By Samuel Gosselin, MBA, PMP(i), CA-AM
Following more than a decade in alliance leadership roles, I went through an eleven-month period of unemployment. Like many biotechnology professionals, my career transitions were rarely voluntary. Strategic pivots, clinical setbacks, and reductions in force repeatedly required me to enter new organizations, adapt to unfamiliar cultures, and rebuild the internal relationships necessary for successful partnerships.
While professionally and personally challenging,this period became an extraordinary learning opportunity. Moving across several small and mid-sized biotechs, each with different scientific platforms, therapeutic areas, and levels of alliance maturity, gave me a unique vantage point on how alliance management functions are formed, understood, and valued. It also reinforced how adaptive, resilient, and resourceful alliance leaders must be to succeed in environments that are often under-resourced, fast-moving, and deeply dependent on external collaboration.
This reflection was further shaped by Jan Twombly’s insights in her September 10, 2025, ASAP workshop, “Alliance Management in Challenging Economic Times.” Her observations on the shifting expectations placed on alliance professionals resonated with my own experience. And while I have worked primarily in smaller biotechs, which often struggle to find the resources for an alliance management function, my recent conversations with large pharma company alliance managers, working for mature organizations with defined alliance management functions, have made it clear that they face similar challenges. They must continually demonstrate their value through recurring internal cycles in which priorities, expectations, and alignment are reassessed.
In other words, we’re all in the same boat.
This post will explore three interconnected realities: First, how alliance managers must navigate interviews and hiring processes in a market where opportunities are scarce and the function itself is often misunderstood. Second, the risks organizations take, sometimes unknowingly, when they operate without formal alliance management capabilities. And finally, why educating internal stakeholders is not a “nice to have”, but a core alliance management responsibility that determines long-term success.
“So You’re an Alliance Manager - What Else Can YouDo?”
For alliance managers in today’s job market, the challenge is not a lack of tools, but a lack of openings. Networking, reading industry newsletters, attending conferences, and participating in professional associations like ASAP, LinkedIn discussions, and job boards are no longer optional; they are survival mechanisms. These activities are time-consuming, require sustained visibility, and demand a careful balance between being proactive and not sounding desperate.
In reality, however, many roles are never formally posted. Among my peers who have successfully landed positions, nearly all were approached outside an official recruitment process. The market is tight, competition is high, and resilience has become as critical as experience.
When opportunities do arise, alliance management titles and job descriptions often suggest a well-defined function, but inpractice, they frequently reveal uncertainty. A title such as Director,Alliance Management – CNS Program Management, for example, is telling. The inclusion of a disease area often reflects an organization more comfortable with program management than alliance management, an attempt to anchor the role in what is known, rather than what is needed. This ambiguity is an important early signal for candidates.
Interviewing under these conditions, alliance managers must often use limited interview time to explain not only their experience and qualifications, but also the scope and value of the function itself. By contrast, a chemist or clinician is typically evaluated on technical expertise, platform familiarity, therapeutic experience, and credentials, followed by a discussion of cultural fit.
This places alliance managers in a difficult position. Many interview processes culminate in the same question: “What else can you do?” This is not necessarily skepticism, but a lack of awareness.The best response is not to defend alliance management as a standalone function, but to explain, plainly and concretely, how alliance management experience naturally spans governance, finance, business development, and program execution, and how that perspective helps organizations function better overall, not just manage partners.
The Alliance Management Difference: Value over Time
In one of my more recent interview processes, the company asked me to prepare a short presentation. That request turned out to be unexpectedly valuable, as it helped me avoid spending too much time explaining what alliance management is, speaking far more than the interviewers, and struggling to shift the conversation toward what I could actually do for the organization. Preparing a concise presentation forced me to focus less on the function and more on their reality: their pipeline, partnerships, risks, and priorities. It also created space for the interviewers to speak more, ask better questions, and engage in a more meaningful dialogue.
Once hired, an experienced alliance manager’s value often becomes immediately visible. Hiring managers frequently express surprise within months: “I didn’t realize what alliance management could do.”
Yet many biopharma companies continue to operate without a formal alliance management function. This is not inherently wrong. Numerous successful organizations rely on strong operational execution and responsive cross-functional teams. From a business development perspective, the immediate execution of a deal, and its short-term impact on PR, investorrelations, and finance, can feel sufficient.
Where experienced alliance managers differentiate themselves is in their focus on value over time. A contract is not the finishline; it is the starting point. Without alliance management capability, risks accumulate quietly: passive compliance, incremental over-concessions, silent misalignment, recurring escalations, and eventual disputes framed by the familiar complaint, “That’s not what we agreed.” These failures rarely occur suddenly. They surface at inflection points, data readouts, budget negotiations, scope changes, when goodwill alone is no longerenough.
Function vs. Capabilities
Small biopharma organizations often encounter alliance management for the first time only when a draft agreement requires the appointment of an alliance manager. The reaction is predictable: “What is alliance management? And who should do this?” The role is then assigned to whoever is closest: a project manager, a business development lead, or a senior executive.
This is a recurring discussion among alliance management experts, as Peter Simoons noted in his recent white paper “Why Strategic Alliances Deserve a Full-Time Owner". Treating alliance management as an afterthought almost guarantees that lessons learned remain tacit and inconsistently applied.
My view is that it is acceptable not to have a formal alliance management function. What is not acceptable is proceeding without ensuring that alliance management capabilities exist. Project managers optimize delivery. Business development optimizes deal terms. Executives optimize strategy. All are essential, but none are designed to manage alliances.
From my experience, three skill sets are particularly critical in these situations: contract literacy, communication skills, and stakeholder management. Emotional intelligence, systems thinking, and structured influence are also important, but farther down the list.
Educating Stakeholders
Another frequently underestimated responsibility of alliance management is education, especially internal education. Alliance management cannot succeed in isolation. Processes, dashboards, governance frameworks, and playbooks are meaningless if the organization does not understand why they exist or how to use them.
Educating leadership requires particular care. In small biopharma, alliance managers must introduce the concept of alliance stratification early. One party may define a collaboration as Tier 1, for example, while for the other partner it is clearly Tier 3. Misunderstanding this asymmetry, especially at the CEO level, creates unrealistic expectations around access, attention, and escalation. Clarifying where a collaboration sits within a partner’s broader portfolio is not political; it is essential.
Governance education is equally critical. I have lost count of how many Joint Steering Committees (JSCs) devolved into status updates or one-sided instruction. That is not governance. These dynamics, if left unchecked, quietly erode trust and shift partnerships toward an “us versus them” mindset that becomes increasingly difficult to reverse.
The first JSC is a turning point and should set the tone. Negotiation is over, and both organizations are now operating in the reality of research, development, or commercialization. Over-promising gives way to execution, misalignment has consequences, and both parties are now running the same race to deliver value and, ultimately, benefit patients.
Alliance management, when present early, helps organizations make that transition deliberately, from contract to collaboration.
The Keys to Success
Formal or not, alliance management is ultimately about stewardship. From my experience, three themes consistently determine success or failure: how alliance managers are positioned and understood, how organizations manage risk when alliance capability is absent, and how deliberately internal stakeholders are educated and aligned.
These reflections are not offered as universal truth. Others will have different experiences, different rankings of critical skills, and different perspectives. What’s your experience? I welcome other views and the dialogue they create. Challenging assumptions and learning from one another is, after all, very much in the spirit of alliance management itself.
Samuel Gosselin has served as head of alliance management for several small and large biopharma companies. The views expressed herein are solely the author’s and do not reflect the position(s) of theauthor’s employer or its affiliates.
About the alliance leadership spotlight series
The alliance leadership spotlight series is a joint initiative of The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) and allianceboard to share practical knowledge in the alliance management community. It showcases Alliance Management professionals taking the lead in addressing challenges and driving alliance success.
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