Head of Consultant Relations

Core Responsibilities

The Head of Consultant Relations will execute Lantern’s consultant relations strategy through named ownership of major consulting and brokerage house relationships. This role involves educating partners on Lantern’s value proposition, gathering feedback to refine messaging, and collaborating with Sales and Client Success on growth opportunities.

The Consultant Relations function is critical for winning in the marketplace and ensuring the quality of Lantern’s deals. Key responsibilities include:

• Owning named house relationships: Building deep, accountable relationships at national and local levels, with clear ownership of major houses (capped at 1–2 houses per person).
• Staying embedded in deals: Realizing relationship value by participating in live deals alongside Sales and Solutions Consulting, tailoring deal strategy and leveraging consultant relationships.
• Developing content: Partnering with product marketing and sales enablement teams to create content tailored to consultants and specific firms.
• Educating the marketplace: Building awareness of surgery COEs and cancer support categories, and how to evaluate solutions in this space.
• Growing the business: Improving Lantern’s win rate and deal quality with each consulting/brokerage firm, not just increasing proposal volume.
• Closing active coverage gaps: Expanding coverage in underserved segments like Texas/Southeast and public sector/labor.
• Managing escalations deliberately: Partnering with Sales and Client Success to route reactive escalations outside CR, freeing up capacity for proactive relationship management.
• Identifying opportunities for improvement: Within and outside the consultant relations mandate, and addressing them where appropriate.
• Establishing strong cross-functional relationships: Collaborating with sales, solutions consulting, client success, analytics, clinical, marketing, network, and member services for a cohesive team approach.

Goals and Metrics

Success is measured by the health and outcomes of named house relationships, not top-of-funnel activity volume. Key metrics include:

• Relationship health and account coverage: Depth, breadth, and health of named relationships across major consulting and brokerage houses.
• Deal outcomes: Win rate and deal quality on embedded opportunities, alongside overall net ACV growth across net-new logos and existing business expansion.
• Escalation load: Declining share of the team’s time spent on reactive escalations, freeing capacity for proactive relationship-building.

Additional metrics include engagement and impact on qualified opportunities for new and existing clients, and progress in building an outcome-based measurement framework.

Ideal Candidate Qualities

The candidate must meet the following requirements:

• 15+ years of professional experience working with employer healthcare benefits, either in health and benefits consulting or in a client/consultant-facing role within a healthcare solution/vendor.
• Strong management experience with the ability to build, mentor, and lead a high-performing team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, professional development, and accountability.
• Deep relationships and credibility across top consulting/brokerage firms, ideally from a previous CR-type role.
• Experience designing or operating a named-account or portfolio-ownership model with clear accountability per account or territory.
• Ability to influence client and consultant decisions with a thoughtful, data-driven perspective.
• Experience in consultative sales or business development.
• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal, for conveying complex information to diverse audiences.
• Clear understanding of self-funded medical plans and relationships between health plans, providers, and plan sponsors.
• Effective interpersonal skills for working independently and within a team environment.
• Comfortable in a high-growth, fast-changing environment; organized, adaptable, and self-motivated.
• Passion for Lantern’s mission and collaborative culture.
• Bachelor’s degree required.

Preferred qualifications:

• 5-10 years as a health and benefits consultant within a top consulting/brokerage firm.
• Strong analytical skills, including experience with medical claims data to project savings/program impact.
• Knowledge of the broader ecosystem of point solutions and healthcare disruptors selling to self-funded employers.
• Experience building outcome-based performance metrics for relationship-management or sales teams.
• Ability to adopt a continuous improvement mindset and contribute to Commercial team processes.
• Experience in an early/growth-stage business.