Associate Director, Asia Transformation

1. Strategic Execution and Leadership:

• Own intake and lead implementation of Manulife's Asia strategy, ensuring alignment with overall strategic priorities.

• Work with stakeholders to translate ambiguous opportunities into clear problem statements, hypotheses, and measurable outcomes (OKRs)

• Build and maintain a comprehensive execution roadmap with milestones, deliverables, interdependencies, and accountabilities across markets and functions for the assigned strategic programs/initiatives

• Define and develop execution roadmaps to provide clarity, structure, and alignment around timelines, milestones, deliverables, and accountabilities.

• Lead day‑to‑day decisioning to maintain pace, remove blockers, and deliver outcomes; escalate with options and implications.

• Facilitate the development of key metrics and indicators to track the success of initiatives, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities.

2. Project Management and Governance:

• Oversee and manage the execution of the plan, ensuring projects are delivered on time and within scope, through effective governance to maintain momentum and accountability.

• Facilitate the program and initiatives Steering Committee to ensure strategic alignment and oversight from executive stakeholders.

• Establish governance frameworks to monitor progress and ensure accountability across initiatives.

• Shape and assist in business case building

• Maintaining the program financials and associate investments, building business cases and updating financial tracking.

• Identify, manage, and escalate key issues and risks in a timely manner, ensuring proactive problem-solving and mitigation strategies.

3. Program Success and Culture Building:

• Elevate the profile of strategic programs and initiatives within the organization, ensuring they receive the necessary focus and resources.

• Motivate and encourage workstream leads, fostering a collaborative and high performance culture.

• Recognize and celebrate successes to maintain morale and highlight positive outcomes.

Required Qualifications:

• Project management expertise: Proven track record in project management, to manage complex, multi-market projects and drive them to successful completion. Management consulting experiences preferred.

• Strategic thinking: Strong understanding of the insurance business, products and operations; familiarity with Manulife systems and processes is a plus.

• Problem Solving Capability: Ability to translate objectives into action items which drive initiatives, including data-driven problem solving and decision-making skills.

• Stakeholder Management: Exceptional communication and collaborative skills, and ability to influence and collaborate with senior leaders and cross-functional teams, supports, advocates, communicates and implements changes.

• Business Acumen: Solid business and financial acumen to evaluate and understand financially feasible actions for strategy implementation.

• Adaptability: Thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and manage multiple priorities simultaneously. Self-motivated, independent and with excellent interpersonal skills.

• Presentation Skills: Excellent presentation, proficiency in PowerPoint and Excel; ability to synthesize complex data into clear, actionable insights.

• Education and qualification - University degree or higher, with preference to degrees in healthcare, medicine, business administration, finance or a related field. Fluency in English is required; proficiency in one or more Asian languages is an advantage.

When you join our team:

• We'll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.

• We'll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.

• As part of our global team, we'll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact

Working Arrangement