Director, Corporate Strategy

You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you’ll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do. Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.

The Corporate Strategy & Enablement Team supports Sun Life in achieving and maintaining a position of sustainable strategic advantage and growth in the long term. It has a broad focus of strategy topics that span all businesses, functions, and geographic markets where Sun Life operates. The team provides support on high priority strategic issues and projects for Sun Life’s Executive team, Corporate Functions, and Business Groups (BG), and is responsible for actively monitoring and analyzing external trends shaping the markets in which Sun Life operates.

**What will you do**:
The Corporate Strategy & Enablement team works in a dynamic, collaborative, and collegial team-based environment. Team members are provided with stretch opportunities to work on many of Sun Life’s most interesting and challenging problems, exposure to senior executives, and the opportunity to diversify knowledge of Sun Life’s businesses and markets. Specifically, the team has four main responsibilities:

- Run the annual strategic planning process
- Shape and support strategy design and advancement of strategy execution
- Support facilitation and planning of Board and Executive Team strategy discussions
- Monitor external trends and draw linkages to Sun Life’s businesses

**Responsibilities**:
Practice Development
- Support the development of the Practice Management strategy, plan and delivery
- Partner with HR and BGs to design a framework to strengthen our professional strategy and enablement practice standards globally for training and development
- Help the structuring, development and documentation of our strategy engagement and delivery methodology and framework and promote knowledge sharing across the practice by coordinating strategy asset collection and structuring, assisting in creation of tools and templates for reusability, etc.
- Be a key player in creating and launching a program for new and experienced strategy practitioners focused on strengthening Sun Life-specific strategy and enablement skills and capabilities
- Once the practice is developed, this role will help promote processes to be leveraged, ensure communication and engagement are ingrained in the way we do business and continue to look for ways to improve the process and continuously evolve with the future needs of the organization

Communication and relationship management
- Effectively communicate insights, ideas, and strategies to an executive level audience in a clear, compelling, and concise manner
- Tailor written and verbal communication based on audience and situation to facilitate productive discussions, foster buy-in, and establish productive working relationships
- Proactively maintain relationships with stakeholders in BGs and Corporate Functions, to maintain an understanding of new developments in their areas and identify needs for strategy support

**What do you need to succeed**:

- Deep understanding of at least one of Sun Life’s business areas (i.e., asset management, individual life insurance, group benefits, group retirement solutions, wealth management, asset management) and geographic markets (i.e., Canada, US, Asia)
- Resourceful and rapid learner, able to work across many topics and domains
- Excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills
- Strong interpersonal skills; able to effectively collaborate with multiple stakeholders across multiple teams
- Strong creative and analytical problem solver, with a solid background working with data, conducting quantitative and qualitative analysis, interpreting results, and writing reports/presentations
- Results-oriented project management skills; well organized, with a high attention to details
- Able to work independently on assignments with appropriate judgment
- Able to manage junior team members on projects, providing guidance on analysis and coaching on deliverables
- Minimum of 5 years relevant business experience, ideally within insurance or financial services; experience in or knowledge of Sun Life's businesses would be an asset
- University degree in business or related discipline; MBA or other relevant advanced degree is an asset
- Experience analyzing and solving complex business problems
- Experience at top-tier management consulting firm or equivalent experience in a Corporate setting focused on developing a practice or program/curriculum design is preferred
- Experience in co