Director, Payer Marketing

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but most providers don't accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway’s mission is to fix this by building a new mental healthcare system everyone can access. We started by solving the biggest barrier to care: insurance. The admin work - credentialing, claims, payment reconciliation - is a nightmare. We've automated that. But we're going further. Over 90,000 providers across all 50 states run their practice on our software, serving over 2.6 million patients. We are building the best tools for therapists to run their entire practice, reimagining the experience of finding a therapist, and investing in the platform foundations to enable this at scale, and building much of it with AI. We aren't just a billing layer; we are becoming the platform where care actually happens. We're a Series D company with $325M+ in funding (a16z, Accel, Spark Capital, etc.), looking for exceptional people to help us achieve this mission. We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better. About the Role: Headway is already the largest mental health network for America's leading health plans. Very few marketing leaders get to operate at a scale where their work materially shapes how mental health care works in America. This is that role. We're looking for a Director of Payer Marketing to build and lead the function that makes Headway the most credible, trusted voice in the room whenever a payer talks about mental health. This is an enterprise B2B product marketing leader at heart — someone who translates narrative to commercial leverage, knows their audience backwards and forwards, and understands how that work builds towards outcomes: deeper relationships, stronger renewals, expanded partnerships, and better terms. This is a player-coach role for someone who is a builder at heart. You'll set the payer-marketing strategy, build and lead a small, high-caliber team, and work hand-in-hand with our Payer/Commercial, Clinical Strategy, and Provider, Patient & Brand marketing teams. What you'll own: • Set the payer marketing strategy. Define the overarching positioning, narrative, and GTM plan for Headway with health plans. The payer story is never just a payer story; it's the synthesis of everything Headway is doing across the platform. • Build the function from zero. This isn't a role where you inherit a playbook — you'll define the operating model, the team structure, the cadences, and the metrics that make payer marketing a true commercial lever. You'll create milestones without being handed a roadmap and build momentum in ambiguous, high-stakes situations. • Build the category story everyone wants to be part of. Author a point of view so strong that plans, providers, and partners orient around it. • Commercialize net-new payer solutions. Partner with Product and Payer/Commercial to take new Headway offerings to market. Define what's buyable, build the proof and positioning that moves a plan from curious to committed, and orchestrate the launch moments that convert the plan relationships you've earned into net-new revenue. • Turn clinical data into proof, and proof into leverage . Partner with Clinical Strategy and Research to source evidence and translate complex data into compelling outcomes narratives, benchmarks, and a steady drumbeat of Headway-authored insight (data stories, trend reports, category POV). • Drive field marketing and enablement. Ensure Payer/Commercial has the content library, pitch decks, RFP support, case studies, and tools to grow and deepen accounts. • Activate the story in the right rooms. Plan and execute the moments that bring the narrative to