Chief Marketing Officer, Gulf

At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. This is hard, urgent, selfless work—but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.

Chief Marketing Officer, Gulf

Commercial Excellence & Digital Transformation

Business Unit

International Business Unit (IBU) — Gulf Affiliate

Geography

UAE, Kuwait, Qatar

Reports To

VP/GM, Gulf Affiliate

Location

Dubai, UAE

Function

Commercial / Marketing & Digital

The Gulf Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is the senior leader accountable for driving end to end digital transformation for our operations to enable our go-to-market model evolution across the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar. The Gulf CMO leads the digital transformation agenda to elevate Lilly’s end-to-end commercial capabilities. By embedding a consumer-first mindset across digital omnichannel execution including HCP engagement, consumer activation, and customer facing excellence, the role ensures every capability enables Lilly to deliver a seamless, connected, and differentiated experience. This integrated approach strengthens near-term brand performance and long-term competitive differentiation for Lilly’s portfolio.

This role leads a high-performing, cross-functional team and partners with affiliate and the International Business Unit (IBU) leaders to prioritize transformation initiatives and build scalable capabilities beyond a ‘traditional’ pharma CMO model.

Key Responsibilities & Accountabilities:

Commercial Strategy, Transformation & Governance

• Define and evolve the Gulf commercialization transformation agenda, ensuring current priorities are delivered while future capability needs remain flexible

• Build an integrated capability roadmap across HCP engagement, consumer activation, analytics, digital/AI enablement, business effectiveness and operations, and customer facing capabilities

• Shape annual and multi-year planning by connecting brand priorities, customer engagement, analytics, and digital workstreams into one commercial strategy

• Establish governance, operating rhythms, decision rights, and accountability across Business Units, Medical, Market Access, Corporate Affairs, Communications, Legal, Compliance, Finance, and Tech@Lilly

• Guide investment choices, channel mix, and pilot-and-scale decisions to support sustainable brand and portfolio impact

HCP Engagement

• Set the strategic direction for HCP engagement excellence, including omnichannel engagement, field force effectiveness, targeting, coaching, and capability building

• Oversee digital HCP engagement, including consent-based touchpoints, virtual engagement, content deployment, and data-enabled personalization

• Provide strategic leadership for Digital District operations as a digital execution engine

• Partner with Medical and Market Access to ensure digital HCP engagement reflects customer, payer, access, and formulary dynamics

Consumer Activation

• Lead the Gulf consumer activation strategy across priority disease states, ensuring a deep understanding of consumer needs, behaviors, and preferences informs strategy.

• Embed consumer-centric ways of working across insights, experience design, media, digital channels, and ecosystem partnerships

• Define meaningful consumer disease state awareness metrics and reporting to inform strategic decisions and affiliate leadership discussions

Business Insights & Analytics

• Build and govern Gulf analytics capabilities, including dashboards, data infrastructure, reporting cadences, and market models across brands and functions

• Scale predictive analytics and new product planning insights to support commercial decision-making and pipeline readiness

• Partner with Global and IBU BI&A teams to leverage shared platforms while maintaining Gulf-specific insight and governance needs

Digital & AI Transformation (in partnership with Tech@Lilly)

• Serve as the primary partner to Tech@Lilly, co-developing the digital, data, AI and MarTech roadmap to augment the impact of business outcomes

• Prioritize commercial use cases across analytics, automation, personalization, customer journeys, marketing technology, and responsible AI adoption

• Drive digital fluency and adoption across CMO-led functions, ensuring tools translate into stronger capabilities and execution to enable the business.

Customer Meeting Services

• Oversee Customer Meeting Services ensuring compliant, efficient planning and execution of HCP congresses, advisory boards, and stand-alone meetings

• Establish meeting governance, vendor management, budget discipline, and operational standards aligned to Lilly requirements and local regulations

• Partner with brand teams, Medical, and Market Access to align meeting strategy with brand priorities and customer engagement plans

People Leadership & Organizational Development

• Lead and develop a diverse, multi-functional team currently comprising five direct reports, with structure subject to future evolution

• Foster a consumer-centric culture of innovation, boldness, failing fast and continuous capability building

• Build succession depth and leadership capability across the CMO organization

Stakeholder Engagement & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Serve as the digital capabilities voice on the Gulf affiliate Leadership Team, shaping strategic direction with Commercial, Medical, Market Access, Finance, and GM leadership

• Represent Gulf priorities in IBU and Global forums, sharing best practices and bringing enterprise capabilities into the affiliate

• Build trusted external and internal partnerships that advance consumer and HCP engagement strategy

Required

• Bachelor's degree required; MBA or advanced degree in Marketing, Business, Digital, Data, or related discipline preferred

• 15+ years of progressive commercial experience, preferably in FMCG, Consumer Goods, Consumer Health, Retail, Technology, or similarly consumer-led industries; including senior leadership experience

• Strong experience in consumer marketing, brand strategy, media, performance marketing, omnichannel engagement, and multi-market execution

• Demonstrated leadership of digital transformation and change management

• Deep understanding of Gulf consumer dynamics, digital ecosystem, MarTech ecosystems, including CRM, CDP/DMP, marketing automation, content management, customer journey orchestration, analytics, and AI-enabled engagement platforms.

• Experience selecting, implementing, and governing technology platforms to improve customer engagement and business performance

• Strong understanding of data strategy, customer data activation, measurement frameworks, and digital analytics.

• Experience leveraging AI, automation, and personalization to enhance customer experiences and operational efficiency.

• Strong data literacy and ability to translate complex analytics into strategic choices

Preferred

• Experience leading consumer-led brand growth, including category strategy, insight generation, campaign development, media investment

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 () 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 does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.

#WeAreLilly