VP, Partnerships

About us:

Foodsmart is the leading Foodcare platform in the U.S., built to deliver nutrition-driven healthcare at scale. Powered by a national network of Registered Dietitians, Foodsmart combines personalized clinical nutrition care, behavior change tools, and food benefits to improve member health outcomes while lowering healthcare costs.

Our platform is designed to foster healthier food choices, drive lasting behavior change, and deliver sustainable health outcomes. Through our highly personalized, digital platform, we guide more than 3 million members—including those in employer-sponsored health plans, regional and national Medicaid managed care organizations, Medicare Advantage plans, and commercial insurers—on a tailored journey to eating well while saving time and money.

Foodsmart seamlessly integrates dietary assessments and nutrition counseling with online food ordering and cost-effective meal planning for the entire family, optimizing ingredients both at home and on the go. We partner with national and regional retailers across the U.S., many of whom accept SNAP/EBT, making healthier food more accessible. Additionally, we assist members with SNAP enrollment and management, providing tangible access to nutritious food. In 2024, Foodsmart secured a $200 million investment from TPG’s Rise Fund, which supports entrepreneurs dedicated to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. This investment helps us expand our reach, particularly to low-income workers who are disproportionately affected by diet-related diseases. 

At Foodsmart, our mission is to make nutritious food accessible and affordable for everyone, regardless of economic status. We are committed to a set of core values that shape our culture and work environment:

👥 Customer First - You start with the member and work backwards.
🚀 Make It Happen - You act with urgency, use data, and hold high standards.
🤝 One Team - You collaborate with respect and commit as a group.

Whether you're a dietitian, a commercial leader, or a technologist, working at Foodsmart means being part of a team that is passionate, supportive, and driven by a shared purpose. Join us in transforming the way people access and enjoy healthy food.

About the role:
Referral volume is one of Foodsmart's most critical growth levers. Today, the company acquires members through three primary referral channels — healthcare system and clinical referrals (FQHCs, CHCs, pharma, hospital systems), food and retail ecosystem partners (food banks, SDOH organizations, enterprise retailers, food vendor marketplace participants), and community-based outreach (on-the-ground enrollment and awareness in high-density markets). These channels are currently managed across separate functions, creating alignment gaps and missed amplification opportunities.

The VP of Partnerships will be the first leader to unify Foodsmart's three member referral-generating functions: institutional healthcare partnerships, food and retail ecosystem relationships, and community-based outreach under a single strategic architecture. As a foundational leader, the VP will guide and mentor the existing leads while strategically scaling the team's capabilities to support our expanding partnership ecosystem.

Referral Growth Strategy
Design and own the multi-year referral growth roadmap across all partnership verticals. Establish a shared volume framework that connects FQHC referrals, food ecosystem partnerships, and community enrollment into a unified measurement system. Identify which channels represent the highest-leverage bets by market and by population, and allocate resources accordingly.

Institutional Partnership Development
Personally lead the identification and structuring of new partnerships with Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), Community Health Centers (CHCs), pharma organizations, hospital systems, FindHelp, UniteUs, and other SDOH-adjacent platforms. These are complex, multi-stakeholder negotiations requiring fluency in clinical workflows, procurement processes, and population health goals. 

Team Leadership & Development 
Serve as a visionary leader and mentor to a high-performing team. Foster a culture of high performance, accountability, and continuous professional development, while thoughtfully expanding team capacity to meet future growth demands.

Food & Retail Ecosystem
Provide executive oversight for Foodsmart's food vendor partnerships and marketplace strategy, including national retailer relationships (Walmart, Amazon, Instacart) as well as community-level food bank and SDOH organizations. Work with the Sr. Director of Food Partnerships to build a differentiated marketplace value proposition that deepens member engagement and drives referral volume.

Community Engagement Oversight
Oversee the Director of Community Engagement and a field team responsible for awareness campaigns and enrollment drives in high-density markets. This vertical requires both operational accountability and strategic direction — ensuring community-level activation is tied to measurable enrollment outcomes rather than solely awareness metrics.

Distribution & Channel Partnerships
Develop and manage relationships with distribution and channel partners — including supplemental benefit platforms (Soda Health, Nations Benefits), benefit management platforms (Lynx), and others — that create access to new member populations at scale. This requires an understanding of how benefit platforms price, structure, and distribute services.

Operating Cadence & Pipeline Management
Build the operational infrastructure for this team: a shared CRM-based pipeline, segment-level performance tracking, a partner health scorecard, and a forecasting methodology that can be trusted by leadership. The VP will bring rigor and accountability to this function.

Cross-Functional Alignment
Work closely with the CGO, Chief Clinical Officer, product, and payer/provider sales teams to ensure partnership structures are consistent with clinical quality standards, network requirements, and member experience expectations. Referral volume only creates value if it converts to engaged, retained members.

In Year 1, the VP of Partnerships will:

 

A Partnership Architect — not a manager of existing relationships, but a builder of new ones. You identify structural opportunities and create the frameworks that make them repeatable.

Mission-Aligned — genuinely motivated by the intersection of food access, health equity, and healthcare delivery. You can speak to SDOH fluently because you care about it.

Strategically rigorous with executional discipline — you can move between market-level strategy and pipeline spreadsheet accountability in the same meeting.

Highly politically fluent — able to navigate the complexity of FQHC leadership teams, retail procurement organizations, pharma corporate affairs teams, and community health stakeholders with equal ease.

Leader, strong builder and developer of talent — you elevate the people around you and create clarity, not dependency.

Comfortable with ambiguity at scale — you can design structure where none exists and iterate quickly without losing direction.

12+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, or growth leadership — with at least half of that in healthcare, digital health, or health-adjacent verticals

5+ years of management experience with a proven track record of guiding, mentoring, and effectively scaling capabilities within growing, high-performing teams

Deep familiarity with the SDOH ecosystem: FQHCs, CHCs, food banks, community health workers, and the platforms that connect them (FindHelp, UniteUs, etc.)

Experience navigating both institutional healthcare (payers, health systems, Medicaid/Medicare) and non-traditional partners (retailers, food companies, community organizations)

A demonstrated track record of building partnership ecosystems — not just managing inherited ones — with measurable referral, enrollment, or revenue outcomes

Operational capability: you have built pipeline management systems, run performance reviews, and held teams accountable to volume metrics

Management consulting background is a meaningful differentiator for this role given the complexity of the organizational design and market segmentation work required

Bachelor's degree required; Master's, MBA, or MPH strongly preferred