Director, Strategic Planning and Performance

About Blue Shield of California

As of January 2025, Blue Shield of California became a subsidiary of Ascendiun. Ascendiun is a nonprofit corporate entity that is the parent to a family of organizations including Blue Shield of California and its subsidiary, Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan; Altais, a clinical services company; and Stellarus, a company designed to scale healthcare solutions. Together, these organizations are referred to as the Ascendiun Family of Companies. 

At Blue Shield of California, our mission is to create a healthcare system worthy of our family and friends and sustainably affordable. We are transforming health care in a way that genuinely serves our nonprofit mission by lowering costs, improving quality, and enhancing the member and physician experience. 

To achieve our mission, we foster an environment where all employees can thrive and contribute fully to address the needs of the various communities we serve. We are committed to creating and maintaining a supportive workplace that upholds our values and advances our goals.

Blue Shield is a U.S. News Best Company to work for, a Deloitte U.S. Best Managed Company and a Top 100 Inspiring Workplace. We were recognized by Fair360 as a Top Regional Company, and one of the 50 most community-minded companies in the United States by Points of Light. Here at Blue Shield, we strive to make a positive change across our industry and communities – join us!  

Our Values: 

• Honest. We hold ourselves to the highest ethical and integrity standards. We build trust by doing what we say we're going to do and by acknowledging and correcting where we fall short. 
• Human. We strive to listen and communicate effectively, showing empathy by understanding others' perspectives.
• Courageous. We stand up for what we believe in and are committed to the hard work necessary to achieve our ambitious goals. 

Physical Requirements:

Office Environment - roles involving part to full time schedule in Office Environment. Based in our physical offices and work from home office/deskwork - Activity level: Sedentary, frequency most of work day.

Please click here for further physical requirement detail. 

Equal Employment Opportunity:

External hires must pass a background check/drug screen. Qualified applicants with arrest records and/or conviction records will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with Federal, State and local laws, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran status or disability status and any other classification protected by Federal, State and local laws.

Your Role

The Director of Strategic Planning and Performance leads the development, evolution, and alignment of the enterprise strategy. This role ensures strategic coherence across all business lines while accounting for market‑specific needs and drives clear stop‑start‑continue decisions and enterprise‑level trade‑offs. The Director serves as the end‑to‑end owner of the Strategy Committee and supports Board‑level strategy discussions as needed.

As a key member of the Corporate Strategy & Insights leadership team, this individual partners closely with Finance, Annual Planning, EPVO, and Operations to ensure strategy, funding, roadmaps, and execution remain tightly connected. The role also oversees the monitoring of strategic performance through defined metrics and dashboards, proactively identifying risks, gaps, or misalignment across the strategic portfolio. This position will report to the Sr. Director of Health Plan Strategy.

Our leadership model is about developing great leaders at all levels and creating opportunities for our people to grow – personally, professionally, and financially. We are looking for leaders that are energized by creative and critical thinking, building and sustaining high-performing teams, getting results the right way, and fostering continuous learning.

Your Work

In this role, you will:

• Advance strategic planning capabilities by establishing structured, repeatable frameworks that support faster, clearer decision‑making for the CEO, ELT, and senior leaders, and strengthen prioritization and enterprise trade‑off discussions
• Oversee strategy governance and manage executive forums, including the Strategy Committee, ensuring effective preparation, facilitation, decision accountability, and alignment to enterprise priorities
• Drive integrated and strategic planning alignment by connecting enterprise strategy to annual and multi‑year planning cycles and partnering with Finance, Operations, EPVO, and other teams to align strategy with funding, resource allocation, and execution roadmaps
• Strengthen strategic performance management by developing and maintaining dashboards, metrics, and reporting mechanisms that track progress, surface risks or misalignment early, and guide corrective actions
• Enable rapid response to industry and market shifts by establishing processes that help the organization quickly interpret changes, assess implications, and adapt strategic plans to remain relevant and actionable

Your Knowledge and Experience

• Requires a bachelor's degree; master's degree strongly preferred
• Requires at least 10 years of prior relevant experience in Corporate Strategy, Strategic Planning, Management Consulting or a related field including 6 years of people management experience
• Requires at least 7 years of prior relevant experience in healthcare; payors preferred
• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing strategic frameworks, planning processes, or decision‑making models
• Proven ability to manage executive‑level forums or governance bodies, including preparation of materials and facilitation of decision processes
• Experience integrating strategy with financial planning, resource allocation, and operational execution
• Hands‑on experience developing and managing strategic performance dashboards, KPIs, or scorecards

 

Hybrid

This role requires employees to be in-office based on our hybrid workplace model, balancing purposeful in-person collaboration with flexibility. For most teams, this means coming into the office two days each week.

Employees living more than 50 miles from an office location will work with their manager to determine in-office time based on business need.