Director, Core Operations and Strategic Enablement

Medica is a nonprofit health plan with more than a million members that serves communities in Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Missouri, and beyond. We deliver personalized health care experiences and partner closely with providers to ensure members are genuinely cared for.

We're a team that owns our work with accountability, makes data-driven decisions, embraces continuous learning, and celebrates collaboration - because success is a team sport. It's our mission to be there in the moments that matter most for our members and employees. Join us in creating a community of connected care, where coordinated, quality service is the norm, and every member feels valued.

The Director, Core Operations COE & Strategic Enablement is a senior, strategic operator who partners closely with the Vice President of Core Operations to drive clarity, alignment, and performance across Core Operations. This role focuses on delivering Core Operations strategy, process design, operational enablement, and enterprise reporting, ensuring leaders have timely insight into performance, risks, and priorities.

The Director, Core Operations COE & Strategic Enablement will operate effectively in a matrixed environment-driving outcomes through facilitation, standards, governance, and through leadership of a team dedicated to Core Ops optimization. This role owns the operating cadence that enables outcomes: prioritization, governance, reporting, decision facilitation, and cross-functional follow-through. Performs other duties assigned.

Key Accountabilities:

• Oversight & Operations
  
  
  
  • Governance & Reporting
    
    
    
    • Manage Core Ops leadership governance processes, ensuring timely delivery of progress updates, metrics, KPIs, and executive-ready narratives to stakeholders
    • This includes quality outcomes and focusing on top quality misses to ensure systemic contributors are addressed and effectively communicated to leaders
    • Create, maintain, and refine dashboards that provide visibility to priority progress, outcomes, risks, dependencies, and benefits realization
    
    
    
    
  • Priority-Setting & Outcome Focus
    
    
    
    • Facilitate the core ops priority-setting process in partnership with the VP and Core Ops leaders-ensuring priorities are clear, sequenced, resourced, and tied to measurable outcomes
    • Maintain an integrated view of initiatives and dependencies to reduce churn, manage tradeoffs, and enable leadership decisions
    
    
    
    
  • Risk & Issue Management
    
    
    
    • Drive a disciplined approach to risk/issue tracking: identify emerging risks, ensure owners and mitigation plans are in place, and bring items through governance for decision and resolution
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  
• Operational Excellence
  
  
  
  • Lead or support process improvement and transformation initiatives, balancing operational stability with change
  • Apply structured problem solving and root cause analysis to identify and mitigate systemic issues
  • Partner with technology teams to shape requirements, prioritize work, and ensure solutions align with operational needs
  • Support disciplined change management to drive adoption and sustained performance improvement
  • Coordinate across stakeholders (IT, finance, compliance, vendors) to align sequencing, dependencies, and readiness for change implementation
  
  
  
  
• People Leadership
  
  
  
  • Leads and develops employees to achieve business objectives while fostering an inclusive, compliant, and performancedriven work environment
  • Sets clear expectations, provides ongoing coaching and feedback, and supports employees' professional growth.
  • Ensures compliance with company policies, employment laws, and HR programs
  • Promotes engagement, collaboration, and accountability while aligning team outcomes with organizational goals
  • For Senior Leaders: Provides strategic leadership and people direction by setting vision, developing talent, and ensuring organizational effectiveness, compliance, and alignment with enterprise priorities
  
  
  
  

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and experience
• 10 years of applicable work experience beyond degree with 3 years at Senior Management level

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in supporting complex program or project management offices or administrative operations for cross-functional teams with the presentation of business cases and/or other project related matters to Senior Management
• Demonstrated experience working closely with senior leaders, supporting their strategic priorities through effective organization, communication, and operational management
• Proven track record of managing back-end operations and preparing executive-level presentations
• Familiarity with creating, improving and managing dashboards, performance metrics, and reporting tools to provide actionable insights
• Hands-on experience organizing and facilitating engagements with multiple stakeholders, ensuring smooth collaboration and communication
• Exposure to industries relevant to the organization or similar complex, matrixed environments
• Proficiency in maintaining clear documentation of team processes, project statuses, and stakeholder engagements.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, with demonstrated experience creating Executive-level PowerPoint presentations, and project management platforms (e.g., Asana, Jira, Smartsheet)
• Adept at identifying operational bottlenecks or risks and proposing actionable solutions to address them
• Ability to manage multiple priorities, adjust to shifting demands, and remain calm under pressure
• Ability to act as a confidant and operational support to the VP, Senior Director and other leaders, ensuring alignment and timely execution of priorities
• Experience supporting change initiatives by ensuring proper communications, materials, and administrative oversight

This position is an Office role, which requires an employee to work onsite at our Minnetonka office, on average, 3 days per week.

The full salary grade for this position is $113,400-$194,400. While the full salary grade is provided, the typical hiring salary range for this role is expected to be between $113,400-$170,100. Annual salary range placement will depend on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, education, work experience, applicable certifications and/or licensure, the position's scope and responsibility, internal pay equity and external market salary data. In addition to base compensation, this position may be eligible for incentive plan compensation in addition to base salary. Medica offers a generous total rewards package that includes competitive medical, dental, vision, PTO, Holidays, paid volunteer time off, 401K contributions, caregiver services and many other benefits to support our employees.

The compensation and benefits information is provided as of the date of this posting. Medica's compensation and benefits are subject to change at any time, with or without notice, subject to applicable law.

Eligibility to work in the US: Medica does not offer work visa sponsorship for this role. All candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of application. Employment is contingent on verification of identity and eligibility to work in the United States.

We are an Equal Opportunity employer, where all qualified candidates receive consideration for employment indiscriminate of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic.