Learn more about this exciting opportunity
High Impact Role
This is a groundbreaking and high-impact leadership role at the intersection of business, policy, and healthcare.
Strategic Position
The role is inherently entrepreneurial, offering a great deal of autonomy and significant opportunity to create your own future.
Unique Opportunity
This offers a unique opportunity to leave a lasting legacy in Canadian healthcare while advancing your career as a visionary leader.
Executive Director @ Canadian Pharmacists Association
Company: Canadian Pharmacists Association
Position: Executive Director
Location: Remote
The Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA) has a long and established history as the national voice for pharmacists in Canada. In 1907 a group of fifteen pharmacists came together to create the first-of-its kind organization to act on issues affecting their profession. Throughout its history, CPhA has played a key role in advocating for the profession and advancing the role of pharmacists in the healthcare system.
Furthering their commitment to the field, CPhA has developed a digital tool, Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties (CPS). This tool provides pharmacists with a comprehensive, evidence- based online resource enabling optimal patient care through quick access to critical updates, drug interaction checkers, and patient handouts. It serves as Canada’s primary source for drug information, updated weekly to ensure pharmacists have the most current and reliable content at their fingertips.
Following a change to its governance and membership model in 2014, CPhA’s Board of Directors is now composed of representatives from each provincial pharmacist association. This shift was the first crucial step in creating a collaborative, national model, unifying provincial partners to represent and advocate for the profession on a strong, united front.
To further its commitment to professional advancement and financial sustainability, CPhA is looking to launch the Third-Party Payer Negotiation Entity. This standalone unit will be established in direct response to overwhelming demand from pharmacists who recognize the need for a strong, unified voice in contract dealings with third-party payers and Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) across Canada. The new entity will serve as CPhA’s strategic answer to this market imbalance: a vehicle for collective negotiation that also generates a vital self-funding revenue source to support the association’s mission.
Skills & Experience
Background
As a seasoned professional with progressive leadership experience, you have worked in a relevant field such as professional associations, healthcare administration, insurance, or collective bargaining.
Experience
You may have worked with or been exposed to working with Third-Party Payors, Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), or with the pharmacists directly.
Proven Track Record
You bring a proven and sophisticated track record in contract negotiation, dispute resolution, and stakeholder relationship management.
Self-Motivated
You describe yourself as an entrepreneurial, self-motivated, and independent thinker who thrives in a startup environment along with experience building or scaling an organization.
Communication
Your excellent and tactful communication skills allows you to drive both membership recruitment and ongoing engagement as you build consensus, and forge relationships among diverse and sometimes competing stakeholders.
Expertise
You demonstrate credibility and understanding of the payer-driven business models from your background in the private payer sector.
Summary of the Role
Working closely with the CEO and board members, the Executive Director of the Third-Party Payer Negotiation Entity is the first hire for a high-impact national initiative, tasked with building the organization from the ground up. This entity is a separate unit under the CPhA umbrella, created to collectively represent pharmacy owners, particularly independents, in negotiations with third-party payers and Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs).
The core objective is to protect the professional autonomy of pharmacists against the financial interests of private payers and put pharmacies on a more level playing field in negotiations. You will be instrumental in determining the success of this endeavor. This includes leading the operational setup—developing policies, procedures, and systems that align with CPhA’s vision—and leveraging your financial management expertise to set and maintain the budget with oversight from the Board of Directors (BOD) and the CEO. Central to your mandate is building a high-performing team with the diverse legal, data, and negotiation skills necessary to ensure the entity’s long-term compliance and success.
Strategic member recruitment is a core part of your mandate, securing the organization’s future and ensuring a sustainable financial model beyond the seed money. You’ll be responsible for crafting a compelling roadmap that effectively rallies the pharmacist community by articulating a clear value proposition and a tangible return on their investment. Your success in this step is paramount, as a robust membership base is the sole source of leverage required to effectively represent members’ interests in negotiations, directly impacting the entity’s national influence and bargaining success.
As the Executive Director, you will be the primary liaison, establishing and maintaining productive relationships with third-party payers and key stakeholders. You will lead collective bargaining to negotiate fair terms across critical issues, including audits, contractual language, and payment schedules. Furthermore, you will serve as a bridge between policy and practice: you and your team will create tangible support tools for members, partner with CPhA’s Advocacy team to influence broader policy changes, and utilize effective member communication to identify common industry issues that strengthen the organization’s collaborative voice and drive standardization across provinces.
Apply for this opportunity
Thank you for your application for this opportunity. Due to the high number of applications we receive, we will only be contacting those that are under consideration for the role.