines strategic thinking, organizational alignment, change leadership, stakeholder influence, and strategic impact translation to help aligning priorities, organizational topics and improve understanding of MAH IT's contribution to business outcomes.

This position is not responsible for product strategy, portfolio governance, program delivery, or operating rhythm ownership. Instead, it enables those functions by helping leaders gain strategic Influence and organizational alignment articulating business value in a compelling and consistent manner that helps in addition with change management within IT.

Core Responsibilities

Strategic Alignment & Organizational Clarity

• Partner with the CIO and MAH IT Leadership Team to reinforce a clear understanding of organizational priorities and strategic direction.
• Ensure enterprise and technology priorities are consistently understood across teams, stakeholders, and leadership levels.
• Help simplify complex strategic initiatives into actionable themes that support organizational alignment and decision making.
• Identify and address areas where competing priorities, initiatives, or stakeholder expectations create confusion or fragmentation.
• Support the leadership team in maintaining alignment around key transformation objectives and business outcomes.

Leadership Advisory & Strategic Enablement

• Serve as a trusted advisor to the MAH IT Leadership Team on organizational alignment, stakeholder perspectives, and change implications.
• Support leaders preparing for key enterprise interactions, e.g. business reviews.
• Provide insight into how strategic priorities are understood across the organization and where additional focus or clarification may be required.
• Help leaders navigate organizational challenges associated with transformation, growth, and evolving business priorities.
• Strengthen alignment between leadership intent and organizational understanding.

Strategic Impact Translation

• Help connect technology initiatives, transformation efforts, and organizational priorities to business outcomes.
• Ensure business stakeholders have a clear understanding of how MAH IT investments support growth, innovation, customer value, and operational performance.
• Surface and consolidate evidence of strategic progress, business impact, and organizational success across MAH IT.
• Support the consistent interpretation of strategic objectives and outcomes across business and technology stakeholders.
• Strengthen leadership visibility into how IT initiatives are contributing to enterprise goals.

Change Leadership & Organizational Readiness

• Support major transformation initiatives by helping leaders build understanding, alignment, and readiness for change.
• Reinforce adoption of strategic priorities, organizational changes, and new ways of working.
• Monitor organizational understanding of key initiatives and identify opportunities to improve clarity and alignment.
• Help ensure organizational changes are understood in the context of broader MAH IT strategy and business objectives.
• Foster consistency in how major initiatives are interpreted across the organization.

Enterprise Stakeholder Engagement

• Support communication and visibility between MAH IT and enterprise leadership teams.
• Ensure MAH IT priorities, achievements, risks, and opportunities are represented consistently across enterprise forums.
• Build strong connections across business, technology, and functional stakeholders to improve understanding and trust.
• Help create a consistent external and internal perception of MAH IT as a strategic business partner.

Success Measures

This role will be successful when:

• Employees demonstrate a clear understanding of MAH IT priorities and strategic direction.
• Leadership and stakeholder groups maintain consistent alignment around organizational priorities and business outcomes.
• Strategic initiatives achieve stronger adoption and organizational support.
• Enterprise stakeholders have confidence in MAH IT priorities, progress, and contributions to business performance.
• The CIO and MAH IT Leadership Team spend less time creating alignment and more time advancing strategic priorities.

Required Experience

Preferred

Strategy realization

Organizational effectiveness

Change leadership including communications

Executive advisory experience

Stakeholder alignment

Enterprise transformation

Business strategy execution

Chief of Staff or leadership enablement experience

Required Skills:

Agile Environments, Agile Environments, Business Strategies, Change Leadership, Change Management, Customer-Focused, Executive Presence, ICT Strategy, IT Financial Management, IT Governance, IT Infrastructure Management, IT Quality Management, IT Security Compliance, Organizational Alignment, Organizational Effectiveness, Organizational Strategy, People Analytics, People Leadership, Product Strategies, Project and Program Management (Inactive), Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Stakeholder Engagement, Strategic Initiative, Strategic Thinking, Strategy Execution {+ 2 more}

Preferred Skills:

US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:

Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here (https://survey.sogosurvey.com/r/aCdfqL) if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.

As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:

EEOC Know Your Rights (https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-10/22-088_EEOC_KnowYourRights_10_20.pdf)

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We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.

Learn more about your rights, including under California, Colorado and other US State Acts (https://www.msdprivacy.com/us/en/CCPA-notice/)

The salary range for this role is

$173,200.00 - $272,600.00

This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs.

The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits .

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully

Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

Yes

Travel Requirements:

10%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

10/20/2026

***A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day** BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.