Advisor/Sr Advisor - Program Governance and Operations - GFD

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Advisory & Decision Support
• Act as a trusted thought partner to the program's senior leader, supporting prioritization, escalation, and decision readiness across program initiatives.
• Translate leadership direction into clear operating norms, execution plans, and communication artifacts.
• Proactively identify risks, misalignments, and execution gaps, and surface recommendations with options and implications.
• Ensure information from across the program and the wider organization reaches leadership in time to inform decisions.
• Leadership Operating Rhythm
• Own the program's leadership meeting cadence, including agendas, pre-reads, action tracking, documentation, and follow-through across leadership forums.
• Facilitate leadership office hours, staff meetings, and administrative huddles, ensuring time is used effectively and outcomes are captured.
• Prepare leadership for stage-gate reviews, funding decisions, and governance forums in partnership with the Program PMO Lead, who owns the underlying governance framework and delivery reporting.
• Serve as steward of meeting and artifact quality, ensuring alignment with Lilly and GFD expectations.
• Executive Communications & Stakeholder Alignment
• Partner with Project Integrators to author and deliver executive-level communications on behalf of program leadership, including steering committee talking points, organizational announcements, event remarks, and external-facing messages.
• Maintain consistent messaging across collaboration, email, and intranet channels as well as formal governance forums.
• Provide clarity during ambiguity by distilling complex inputs into clear, actionable communication.
• Program Office Operations & Workplace Readiness
• Lead program office operations, including workspace readiness, site and office access, logistics, and change communications.
• Coordinate with internal and external stakeholders to ensure a seamless employee and partner experience at the program location.
• Establish and maintain the program office as a functioning working environment for the integrated program team.
• External Partner Interface
• Act as a central coordination point between Lilly program leadership and external partners, including engineering, construction, staffing, and service providers.
• Support onboarding and integration of new partners by clarifying roles, interfaces, and communication norms, working from the governance expectations set by the Program PMO Lead.
• Ensure partner interactions reflect Lilly's standards for professionalism, alignment, and decision clarity.
• Culture, Team Enablement & Organizational Health
• Foster a high-trust, low-friction operating culture by resolving miscommunications, reducing unnecessary escalation, and protecting leadership focus.
• Support mentoring and talent continuity programs as an active participant in building organizational relationships.
• Champion collaboration, psychological safety, and continuous improvement across the program community.
• Compliance & Records
• Maintain program leadership documentation, decision records, and communications in compliance with applicable Lilly quality, records management, and regulatory standards.
• Program senior leader (AVP or equivalent) — primary partner; the role exists to extend this leader's capacity and decision bandwidth.
• Program workstream leads (engineering, construction, commissioning and qualification, quality) — coordination and information flow into leadership forums.
• Global Portfolio Operations — alignment of leadership reporting and communications with enterprise standards and portfolio messaging.
• External delivery and service partners — relationship management at the leadership interface.

Key Interfaces

Minimum

Preferred

Qualifications

• Minimum
• Bachelor's in Business, Engineering, Construction Management, Communications, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in program operations, business operations or senior program management roles within a large, complex organization.
• Qualified applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Lilly will not provide support for or sponsor work authorization or visas for this role, including but not limited to F-1 CPT, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, J-1, H-1B, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, or L-1.
• Experience supporting greenfield and/or GMP-regulated pharmaceutical or life-sciences capital programs.
• Experience on projects or programs of >$500M in total installed cost.
• Demonstrated experience authoring executive-level written communications on behalf of senior leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively at both strategic and tactical levels without loss of quality, and to manage multiple concurrent workstreams under deadline pressure.
• Experience working within large, matrixed organizations and alongside external partners and contractors.
• Familiarity with capital delivery stage-gate and governance frameworks.
• Experience preparing and supporting executive or board-level governance forums.
• High emotional intelligence with mature stakeholder management and relationship-building capability.
• Lean Six Sigma or continuous improvement experience.
• Additional Information
• Ability to travel, both within and outside the US as required, approximately 10% expected.
• Lilly is dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities to actively engage in the workforce, ensuring equal opportunities when vying for positions. If you require accommodation to submit a resume for a position at Lilly, please complete the accommodation request form ( https://careers.lilly.com/us/en/workplace-accommodation ) for further assistance. Please note this is for individuals to request an accommodation as part of the application process and any other correspondence will not receive a response.
• Lilly is proud to be an EEO Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, gender expression, sexual orientation, genetic information, ancestry, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.
• Our employee resource groups (ERGs) offer strong support networks for their members and are open to all employees. Our current groups include: Africa, Middle East, Central Asia (AMECA), Black Employees at Lilly (BE@Lilly), Chinese Culture Network (CCN), EnAble, Evolve, Lilly Indian Network (LIN), Organization of Latinx at Lilly (OLA), Pride (LGBTQ+ Allies), Veterans Leadership Network (VLN) and Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL).
• Actual compensation will depend on a candidate’s education, experience, skills, and geographic location. The anticipated wage for this position is
• $130,500 - $211,200
• #WeAreLilly

Preferred Qualifications

• Preferred
• Familiarity with tools such as Smartsheet, Power BI, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams; exposure to Oracle Unifier or Primavera P6 is a plus.
• Full-time equivalent employees also will be eligible for a company bonus (depending, in part, on company and individual performance). In addition, Lilly offers a comprehensive benefit program to eligible employees, including eligibility to participate in a company-sponsored 401(k); pension; vacation benefits; eligibility for medical, dental, vision and prescription drug benefits; flexible benefits (e.g., healthcare and/or dependent day care flexible spending accounts); life insurance and death benefits; certain time off and leave of absence benefits; and well-being benefits (e.g., employee assistance program, fitness benefits, and employee clubs and activities).Lilly reserves the right to amend, modify, or terminate its compensation and benefit programs in its sole discretion and Lilly’s compensation practices and guidelines will apply regarding the details of any promotion or transfer of Lilly employees.