Senior director, social media & content, global communications

At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. This is hard, urgent, selfless work—but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.

The Senior Director, Social Media & Content is a critical leader on the Global Communications team, shaping how Lilly's news, stories, and voice come to life across our corporate social and digital channels — making them destinations our audiences seek out, and ensuring everything we publish looks and sounds unmistakably like Lilly: human, caring, and centered on the people we serve. It's a rare opportunity to connect the world to Lilly's purpose — making life better — through storytelling that's as human as the company and teams behind it.

Reporting to the AVP, Global Communications Strategy, Innovation and Operations, this leader builds and leads a team of social media managers and strategists who turn Lilly's owned channels into a credible, must-follow voice. The role is central to building community, extending reach, and ensuring corporate storytelling is agile, social-first, and consistently connected to brand and business impact through data-driven rigor.

Key Objectives/Deliverables

• Lead the corporate social and digital strategy across current and emerging platforms, ensuring alignment with overall communications and enterprise goals.
• Lead owned editorial and content strategy and manage an agile content team responsible for producing social-first and social-exclusive storytelling, including long-form content like blogs.
• Govern the editorial strategy for Lilly’s corporate digital channels (e.g., Lilly.com, Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube), establishing and enforcing publishing cadence, voice, and quality standards, in close partnership with the Senior Director, Digital Operations and Planning.
• Serve as the steward of Lilly's voice across owned channels — ensuring corporate storytelling consistently reflects the brand's human, caring, and empathetic attributes and the "voice of the patient" positioning.
• Oversee organic and paid digital advertising efforts to strategically amplify priority content and improve reach and engagement.
• Integrate with the enterprise editorial pipeline and partner with Executive Communications and other teams to bring leadership voice and spokesperson content to life across owned channels.
• Identify, test, and scale emerging platforms and content formats, proactively redeploying resources as the media landscape shifts.
• Partner across Global Communications—including Enterprise Communications, Executive Communications and the therapeutic area (TA) teams—to build social media campaigns and tactics that amplify priority narratives, support launches and achievements, and extend reach across markets.
• Build a measurement framework that connects content to resonance, sentiment, share of voice, and movement on brand-reputation attributes.
• Ensure corporate content is optimized for both traditional search and LLMs.
• Partner with the Issues/Crisis Communications team on early issue detection, rapid response and holding-statement readiness, audience targeting, and coordinated messaging across owned channels to protect and strengthen Lilly’s reputation as conversations unfold.
• Partner closely with the Marketing Social Media Center of Excellence to adopt marketing innovations and translate standard processes into compelling corporate communications.
• Work with Medical, Legal and Regulatory functions to outline appropriate guardrails on social media content and tactics.
• Advocate patient-centric storytelling, setting standards for consent, dignity, privacy, and stigma-aware language wherever patient and caregiver stories appear on corporate channels.
• Champion AI-enabled content workflows—adopting tools for content quality control, trend detection, and production efficiency that enhance the team’s speed and creative impact.
• Partner with and provide direction to external agencies and vendors, as needed.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Journalism, or a related field.
• 10+ years of dynamic experience in digital and social media strategy and content creation, with a significant portion in a global, corporate, or agency setting.
• Qualified applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Lilly will not provide support for or sponsor work authorization or visas for this role, including but not limited to F-1 CPT, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, J-1, H-1B, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, or L-1.

Additional Skills/Preferences

• Experience operating in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment—such as a newsroom, a regulated or healthcare organization, or a high-profile consumer brand—where speed, judgment, and reputation are paramount.
• Demonstrated expertise in developing and delivering comprehensive corporate social and digital media strategies that drive measurable engagement and brand reputation.
• Strong understanding of modern communications subject areas, including content strategy, community management, paid social, and emerging platforms.
• Current point of view on how brands optimize for AI-generated search and answer experiences (GEO/AI search), and a track record of staying ahead of evolving standard processes.
• Validated ability to lead an agile content engine, managing editorial processes and ensuring high-quality, social-first storytelling.
• Record of building and growing large, highly engaged audiences and communities at brand or publisher scale.
• Experience bringing to bear data and analytics to inform social media strategy, optimize content, and demonstrate business impact.
• Experience working across global, multi-market teams and an understanding of how regional context, culture, and platform behavior shape what resonates with audiences.
• Comfort navigating brand, legal, and regulatory considerations when publishing at speed in a complex, scrutinized environment.
• Strong leadership skills with experience leading teams and fostering cross-functional collaboration, particularly with marketing and executive communications.
• Familiarity with AI tools for content quality control and identifying emerging trends is highly valued.
• News & Editorial Judgment: Newsroom-grade instinct for what will resonate, when to move, and how to turn moments into credible, on-brand storytelling.
• Channel & Community Excellence: Deep platform fluency and a proven ability to build engaged communities and turn owned channels into destinations audiences seek out.
• Strategic & Analytical Strength: Connects social and digital activity to business outcomes, using data and AI-enabled tools to optimize content and demonstrate impact.
• Global Perspective: Brings a global perspective to social and digital storytelling, with the cultural fluency and awareness to lead campaigns that resonate across markets and partner effectively with teams worldwide.
• Leadership & Collaboration: Builds and develops high-performing creative teams, partners seamlessly across marketing and executive communications, and develops a culture of innovation and accountability.

Additional Information:

Indianapolis, IN or Remote

Lilly is dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities to actively engage in the workforce, ensuring equal opportunities when vying for positions. If you require accommodation to submit a resume for a position at Lilly, please complete the accommodation request form (https://careers.lilly.com/us/en/workplace-accommodation) for further assistance. Please note this is for individuals to request an accommodation as part of the application process and any other correspondence will not receive a response.

Lilly is proud to be an EEO Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, gender expression, sexual orientation, genetic information, ancestry, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Our employee resource groups (ERGs) offer strong support networks for their members and are open to all employees. Our current groups include: Africa, Middle East, Central Asia (AMECA), Black Employees at Lilly (BE@Lilly), Chinese Culture Network (CCN), EnAble, Evolve, Lilly Indian Network (LIN), Organization of Latinx at Lilly (OLA), Pride (LGBTQ+ Allies), Veterans Leadership Network (VLN) and Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL).

Actual compensation will depend on a candidate’s education, experience, skills, and geographic location. The anticipated wage for this position is $154,500 - $226,600. Full-time equivalent employees also will be eligible for a company bonus (depending, in part, on company and individual performance). In addition, Lilly offers a comprehensive benefit program to eligible employees, including eligibility to participate in a company-sponsored 401(k); pension; vacation benefits; eligibility for medical, dental, vision and prescription drug benefits; flexible benefits (e.g., healthcare and/or dependent day care flexible spending accounts); life insurance and death benefits; certain time off and leave of absence benefits; and well-being benefits (e.g., employee assistance program, fitness benefits, and employee clubs and activities). Lilly reserves the right to amend, modify, or terminate its compensation and benefit programs in its sole discretion and Lilly’s compensation practices and guidelines will apply regarding the details of any promotion or transfer of Lilly employees.

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