Multi-Country Route-to-Market Board Adviser — Consumer Health

The mandate

The board’s standing question is whether one regional route-to-market architecture can scale trusted consumer-health brands across Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, or whether regulatory, pharmacy and traditional-trade differences require country-specific models. Management presents attractive revenue cases, but distributor dependency, channel conflict and working-capital exposure are not comparable across those proposals.

The adviser will reserve three days each month for nine months: one remote session with rotating country teams, one virtual challenge day with the Jakarta regional leadership and one day for analysis or distributor interviews. Quarterly in-person board and Growth Committee attendance is included, agreed market visits will be scheduled at least six weeks ahead, and time-sensitive written questions receive a response within forty-eight hours.

The term concludes with the board’s market-sequencing and operating-model resolution. Renewal for a further period is possible only through a fresh conflicts review and majority vote of independent directors; the adviser is not retained to supervise country execution or to become an intermediary with distributors.

The adviser carries influence, not authority, and holds no executive or line responsibility. They cannot instruct country managers, select or terminate partners, approve a launch, commit capital, negotiate commercial terms or represent the company with regulators; recommendations must distinguish board judgment from management execution and preserve accountable country ownership.

Other advisory and board roles may continue, provided they do not involve a competing consumer-health portfolio, a pharmacy chain, a distributor under consideration or an investor taking a position in a reviewed market. Every relevant interest and recent mandate must be declared before receiving data, and a later conflict may require recusal from one country rather than silent participation.

Why the board wants this voice

The directors have category, finance and digital expertise but no member has personally governed fragmented healthcare channels across several Southeast Asian markets. Country leaders understandably optimise for local launch approval, while the board must decide the sequence and dependencies across the portfolio. It wants a former regional operator able to identify when regional scale is evidence and when it is only a presentation convenience.

What you will own

• Test each country thesis against channel structure, regulatory timing, partner balance sheet, cash conversion, data access and the management bandwidth required after launch.
• Press management to distinguish capabilities that genuinely scale regionally from activities whose economics or control must remain local.
• Challenge distributor concentration and termination assumptions, including sub-distribution, pharmacy access, inventory ownership, returns and continuity after partner failure.
• Shape a comparable route-economics scorecard that reconciles gross-to-net, field coverage, logistics, trade credit, registration cost and working-capital exposure.
• Examine whether marketplace, social-commerce, pharmacy and practitioner channels can coexist without price leakage or compromised product governance.
• Moderate board reviews of alternative market sequences, making dependencies, abandoned options and dissent visible before capital is authorised.
• Maintain an advisory question-and-evidence ledger that records challenged assumptions, management responses, unresolved risks and the rationale for the final board choice.

Candidate qualifications

• Held regional president, commercial, operating or route-to-market authority across at least three Southeast Asian consumer or healthcare markets.
• Can evidence a market-entry sequence that changed after distributor economics, regulation or management capacity contradicted the original growth case.
• Governed traditional trade, modern retail, pharmacy and digital channels where product claims and traceability mattered commercially.
• Challenged a country general manager or investment sponsor at board level without taking over that executive’s accountability.
• Has evaluated distributor solvency, data rights and transition risk beyond surface market coverage or relationship tenure.
• Served on boards or formal advisory councils with documented conflicts, recusals and time-bounded recommendations.

Non-negotiables

• Commits three days monthly, quarterly in-person board attendance and the pre-agreed Southeast Asian market-review calendar.
• Declares all active roles and financial interests involving consumer health, pharmacy, distribution or candidate-country investors.
• Accepts that the appointment carries no line authority, partner-negotiation power or executive liability for implementation.
• Has first-hand operating exposure in Indonesia and at least two other countries within the stated regional perimeter.

1. 49 words maximum. Which current commitments or investments could intersect with the five markets, distributors or pharmacy channels under review?
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a country-entry sequence you changed after testing route economics, and identify the decisive evidence.
3. 49 words maximum. Confirm the monthly cadence and name the Southeast Asian markets where you held direct operating authority.