Vice President, Health Digital/Social Strategy (Chicago)
FleishmanHillard, a leading global communications agency, is seeking an experienced Digital and Social Vice President to help shape high-impact work across our rapidly growing health and life sciences sector. This is a critical role on our social and digital team, with the opportunity to support leading pharmaceutical companies—including work related to a first-of-its-kind treatment in an expanding area of medicine—and collaborate with talented colleagues across strategy, creative, analytics, media, and healthcare communications. The role combines account leadership with deep expertise in audience-first social strategy, omnichannel social management, community engagement, social listening, and issues management. You’ll lead the development and execution of compliant, insight-led social programs spanning disease awareness, therapeutic areas, corporate communications, and branded health initiatives. We’re looking for an equal-parts strategist, operator, and people leader with a proven ability to build integrated social programs and patient communities, apply listening at scale, and navigate the complexities of the healthcare regulatory environment. FleishmanHillard values the importance of impact and inclusion to strengthen the bonds between us, grow our people and create spaces for everyone to thrive. We stay true to our commitment to our people and the communities in which we live and work. As part of our ongoing effort to be the world’s most inclusive agency, we are committed to seeking candidates who possess and demonstrate a profound interest in furthering our impact and inclusion goals. Responsibilities Strategic Leadership & Digital Healthcare Expertise Serve as the day-to-day lead for digital, social, community management, and listening workstreams, partnering with the broader portfolio account leadership team and serving as a senior client contact for these areas. Shape comprehensive social listening and community engagement strategies aligned with client objectives across patient activation, HCP awareness, disease-state education, and brand-focused programming. Provide counsel and help direct portfolio account team members to drive best practices and consistency in content development and creative direction. Provide strategic counsel on social media’s role in audience journeys. Participate in client steering committee meetings, including delivery of performance data, learnings, and strategic recommendations. Cultivate working relationships with client Marketing partners, including agency team, to ensure cohesive channel strategy. Build executive-level relationships with key client stakeholders to maintain health of accounts and identify strategic opportunities for growth. Collaborate with agency portfolio team to integrate community management strategy and learnings within broader, communications-owned programming. Workstream Leadership & Oversight Oversee day-to-day community management operations, including reactive monitoring, moderation, response development, approval workflows, proactive engagement opportunities, and escalation management across owned social channels. Support identification, implementation, and operations of social listening tools and platforms. Translate listening insights into actionable recommendations for content, community engagement, paid media, and HCP strategies. Ensure quality assurance, brand safety, and regulatory alignment across all community management activities, including appropriate handling and escalation of adverse-event/product-quality mentions. Establish clear protocols for proactive community management. Partner closely with client legal, regulatory, medical and safety stakeholders to establish and maintain clear review, approval and escalation workflows. Collaborate with creative, content, and analytics teams to design innovative community engagement initiatives, content formats, and measurement approaches. Stay current with platform developments, emerging technologies (including GenAI applications for community management), and industry best practices. Build and lead a dedicated community management team, with the opportunity to shape its structure as the work evolves. Train, mentor, and manage team members, fostering high standards, accountability, and career growth. Budget, Measurement & Reporting Manage account budget for community management resources, tools, technology, and staffing. Present forecasts and track spend against plan. Establish a measurement framework that connects social listening and community-engagement performance to business outcomes, and translate results into reporting dashboards with clear insights and recommendations. Present ROI and business impact to client leadership; recommend budget and resource adjustments. What You will Bring 10 years of experience in digital communications, including at least 5 years of hands-on social media experience in a healthcare or pharmaceutical agency setting. Candidates should bring the sector fluency to counsel clients confidently, translate complex science and stakeholder needs into audience-first strategies, and lead compliant programs in a fast-evolving health environment. Deep familiarity with social platform capabilities and risk considerations across Meta, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and other relevant channels. Practical understanding of platform-specific community norms, moderation tools, content formats, engagement behaviors, and risk considerations across major social platforms, including Meta, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, and emerging channels. Demonstrated experience designing and operating compliant social community-management programs in a regulated healthcare environment, including monitoring, moderation, response workflows, and issues escalation. Proven track record building and managing scaled patient/caregiver/HCP communities. Experience with social listening tools and platforms, with proven ability to translate social listening and community insights into practical recommendations for content strategy, engagement, reputation management and broader business planning. Experience partnering with paid media, editorial, creative, analytics and medical/legal/regulatory stakeholders in a multi-agency environment. Experience applying AI-enabled tools or automation to social listening and community-management workflows, with appropriate governance and human oversight. Demonstrated crisis management experience in regulated healthcare environment Experience managing large, matrixed teams in multi-agency environments. Account leadership experience: serving as day-to-day account lead for large, complex client relationships. Experience managing or mentoring teams for employee and account growth Preferred Qualifications Bachelor's degree in communications, Digital Marketing, Public Relations, Journalism, or related field. Working knowledge of healthcare compliance requirements (e.g., FDA, HIPAA, OPDP). Direct working experience with pharmaceutical companies, either in house or in agency. Strong grasp of digital measurement frameworks and how to connect performance data to storytelling impact. A creative, strategic, curious, and analytical mindset with a passion for health equity, innovation, and digital transformation. Our Story FleishmanHillard specializes in public relations, reputation management, public affairs, brand marketing, digital strategy, social engagement and content strategy. FleishmanHillard was named 2020, 2021 and 2022 Campaign Global PR Agency of the Year; 2023 ICCO Large Agency of the Year – The Americas; 2022 and 2023 PRWeek U.S. Agency of the Year; 2022 and 2023 PRWeek U.S. Outstanding Extra-Large Agency of the Year; 2023 Campaign US PR Agency of the Year; 2021 PRovoke APAC Consultancy of the Year; and 2021 PRWeek UK Large Consultancy of the Year. FleishmanHillard is part of Omnicom PR Group and has nearly 80 offices in more than 30 countries, plus affiliates in 45 countries. FleishmanHillard offers a hybrid work model and seeks employees who are comfortable working in the office for a portion of their workweek. We value the collaboration and camaraderie that in-person interactions provide but also understand the importance of flexibility and balance in our employees' lives. We acknowledge that our people are diverse individuals with unique circumstances and needs, and therefore our goal is to foster a productive and inclusive work environment where all employees can thrive, both in and out of the office. FleishmanHillard is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy (which includes pregnancy, childbirth, and medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding), gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, mental or physical disability, ancestry, medical condition, marital status, military or veteran status, alienage, citizenship status, sexual orientation, genetic information, or any other protected class under federal, state or local laws. Please do not contact the office directly to apply – only resumes submitted through this website will be considered. If you need assistance reviewing career opportunities or completing an application, please email our careers team or call 314-982-1700 and ask to be con
