Director of Clinical Advising & Innovation (Reproductive Healthcare - Remote)

Organizational Summary

Contraceptive care is basic healthcare. Yet too many patients in the U.S. struggle to access the care they need, when they need it. Founded in 2014, Upstream USA is a national, nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that equitable, patient-centered contraceptive care is available to everyone.

Our Mission and Impact

Upstream works to ensure individuals can make fully informed, autonomous decisions about the contraceptive methods that are best for them. We are currently the largest contraceptive organization in the country improving contraceptive care in primary care settings, operating in 37 states and Washington, D.C.

While our foundational work focuses on partnering with healthcare organizations offering primary care, such as federally qualified healthcare centers (FQHC) and health systems, we are always evolving. We are actively pursuing additional, innovative paths to ensure every patient has streamlined access to the contraceptive service of their choice, where and when it is most convenient for them.

A Different Kind of Nonprofit

Supported entirely by venture philanthropy, Upstream operates with a culture of aggressive growth and a laser focus on measurable outcomes. To maintain our independence and nonpartisan stance, we do not accept funding from the government or pharmaceutical companies.

• Our 2030 Goal: We are on a mission to partner with organizations that collectively reach 5 million patients of reproductive age.
• Recognition: We are a 2023 Audacious Project recipient, with our work featured in publications like Harvard Public Health, Bloomberg, and MedPage Today.

We welcome individuals who are driven by impact and scale to join us in making equitable contraceptive access a reality for all.

Position Summary

The Director of Clinical Strategy Advising and Innovation is the clinical operations leader responsible for harnessing Upstream’s Clinical Team to inform organizational initiatives, including our systems change work with health care organizations (HCOs) as part of our Core Program. The Director also advises on early stage program innovation to help grow our portfolio of programs from ideation to launch decisions. Sitting within the Clinical Strategy, Design and Training (CSDT) vertical, they manage a pool of clinician experts, deploying them to support HCO partners and the organization's highest-priority workstreams, while driving program evolution and innovations.

Reporting to the Head of Clinical Strategy, Design & Training, this role sits at the intersection of clinical practice and organizational strategy. The ideal candidate will have deep clinical expertise and experience supporting clinical innovations in a fast-paced setting. A background in health service research, clinical program design, and/or implementation science is preferred. The Director is responsible for ensuring that generative thinking and rapid experimentation are grounded in clinical best practices. They manage the operational handshake between program design and field implementation, ensuring that new pilots, enhancements, or interventions are designed for sustainable, high-fidelity uptake.

There is flexibility to reduce the schedule to 32 hours per week to allow the individual to maintain an active clinical practice, ensuring continued clinical expertise and credibility.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Strategy Execution & Monitoring

• Strategic Deployment: Develop and execute operational plans that align clinical work, including clinical innovation, with the broader strategic and financial goals of the organization. Ensure clinical expertise is a design partner from the discovery phase of initiatives to improve contraceptive access.
• Workstream Integration: Oversee the assignment of clinical advisors to specific workstreams, whether as ad hoc or embedded consultants.
• Tools & Resources: Develop frameworks and tools that support the Clinical Team in prioritization, decision-making, and execution against mission, vision and annual vertical goals.

Operational Updates and Innovation

• Embedded Innovation: Design and oversee rapid cycle clinical program enhancements.
• Rapid Prototyping: Drive generative thinking within the Clinical Strategy Team, lead innovation sprints to test new tools, workflows, or setting-specific adaptations.
• Guardrail Governance: Establish clinical guardrails and support clinical excellence in pilots, ensuring that innovation never compromises patient safety or medical standards.
• Core Program Enhancement: : Collaborate with cross-functional teams, the Clinical Strategy Team, and other stakeholders to design and integrate clinical program updates seamlessly into existing clinical workflows.
• Setting-Specific Design: Support the adaptation of clinical program elements for new healthcare environments.
• Pilot Implementation: Partner with the VP of Strategy on developing and deploying program pilots , providing clinical guidance on operational workflows as well as insights on clinical ROI; gathering real-world feedback from field testing to inform the iterative program updates and scaling decisions.

Cross-Functional Support

• Leadership: Serve as the senior clinical advisor at innovation and cross-functional tables, anticipating interdependencies and risks, navigating complexity, and providing air-cover for the Clinical Team, where necessary.
• Clinical Consultation: Advise cross-functional teams during early exploration and planning for new opportunities involving clinical considerations before transitioning operational execution to a consulting Clinical Team member.
• Relationship Cultivation: Nurture relationships with internal and external stakeholders to foster the smooth integration of the clinical team into collaborative relationships that advance workstreams.

Project, Risk and Data Management

• Project Management: Collaborate with the CSDT operations team to ensure requests for clinical input, redesign and innovation are optimally managed; monitor and actively manage the Clinical Team’s workload for progress against pre-determined timelines, flagging risks or the need for additional support from vertical leadership.
• Data management: Partner with the analysts to ensure clinical program metrics are defined, tracked and findings integrated into operations to ensure seamless workflow.
• Risk management: Identify and mitigate risks to program fidelity, impact, and resource usage.

Staff Management & Team Development

• Staff Management: Recruit, onboard, schedule, and evaluate Clinical Strategy Team staff to ensure adequate coverage and high morale; lead team meetings; and facilitate change management.
• Ideation: In collaboration with our Strategy team, manage generative thinking among the clinical team to support the surfacing of new ideas, models and approaches for advancing Upstream’s mission, guide desk research and leverage opportunity screens to identify the most promising ideas.
• Professional Development and Coaching: Manage the capacity and professional development of the Clinical Strategy Team, ensuring the team maintains deep expertise in contraceptive care and implementation best practices.
• Additional duties and projects as assigned.

Required Education, Experience, Knowledge, Skills and Ability

• Clinical Background: MD, NP, or PA with 8-10+ years of clinical and leadership experience in clinical services or public health.
• Reproductive Health: Strong clinical background in contraceptive care and reproductive health equity
• Healthcare Leadership: 8+ years of experience managing multi-disciplinary clinical teams or complex projects in a healthcare setting or with health services operations.
• Clinical Innovation Experience: Demonstrated experience supporting innovation from ideation to implementation, including through health service redesign, clinical product development, or leading innovation sprints (rapid prototyping, user-centered design).
• Analytic Skills: Strong analytical and critical thinking skills; the ability to synthesize complex data, develop insights, and translate findings into actionable recommendations.
• Team Development: Proven track record of leading, mentoring, and elevating teams; able to build capability, set direction, and inspire high performance.
• Change Management: Experience supporting teams through periods of change whether driven by internal or external forces.
• Relationship Development: Exceptional relationship-building and cross-functional leadership capabilities, including a track record of influencing and aligning senior leaders without direct authority.
• Complex Project Management: Familiarity with project management tools and frameworks; experience managing large, multi-workstream initiatives, including prioritization, scoping, resourcing, and operational execution.
• Strong Communication Skills: Superior communication skills, with the ability to craft and deliver clear, compelling narratives for executive audiences.
• Operating in Fast Pace Environments: Demonstrated ability to thrive in fast-paced, high-growth, and highly collaborative environments, with comfort navigating ambiguity and shifting priorities.
• Mission Alignment: Commitment to Upstream’s mission, equity goals, and values, including the ability to bring an inclusive lens to strategic decision-making and organizational planning.
• Nonprofit Experience: Experience with nonprofit organizations, or mission-driven environments.
• Executive Engagement: Experience working closely with executive teams, boards, or senior decision-makers.
• Operational Agility: The ability to work in the weeds of a project while maintaining a high-level strategic perspective.
• Scientific Agility: The ability to move at the speed of innovation while ensuring program impact remains clinically measurable and aligned with the Logic Model.
• Operational Intuition: Deep understanding of healthcare workflows in diverse settings (e.g., FQHCs, large systems) and how to hardwire new clinical practices into them.
• Team Management: Exceptional ability to lead and influence high-level internal specialists and navigate the friction between design and delivery.
• Internal Collaboration: Ability to navigate cross-functional environments and translate clinical needs for technical and operational audiences, while avoiding program debt.
• Entrepreneurial Mindset: A proactive desire to disrupt existing workflows to improve patient access and provider experience.
• AI Fluency & Tool Integration: Ability to identify and leverage generative AI tools (such as LLMs, image generators, or industry-specific copilots) to streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance overall output quality while maintaining the proper human checkpoints.
• AI Prompt Engineering & Critical Output Evaluation: Proficiency in crafting effective prompts to achieve desired outcomes and the critical thinking skills necessary to audit, fact-check, and refine AI-generated content for accuracy and brand alignment.
• Ethical AI Awareness: A foundational understanding of the ethical implications of AI, including data privacy, bias recognition, and the responsible use of company information in third-party AI environments.
• Demonstrates the ability to remain focused, adaptable, and solution-oriented in the face of challenges, setbacks, or ambiguity. Approaches obstacles with a growth mindset and maintains a steady commitment to goals, even under pressure or changing circumstances; resilient.
• While we are a remotely based organization, we maintain an on-camera culture during meetings to support connection, engagement, teaming and collaboration. Must be comfortable and able to participate in this environment

Travel Requirements

This role will require up to 25%  business travel. All Upstreamers can expect a minimum of 8 days of business travel per year to attend 1 annual organizational retreat and 1 or 2 annual team/department meetings.

Hiring Range

The hiring range for this role is $225,000 to $275,000 commensurate with clinical credentials and experience.