Portfolio Strategy Lead

Job Description

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Sun Life's Corporate Real Estate (CRE) team is looking for a Portfolio Strategy Lead to guide real estate planning and decisions across a portfolio of sites. This role calls for someone who can manage the details of individual projects while stepping back to identify portfolio-wide priorities, patterns, and opportunities.

The Portfolio Strategy Lead brings together business needs, financial analysis, market insights, and input from CRE workstreams to develop practical recommendations. They build trusted relationships, drive work from early assessment through executive-ready materials and approvals, and keep stakeholders aligned and decisions moving.

What will you do?

Lead portfolio and site strategy

· Own the strategic planning and decision pipeline for an assigned portfolio of sites, under direction of the Portfolio Strategy Program Manager.

· Assess renewals, relocations, consolidations, investments, and other site decisions in the context of broader portfolio objectives.

· Identify upcoming decision points, dependencies, risks, and opportunities across the portfolio.

· Translate site-level findings into clear portfolio insights and recommendations.

Develop analysis and recommendations

· Lead the development of business cases, options analyses, financial comparisons, and decision materials.

· Work with relevant workstreams including leasing, facilities, design, project management, finance, and business stakeholders to gather and validate inputs.

· Test assumptions, reconcile details across workstreams, and clearly articulate trade-offs, risks, and implications.

· Apply sound judgment when information is incomplete, distinguishing established facts from assumptions and open questions.

Build relationships, drive alignment and secure approvals

· Build strong, trusted relationships with business partners and CRE workstreams to understand priorities, anticipate concerns, and support well-informed site decisions.

· Coordinate work across teams, driving timely contributions and deliverables without direct reporting authority.

· Communicate effectively and set clear expectations, leveraging differing stakeholder perspectives to strengthen outcomes and establishing controls to keep work aligned to the objective and on track.

· Prepare concise, executive-facing presentations and approval packages that make the recommendation and decision required clear.

· Track feedback and follow-up actions through to resolution.

What do you need to succeed?

· 3-5+ years of experience in corporate real estate, portfolio strategy, leasing, workplace strategy, finance, consulting, or related field.

· University degree in business, real estate, finance, or a related field.

· A strategic mindset and the ability to connect detailed project analysis to broader portfolio priorities. A structured and curious problem-solving approach, with the ability to frame ambiguous questions, test assumptions, and develop practical recommendations.

· Exceptional attention to detail, with the discipline to manage assumptions, data, timelines, and approval requirements accurately.

· Strong analytical and financial-modelling skills, including experience developing business cases, comparing capital and operating cost scenarios, and applying concepts such as cash flow, NPV, sensitivity analysis, and run-rate impacts.

· Strong planning and organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple concurrent priorities and drive inputs, decisions, and approvals to completion.

· Clear, concise communicator with experience presenting decision materials for VP-level and senior audiences.

· Excellent relationship-building and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to establish credibility, collaborate across teams, constructively challenge inputs, and influence outcomes without direct authority.

· Advanced Excel skills, including the ability to organize, reconcile, analyze, and quality-check data from multiple sources.

· Confidence using AI and other digital tools to improve efficiency, analysis, and communication.

Nice to Have

· Experience with multi-site real estate portfolios or financial services.

· Familiarity with real estate market research, scenario analysis, or portfolio planning tools.

What's in it for you?

• The opportunity to move along a variety of career paths with amazing networking potential
• Flexible Benefits from the day you join to meet the needs of you and your family
• We’re committed to creating an inclusive and respectful environment. Our goal is to make sure all our employees have the chance to live up to their full potential
• We’re honoured to be recognized as a 2025 Best Workplaces in Ontario by Great Place to Work® Canada
• We are thrilled to be recognized by Excellence Canada with their top-level certification, the Canada Order of Excellence for Mental Health at Work®, for prioritizing employee well-being, fostering a positive work culture, and achieving excellence in mental health

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