Marketing Operations Senior Advisor - Financial & Strategic Planning

Primary Responsibilities

The Marketing Operations team seeks a Senior Advisor to lead four core pillars of the function: Strategic Planning, Financial Operations, Change Management, and Learning & Development. This role will play a pivotal part in advancing Marketing’s Modernization strategy, primarily through leading planning and budgeting efforts and helping ensure change is adopted across the broader organization. This leader will help translate modernization priorities into practical planning processes, budget discipline, operating rhythms, and adoption approaches that improve how Marketing prioritizes work, allocates investment, and implements new ways of working. The role will partner closely with Business Marketing, COEs, Finance, senior leadership, and the Marketing Operations Process Optimization and MarTech leads to connect strategy to execution, improve visibility into priorities and spend, and support successful delivery and adoption of new processes, AI-enabled ways of working, and Workfront-based planning and execution.

Specific areas of focus for this role include:

Strategic Planning

Facilitate Marketing’s annual and quarterly planning process by establishing governance, standard materials, taxonomies, and planning routines. This role will also implement the annual planning process in Workfront Planner with the implementation partner and identify opportunities to streamline, optimize, and automate the process over time.

Core areas of emphasis:

• Annual and quarterly planning leadership
  • Lead and orchestrate the annual marketing planning process end to end, including timelines, milestones, deliverables, and stakeholder alignment
  • Facilitate quarterly planning, business reviews, and planning checkpoints to monitor progress, surface risks, and adjust priorities as needed
  • Translate enterprise and line-of-business priorities into structured marketing plans, investment needs, and success measures
• Planning framework and portfolio management
  • Own and evolve the planning frameworks, templates, taxonomies, and supporting artifacts that create consistency, clarity, and standardization across enterprise marketing planning
  • Ensure the marketing planning process and all required planning artifacts are designed, maintained, and operationalized within Workfront Planner to support scalable intake, planning, and portfolio visibility
  • Track and manage all enterprise portfolio submissions for Marketing, ensuring required business cases, needs statements, and supporting inputs are completed, aligned, and submitted on time
• Cross-functional alignment and governance
  • Partner with Business Marketing, COEs, Finance, and Process Optimization teams to ensure plans are actionable, connected to budget realities, and operationalized in workflows and systems
  • Establish governance routines, dashboards, and reporting that provide leadership with visibility into progress, performance, risks, and decisions required
  • Refine and standardize KPI frameworks, in partnership with Marketing Analytics team members, to ensure plans and investments have clear measures of success and accountability

Financial Operations / Budgeting

Lead Marketing’s budgeting and financial operations processes, including planning, forecasting, reconciliation, and reporting, to strengthen visibility, discipline, and decision-making.

Core areas of emphasis:

• Budget planning and forecasting
  • Lead annual budget planning and support quarterly projection development with Finance
  • Partner with Finance and Business Marketing budget leads support monthly forecasting cycles across Marketing
  • Provide leadership with insight into spend pacing, risks, opportunities, and tradeoff decisions
• Investment strategy and stewardship
  • Connect marketing plans and portfolio decisions to investment outcomes, ROI conversations, and responsible use of capital
  • Support vendor and contract-related financial oversight as needed, including tracking major commitments and surfacing spend implications
  • Enable greater financial rigor across Marketing through education, transparency, and consistent operating expectations
• Financial governance and process management
  • Establish and evolve standardized financial management processes, definitions, and reporting frameworks across teams
  • Identify process improvements, automation opportunities, and workflow enhancements that simplify budget management and strengthen compliance
  • Consider SLT and ELT Marketing Scorecards / Dashboards

Change Management

Lead the Change Management function for Marketing Operations, including oversight of the Change Management team and adoption support for new processes, tools, and ways of working. This includes supporting overall Modernization, new ways of working and new Technology solutions, AI enablement, and broader process changes through communications, training, engagement, and sustainment.

Core areas of emphasis:

• Set the change strategy and direct the Change Management Consultant in building stakeholder engagement, communications, and adoption plans for key Marketing Operations and modernization initiatives
• Assess change impacts across roles, teams, processes, and tools; identify resistance points and readiness gaps; and implement mitigation plans that improve adoption and reduce execution risk
• Create clear, role-relevant communication approaches that help leaders and teams understand the purpose, value, timing, and expectations of change
• Ensure change plans are paired with practical enablement, reinforcement, and feedback mechanisms so adoption is sustained beyond initial rollout

Learning & Development

Lead learning and development efforts that build Marketing capability, support upskilling and new employee onboarding, and reinforce adoption of key processes and tools.

Core areas of emphasis:

• Capability building and learning strategy
  • Assess organizational learning and upskilling needs and define a holistic learning agenda aligned to business priorities, role expectations, and future-state capabilities
  • Design and manage learning programs, enablement materials, and communications that support process understanding, functional excellence, and professional growth
  • Partner with subject matter experts and external vendors to deliver high-value training experiences and curated development opportunities
• Onboarding and continuous enablement
  • Own and evolve the Marketing new employee onboarding journey, playbook, and foundational training experiences to create a consistent start for new team members
  • Develop education plans that support rollout of new processes, tools, and governance models across Marketing
  • Measure participation, feedback, and effectiveness to continuously improve learning impact and organizational readiness

Ideal candidates will offer the following:

• Bachelor’s degree; advanced degree desirable, or equivalent experience
• 8+ years of experience in marketing operations, strategy, financial operations, process improvement, change management, learning and development, or related business functions
• Strong strategic thinking and systems orientation, with the ability to connect enterprise priorities to operating plans, investments, processes, and outcomes
• Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional initiatives involving planning, governance, budgeting, transformation, or organizational change
• Strong financial acumen, including budgeting, forecasting, reconciliation, reporting, and translating financial data into clear business insights
• Ability to design and improve frameworks, processes, and operating routines that increase consistency, efficiency, and accountability
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders and align diverse stakeholders around decisions and next steps
• Experience building adoption strategies, enabling change, and helping teams transition successfully to new processes, tools, and ways of working
• Experience developing talent, onboarding programs, training strategies, or capability-building initiatives that strengthen organizational effectiveness
• Proven track record of driving results in fast-paced environments with strong project management, problem-solving, and organizational skills

Additional Competencies should include:

• Highly collaborative, resourceful, and accountable, with strong judgment and follow-through
• Able to balance strategic thinking with operational execution and attention to detail
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity, competing priorities, and evolving organizational needs
• Strong analytical mindset with the ability to identify trends, derive insights, and recommend action
• Effective at leading through influence across multiple teams and levels of the organization
• Committed to building team capability, reinforcing clear ways of working, and improving the employee experience
• Ability to work from a Cigna Group office 3 days a week, as directed by the business

If you will be working at home occasionally or permanently, the internet connection must be obtained through a cable broadband or fiber optic internet service provider with speeds of at least 10Mbps download/5Mbps upload.

About Cigna Healthcare

Cigna Healthcare, a division of The Cigna Group, is an advocate for better health through every stage of life. We guide our customers through the health care system, empowering them with the information and insight they need to make the best choices for improving their health and vitality. Join us in driving growth and improving lives.

Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to race, color, age, disability, sex, childbirth (including pregnancy) or related medical conditions including but not limited to lactation, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran or military status, religion, national origin, ancestry, marital or familial status, genetic information, status with regard to public assistance, citizenship status or any other characteristic protected by applicable equal employment opportunity laws.

If you need a reasonable accommodation to complete the online application process, please email seeyourself@thecignagroup.com for assistance.  Please note that this email inbox is dedicated to accommodation requests only and cannot provide application updates or accept resumes.

The Cigna Group has a tobacco-free policy and reserves the right not to hire tobacco/nicotine users in states where that is legally permissible. Candidates in such states who use tobacco/nicotine will not be considered for employment unless they enter a qualifying smoking cessation program prior to the start of their employment. These states include: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Washington State.

Qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with all federal, state and local ordinances.