Director, Brand Strategy & Partnerships

At LifeStance Health, we strive to help individuals, families, and communities with their mental health needs. Everywhere. Every day. It’s a lofty goal; we know. But we make it happen with the best team in mental healthcare. Thank you for taking the time to explore a career with us. As the fastest growing mental health practice group in the country, now is the perfect time to join our team! LifeStance Health Values • Belonging: We cultivate a space where everyone can show up as their authentic self. • Empathy: We seek out diverse perspectives and listen to learn without judgment. • Courage: We are all accountable for doing the right thing - even when it's hard - because we know it's worth it. • One Team: We realize our full potential when we work together towards our shared purpose. Benefits As a full-time employee of LifeStance Health, the following benefits are offered: medical, dental, vision, AD&D, short and long-term disability, and life insurance. Additional benefits include a 401k retirement savings with employer match, paid parental leave, paid time off, holiday pay and an Employee Assistance Program. ROLE OVERVIEW The Director, Brand Strategy & Partnerships leads the development, governance, and activation of the LifeStance Health brand across enterprise audiences, markets, partnerships, and growth priorities. This role is responsible for strengthening how LifeStance shows up with patients, clinicians, teammates, referral partners, recruits, business partners, and external stakeholders by building a clear, differentiated, and scalable brand platform. This leader will serve as a senior strategic partner across the organization, translating enterprise priorities into brand strategies, creative systems, partnership opportunities, and activation plans that build awareness, trust, preference, and long-term affinity. The role oversees brand governance, creative services, branded partnerships, sponsorship strategy, and cross-functional brand activation, ensuring LifeStance presents a consistent, credible, and compelling brand experience across every touchpoint. Consistent with LifeStance’s values, every member of the LifeStance team is expected to support each other and the mission, which may mean participating in projects and initiatives and performing functions and responsibilities not specifically outlined in this job description. KEY RESPONSIBILITES Enterprise Brand Strategy • Lead the development and evolution of LifeStance’s enterprise brand strategy, positioning, narrative, and messaging architecture. • Translate business priorities into brand strategies that support consumer growth, clinician relevance, referral confidence, recruiting, business development, reputation, and stakeholder trust. • Ensure the LifeStance brand reflects the company’s long-term vision, growth strategy, care model, and role in the outpatient mental health category. • Partner with marketing, clinical, operations, people, business development, M&A, and executive stakeholders to ensure brand strategy is embedded across enterprise initiatives. • Develop audience-specific brand strategies for patients, clinicians, teammates, referral partners, recruits, payors, community partners, and external stakeholders. Brand Governance and Architecture • Own enterprise brand governance, standards, and usage across internal and external channels. • Develop and maintain brand guidelines, messaging frameworks, visual and verbal identity standards, and brand decision-making processes. • Lead brand architecture strategy for specialty services, partnerships, de novos, M&A activity, service-line expansion, and future growth initiatives. • Ensure consistency across digital, physical, internal, patient-facing, clinician-facing, and partner-facing touchpoints. • Establish processes and tools to help teams activate the brand consistently and efficiently at scale. Creative Services Leadership • Oversee creative services strategy, prioritization, and execution across enterprise marketing needs. • Lead the development of scalable creative systems, campaign assets, templates, toolkits, and branded materials. • Partner with internal teams and external agencies to ensure creative work is strategically grounded, brand-aligned, and built for reuse across audiences and markets. • Manage creative workflows, intake, prioritization, and quality standards to improve efficiency and brand consistency. • Help evolve the creative services model, including the right mix of internal resources, agencies, contractors, and production partners. Brand Partnerships and Sponsorships • Develop and lead branded partnership strategy across healthcare, mental health, employer, community, consumer, and out-of-category opportunities. • Identify and cultivate partnerships that increase brand awareness, credibility, trust, and cultural relevance. • Evaluate sponsorships, collaborations, thought leadership opportunities, and strategic relationships through the lens of brand fit, audience reach, reputation impact, and business value. • Partner with business development, clinical, people, PR, and market leaders to activate partnerships that support enterprise goals. • Build frameworks to assess partnership ROI, brand lift, stakeholder engagement, and long-term strategic value. Campaign and Activation Strategy • Partner with marketing leadership to translate brand strategy into campaign platforms, activation plans, and market-level storytelling. • Support development of top-of-funnel campaign strategy, creative briefs, audience segmentation, and activation plans. • Ensure campaigns are grounded in consumer insight and flexible enough to support multiple audiences, service lines, geographies, and business priorities. • Partner with performance marketing, content, PR, social, reputation, and field teams to connect brand-building efforts with demand generation and stakeholder engagement. • Define how brand activation supports awareness, trust, preference, discoverability, referral confidence, clinician pride, and long-term loyalty. Cross-Functional Leadership • Serve as a strategic brand advisor to senior leaders and cross-functional partners. • Support enterprise initiatives requiring brand strategy, storytelling, positioning, or change management. • Partner with M&A and de novo teams to ensure new practices and markets are integrated into the LifeStance brand in a consistent and thoughtful way. • Collaborate with People / Talent teams on employer brand, EVP activation, recruiting materials, and clinician engagement. • Collaborate with PR, communications, and clinical leadership to strengthen thought leadership, reputation, and external storytelling. Measurement and Optimization • Establish brand health measurement frameworks, including awareness, familiarity, trust, preference, reputation, share of search, stakeholder engagement, and campaign contribution. • Partner with analytics and performance teams to connect brand-building activity to business outcomes over time. • Develop executive-facing reporting that communicates brand progress, opportunities, and impact. • Use insights, research, and performance data to continuously improve brand strategy, creative execution, and partnership activation. REQUIREMENTS • 10+ years of experience in brand strategy, brand management, integrated marketing, creative strategy, or brand experience. • Experience leading enterprise brand strategy in a complex, multi-site, multi-market, or matrixed organization. • Qualified candidates must be legally authorized to be employed in the United States • LifeStance is an EEO/Affirmative Action Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status. • Demonstrates awareness, inclusivity, sensitivity, humility, and experience in working with individuals from diverse ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, sexual orientations, gender identities, and other various aspects of culture. PREFERRED SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE • Healthcare, behavioral health, consumer health, retail health, or similarly regulated category experience strongly preferred. • Demonstrated ability to build and govern brand systems across multiple audiences, channels, markets, and stakeholders. • Experience managing creative teams, agencies, production partners, or cross-functional creative workflows. • Experience developing or activating strategic partnerships, sponsorships, or branded collaborations. • Strong executive communication skills with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and translate strategy into clear recommendations. • Proven ability to balance strategic vision with operational execution. • Strong understanding of consumer behavior, brand health, reputation, content strategy, digital experience, and integrated campaign development. • Ability to operate in a fast-paced, growth-oriented environment with evolving priorities. Leadership Attributes • Strategic thinker with strong business acumen and enterprise orientation. • Deeply collaborative, with the ability to influence across functions without direct authority. • Strong storyteller who can simplify complex ideas and create alignment. • High judgment and strong brand instincts. • Comfortable building new capabilities, processes, and systems. • Able to balance creativity, consistency, governance, and speed. • Passionate about building a brand that is human, trusted, differentiated, and useful in people’s lives. PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS • The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of the job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. • While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit, stand, bend, talk and hear. The employee is frequently required to walk. The employee must be able to lift and/or move objects up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and the ability to adjust focus. COMPENSATION: $170,000 - $215,000/annually, with annual bonus potential and long-term incentive plan eligibility LifeStance provides the compensation range and benefits that it in good faith believes it might pay and/or offer for this position. LifeStance reserves the right to ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and offer additional benefits and other compensation, depending on circumstances not related to an applicant’s sex or other status protected by local, state, or federal law. LifeStance is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are fully committed to creating an inclusive work environment for all our employees. Learn more about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at LifeStance. LifeStance Health complies with federal and state disability laws and makes reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact our Human Resources Team at . Please note: This contact is intended solely for accommodation requests. Inquiries regarding applications, resumes and applicant status should not be sent to this email address as they will not be reviewed or responded to. To apply for a position, please use our official careers page. Originally posted on Himalayas