Strategic Partnerships Lead

About the role

ABOUT US Forus is building an AI-powered network that connects doctors, pharmacies, payers, and biopharma to accelerate new science to patients. Our platform automates the complexity between a doctor prescribing a medicine and a patient starting treatment, including insurance coverage, financial assistance, and supply chain navigation. We provide this support free to doctors and patients, helping them get life-changing medicine faster, cheaper, and easier. The resulting network enables biopharma companies to design better research, launch new drugs more effectively, and invest in harder-to-treat conditions. Forus has exceptional product-market fit and is growing rapidly through organic adoption: - Accelerating scale: We already support patients across more than 85% of ZIP codes and partner with 9 of top 15 largest biopharma companies in the world. - AI-native, durable model: Our business becomes stronger as AI improves, as every new doctor, patient, and partner makes the network more valuable. - Backing to build for the long term: We raised $300M+ from leading investors to build an exceptional team and unlock the full scale of the opportunity. Our number one priority is scaling to market demand. We are looking for individuals who are high horsepower, high throughput, and hyper resourceful to help us increase capacity and grow. We move fast and need to move faster. If we succeed, science will be the only limit to medicine. All full-time roles are in person in New York. ABOUT THE ROLE As Strategic Partnerships Lead at Forus, you will build the relationships that allow us to operate and scale across the complex infrastructure surrounding medication access. You will work with payers, PBMs, pharmacies, wholesalers, GPOs, and other relevant industry organizations. You will determine which relationships can materially accelerate our growth, expand our capabilities, or remove barriers for providers and patients, then own those partnerships from initial strategy through execution. This is not a traditional business development role focused on accumulating partnerships; success means creating durable strategic value through commercial agreements, integrations, operating coordination, data exchange, and broader ecosystem alignment. This is a demanding role, with a high level of autonomy and responsibility. You will be expected to “act like an owner” and commit yourself to Forus' success. If you are low-ego, hungry to learn, and excited about intense, impactful work that drives both company growth and accelerated career progression, we want to hear from you. IF YOU JOIN, YOU WILL: - Develop Forus’ partnership strategy across payers, PBMs, pharmacies, wholesalers, GPOs, and other healthcare organizations - Identify the external relationships that can most meaningfully accelerate growth, improve medication access, expand product capabilities, or reduce strategic risk - Build trusted relationships with senior leaders across complex and highly matrixed healthcare organizations - Develop a deep understanding of each partner’s incentives, priorities, and constraints, and use that understanding to structure mutually valuable relationships - Own partnerships end-to-end, including sourcing, strategic assessment, negotiation, implementation, governance, and expansion - Coordinate across product, engineering, operations, commercial, legal, and leadership teams to translate external opportunities into executed outcomes - Represent Forus externally and help establish the company as a trusted and consequential participant in the healthcare ecosystem WE’RE LOOKING FOR YOU IF YOU HAVE: - 7–12 years of experience in healthcare partnerships, business development, investing, strategy, consulting, or an operating role involving complex external relationships - Deep understanding of the healthcare ecosystem, ideally including payers, PBMs, pharmacies, wholesalers, health technology infrastructure, or medication access - Familiarity structuring partnerships that span commercial, technical, operational, regulatory, and legal considerations - Strong written and verbal communication that allows you to be an effective participant in both internal debates and external relationships - Track record of moving quickly, finding shortcuts, and going to unreasonable lengths to deliver on goals - High NPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score with your former teammates This is a list of ideal qualifications for this position. If you don't meet every single one of them, you should still consider applying! We’re excited to work with people from underrepresented backgrounds, and we encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. WORKING WITH US Forus is based in New York, with our full team working out of a beautiful and spacious office in SoHo.  We run as a high-trust environment with high autonomy, which requires that everyone is fully competent and operates in line with our principles: - Do the math. Be rigorous, assume nothing. Break problems down and reason from the ground up. Stay open to changing your mind. - Resourceful optimism. Assume problems are solvable. Be audacious. Resist false constraints and push beyond the obvious before deciding. - Spit it out. Speak directly, invite critique, avoid equivocation. We want right answers, not comfortable ones. All killer, no filler. - Raise the bar. Hold a high standard for your pace and execution, and elevate the performance of the team around you. Mamba mentality. - Fight for users. Start with users’ realities, not ours. Resist optimizing for internal convenience over user outcomes. We provide competitive compensation with meaningful equity (for full-time employees). Everyone who joins will be a major contributor to our success, and we reflect this through ownership and pay. We also provide rich benefits to ensure you can focus on creating impact (for full-time employees): - Fully covered medical, vision, and dental insurance. - Memberships for One Medical, Talkspace, Teladoc, and Kindbody. - Unlimited paid time off (PTO) and 16 weeks of parental leave. - 401K plan setup, FSA option, commuter benefits, and DashPass. - Lunch at the office every day and Dinner at the office after 6:30 pm. Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our company’s size and industry, and are one part of the total compensation package that also includes equity, benefits, and other opportunities at Forus (for full-time employees). Individual pay decisions are ultimately based on a number of factors, including qualifications for the role, experience level, skillset, geography, and balancing internal equity. Forus is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.