ABOUT US
OLIPOP was founded in 2017 by Ben Goodwin and David Lester. Ben and David have been working together for nearly a decade to find accessible solutions to bring the benefits of digestive health to as many consumers as possible. OLIPOP is a deliciously refreshing tonic that is crafted with prebiotics, botanicals, and natural plant fiber to support your microbiome and benefit digestive health. We're on a mission to provide an affordable, delicious alternative to soda that delivers leading-edge health benefits to mainstream consumers.
OUR TEAM
At Olipop our values lead the way we create our products, engage with each other, and interact with our community. While we’re invested in our product, we’re equally invested in personal development. We’re tightly knit, we’re genuine and we’re always pushing the envelope to do a better job than we did the day before. Our team is also fully remote, requiring us to be resourceful, creative and collaborative to support our fast-moving business.
To best serve our diverse community of customers, we also seek to recruit and include people with a diversity of abilities, backgrounds, and cultures.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED
Working at a start-up can be as much a personal journey as it is a professional one. To succeed at a company like Olipop, you must be comfortable with failing, learning, and adapting. You need to be curious, optimistic, and able to find a way when it seems impossible. You must be confident enough to express your ideas but humble and open to learning from your experiences and from others. If this is the approach you take to life, then we’d love to hear from you.
THE ROLE
We have an exciting opportunity to join our team as our Sr. Director of Scientific and Medical Affairs. In this role, you will drive key strategic initiatives, which include in-vitro & human clinical trials to develop or substantiate OLIPOP product claims, ingredient or product innovation, food as medicine reimbursement initiatives, registered dietitian outreach programs, and developing industry trade group partnerships. In this role, you will be a core member of the OLIPOP team responsible for demonstrating ownership in overseeing a diverse network of consultants and Scientific Advisory Board members to execute key strategic initiatives. This role collaborates cross-functionally with supply chain, sales, marketing, and logistic teams. This role is suited for an individual with deep expertise in consumer packaged goods leading scientific substantiation initiatives spanning the gut microbiome and metabolic health, discernment in balancing scientific and commercial objectives, exceptional leadership skills, comfortability with ambiguity and prior experience developing strategic R&D roadmaps.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Collaborate with OLIPOP’s leadership team on identifying technical development opportunities to support topline commercial initiatives, protect brand integrity, and enable our innovation pipeline.
- Developing quarterly, annual & multi-year strategy roadmap to ensure OLIPOP’s leading scientific and claims position in the functional soda category.
- Building out and managing the Medical and Scientific Affairs Dept, specifically internal team members or consultants with expertise ranging from clinical trials, healthcare, and food as medicine policy to registered dietitians.
- Oversee the food as medicine reimbursement strategic roadmap to increase OLIPOP’s accessibility, affordability & reimbursement across various policy or healthcare system initiatives.
- Co-developing healthcare practitioner and registered dietitian engagement program to increase OLIPOP’s adoption across private practice to hospital/healthcare system channels in these communities.
- Collaborate on OLIPOP claims and other regulatory initiatives with internal team members and external law firms.
- Identify, support preparation, and speak at various industry trade shows or retailer events communicating OLIPOP’s scientific and healthcare strategy to multiple stakeholder groups.
- Consult with marketing & PR teams to develop relevant scientific, health or technical content supporting OLIPOP’s core health values.
- Ensure accurate communication of key scientific concepts in media or conferences.
- Collaborate with supply chain and commercialization teams for new product development, including ingredient scientific diligence and claims substantiation.
- Set the strategic direction for in-vitro & human clinical trial programs spanning digestive and metabolic health, while ensuring we can develop OLIPOP’s beneficial health effects into claims, journal articles, white papers, media content, and other programming.
- Oversee our Scientific Advisory Board and develop a strategy for identifying gaps for additional globally recognized leaders to support scientific health or policy.
- Partner with our business insights team to identify and track our competitors to maintain our leading position in the functional soda category or potentially new product categories for development exploration.
- Embody servant leadership nurturing team members’ growth by overseeing departmental scorecards and other talent advancement programs.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Ph.D. in microbiology, nutrition, epidemiology, or biochemistry preferred. We will consider Master of Science degrees in nutrition, microbiome, digestive or a focus in metabolic health research.
- Requires at least 10+ years of prior management or experience leading R&D teams (preferably in the consumer packaged goods sector) and working cross-functionally to execute R&D strategy successfully.
- Excellent strategic planning skills and being able to manage initiative execution at all levels of the organization are required.
- Excellent analytical, problem solving and scientific reasoning skills. You are systems-thinking yet methodical.
- Curious and passionate about understanding why prebiotic fiber and botanicals can truly help address multiple health conditions.
- Knowledge of regulatory and claims landscape related to microbiome, digestive or metabolic health.
- Experience running in-vitro and human clinical trial studies at a pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, or CPG company.
- Expertise in negotiating, managing and overseeing clinical research organizations (CROs) and other consultants to drive successful trial outcomes.
- Expertise in academic KOL relationship development, overseeing studies and negotiating legal agreements with top-tier academic institutions.
- Expertise in developing product innovation and claims substantiation roadmaps.
- Experience overseeing manuscripts for publication in academic journals.
- Experience overseeing third-party labs, data analysis companies or other subject-matter-experts related to scientific research.
- Expertise in identification, development and data validation for novel product claims.
- Experience partnering with registered dietitians, nutritionists, or health coaching professionals for marketing, awareness and/or community-building.
- Familiarity with food as medicine legislation, initiatives and programs to support expansion of OLIPOP into reimbursement or other health insurance programs.
- Strong negotiation, verbal reasoning, scientific and technical knowledge.
- Prior experience working in consumer packaged goods with retail channel-oriented business focus is preferred.
- Has an abundance of curiosity and a keen understanding of the “why.”
- Strong ability to build consensus while having the strength to have tough conversations in support of achieving key strategic objectives.
- Embodies our OLIPOP values - Commitment, humility, integrity, aspiration, and engaged empathy.
- Ability to prioritize and manage multiple high priority objectives.
- Exceptional leadership skills and ability to effectively communicate at all levels of the organization.
- This position is remote and requires approximately 30% travel.
REPORTS TO:
Chief Executive Officer
COMPENSATION:
$165,000-$175,000 base salary + bonus
We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. Olipop does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor. Applicants and employees are protected from discrimination under Federal law. For more information, please see EEO is the Law.
