VP - Vice President - Partnerships and Innovation

The role serves as a commercialization and strategic execution engine within the Chief Strategy & Growth Office, linking strategy to external relationships, innovation, technology, business development, and implementation.

In partnership with Strategic Planning, Growth & Market Development, clinical and research leaders, operations, technology, Finance, and external organizations, the Vice President identifies opportunities and disruptions, develops business and partnership models, evaluates best-fit alternatives, incubates new capabilities, and converts ideas into sustainable enterprise value.

The Vice President ensures partnerships and innovations are tied to strategic priorities, supported by credible business plans, embraced by key leaders, well governed, and measured against organizational and financial outcomes.

Essential Responsibilities:

Responsibilities listed in this section are core to the position. Inability to perform these responsibilities with or without an accommodation may result in disqualification from the position.

Strategic Partnerships & Business Development

• Create a portfolio framework aligned with OU Health's Strategic Plan that weighs opportunity, gaps, risk, investment, clinical impact, patient/community benefit, and financial outcomes.

• Assess, structure, and advance partnerships that strengthen OU Health's strategic position, engaging leaders as needed.

• Build joint ventures, affiliations, and industry, academic, corporate, clinical, and other strategic partnerships.

• Anchor partnership strategies in enterprise priorities rather than one-off transactions.

• Cultivate external relationships that build capabilities, accelerate growth, expand access, strengthen differentiation, or create new value.

Innovation & Disruption

• Build enterprise innovation capabilities that solve major organizational challenges and create strategic differentiation.

• Identify emerging technologies, business models, competitors, and market disruptions affecting OU Health.

• Partner with College of Medicine leaders to identify, assess, scale, deploy, and monetize portfolio innovations and breakthroughs.

• Develop methods to evaluate innovations by strategic fit, value, risk, scalability, feasibility, economics, portfolio balance, resource needs, and competitive advantage.

• Create pathways to rapidly intake, test, learn, refine, scale, or discontinue innovations.

AI Strategic Assessment

• Partner with clinical operations, research, and the VP of Data & AI to align AI enablement with OU Health's strategic plan, advancing growth, innovation, consumer engagement, and strategic priorities.

• Define high-value AI use cases that support strategic and business goals.

• Establish criteria to assess AI-enabled capabilities for value, workflow impact, consumer experience, growth, risk, readiness, resources, roadmap fit, and differentiation.

• Embed AI planning into enterprise strategy and innovation, rather than managing it as a separate technology agenda.

• Work with Enterprise Technology Solutions to align AI strategy with technology readiness, governance, and security.

• Help align OU Health's IT roadmap and governance with the strategic plan.

New Ventures & Business Models

• Develop mission- and strategy-aligned business models and revenue opportunities.

• Create business cases and commercialization plans for new ventures.

• Guide ventures from opportunity identification through validation, planning, piloting, and transition to sustainable operating ownership, using enterprise capabilities as appropriate.

• Assess opportunities for strategic fit, market demand, financial potential, capability, scalability, and risk.

Commercialization & Technology Transfer

• Create a structured commercialization pathway for promising research, clinical innovations, intellectual property, and emerging technologies to generate enterprise value.

• Work with research, academic, clinical, legal, finance, and external partners to identify commercialization opportunities.

• Connect researchers, clinicians, entrepreneurs, industry partners, investors, and enterprise leaders when appropriate.

• Support a balanced incentive program that reflects the shared interests of researchers, clinicians, and appropriate OU institutions.

• Support appropriate intellectual property protection and governance.

• Create repeatable pathways that move innovations from concept to measurable value and eventual monetization.

Strategic Integration & Execution

• Lead or coordinate cross-functional implementation of select enterprise strategic priorities, including new businesses, programs, and strategic plans.

• Translate strategic opportunities into business plans, operating models, roadmaps, governance, and success measures.

• Align resources, governance, and cross-discipline execution to support teamwork, effective implementation, adoption, measurement, and support.

• Create transition pathways for validated, mature capabilities to move into long-term operational ownership.

• Provide visibility into execution risks, dependencies, barriers, and outcomes.

Patient/Consumer Digital Engagement Center Incubation

• Lead initial development and incubation of OU Health's Patient/Consumer Digital Engagement Center as a strategic innovation capability.

• Drive rapid design, technology deployment, workflows, automation, AI integration, and measurement with ambulatory operations, Growth & Market Development, technology leaders, and other stakeholders.

• Prioritize roadmap sequencing to build early momentum, leverage champions, test and learn, balance build/buy decisions, and optimize adoption.

• Apply lessons from leading health system engagement centers and B2C consumer market leaders.

• Identify best-fit technology platforms within a solution architecture that leverages future-forward technologies and existing OU Health platforms.

• Design the capability around the consumer-patient, not organizational silos.

• Establish the operating model, ambulatory partnership, and capabilities needed to transition the mature platform to Growth & Market Development and ambulatory operations.

Partnership & Innovation Governance

• Establish and lead disciplined governance for partnership, business development, innovation, and venture opportunities, using a Business Development Review Committee or similar enterprise mechanism and existing governance bodies as appropriate.

• Create consistent processes for intake, evaluation, business cases, prioritization, approval, incubation, measurement, and transition.

• Maintain an enterprise pipeline of partnership and innovation opportunities.

• Establish a portfolio framework to vet, decline, and advance candidate initiatives.

Value Creation & Performance

• Set clear financial, strategic, operational, and consumer outcomes for partnerships, ventures, and innovation initiatives.

• Track partnership ROI, KPIs, innovation pipeline performance, new revenue, and accretive value.

• Redesign, transition, or discontinue initiatives that lack sufficient value without disrupting operations.

Minimum Qualifications:

Education: Master's degree required.

Experience:10 years progressive leadership experience with at least five years of healthcare marketing experience required.

License(s)/Certification(s)/Registration(s) Required: None

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Extensive knowledge of healthcare strategy, strategic partnerships, emerging technologies, innovation, commercialization, finance, organizational transformation, enterprise execution, business model development, and sustainable value creation principles.

• Exceptional skill in exercising sound business judgment, evaluating complex opportunities and risks, developing high-impact partnerships, leading cross-functional teams, negotiating strategic agreements, and identifying transformative opportunities that generate measurable enterprise value.

• Proven ability to distinguish high-impact opportunities from low-value initiatives, navigate ambiguity and complexity, build and scale innovative business models and partnerships, drive enterprise-wide transformation, and move strategic concepts from development through execution while serving as an entrepreneurial, visionary, and results-oriented leader.