Nile Harris | CEO, HVG Executive Solutions | Balancing Strategy & Execution, Building High-Performing Teams, & MedTech Advancements

Nile Harris, a seasoned leader with two decades of experience in the MedTech industry, is the founder and CEO of HVG Executive Solutions and currently serves as a director in the life sciences practice at Alvarez & Marsal. Nile shares her diverse career journey from financial services to MedTech, including roles at Medtronic and Abbott, and her current work in management consulting. Emphasizing the value of lifelong learning, Nile discusses her philosophy on leadership, blending strategy with tactical execution, and the importance of adapting rapidly. She also reflects on pivotal moments, like nearly quitting due to the emotional challenges in medtech sales, and her passion for closing healthcare disparity gaps. 

Guest links: https://gapdemystified.com | https://hvg.llc

Charity supported: Opportunity International

Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Host: Lindsey Dinneen
Editing: Marketing Wise
Producer: Velentium

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Episode 043 - Nile Harris

[00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.

[00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.

[00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives.

[00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives.

[00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.

[00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and I'm so excited to introduce you to my guest today, Nile Harris. Nile is a highly skilled and versatile leader who has made significant impact in the medtech industry for two decades from the C suite to the operating room and companies such as Medtronic and Abbott. Her agility was forged through a successful cross functional career, spanning corporate strategy and development, product marketing, field sales and marketing, strategic market insights, commercialization, market access, and executive coaching. Nile is an expert advisor and mentor for Life Science Tennessee and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center focused on early stage startups. She is the CEO and Founder of HVG Executive Solutions and currently serves as Director in the life sciences practice at Alvarez and Marsal.

All right. Well, thank you so much for being here, Nile. I'm so excited to speak with you today.

[00:01:48] Nile Harris: Thank you. I'm happy and excited to be here as well.

[00:01:53] Lindsey Dinneen: Awesome. Well, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind starting off by telling us a little bit about yourself and your background and what led you to MedTech.

[00:02:03] Nile Harris: Yeah. Interesting story. Happy to share my journey to MedTech. I tripped into it and loved it. I began my career out of undergrad in financial services, actually interned all through undergrad and financial services. And I loved being on a trading floor-- I was actually a licensed broker at one point-- loved working on trading floors. I'm originally from Chicago, worked at the Board of Trade, Chicago Board of Options Exchange, but it wasn't a cultural fit. And I felt like I wanted to give more or put more out into the world other than making more money, essentially.

And I went to business school at the University of Michigan and did my internship at Lily in Indianapolis and absolutely loved healthcare. And it had never occurred to me that healthcare was an option. And I spent my summer there as IT Project Manager supporting clinical trials. And I was like, I thought this was just amazing. And so I was recruited to Medtronic coming out of Michigan and they had an IT rotation, leadership rotation program. They're sort of a internal consulting group. And I was in that program for two years. And when I came out of that program, I went to the strategy and corporate development group within Medtronic. And that's when I really saw what we did as a company there. I really have more exposure to the products, the lives that we were saving, and the impact that we were having. And I had really no idea what it took to get a product from bench to bedside. Like, what does it take to get a product designed and into a patient?

And I decided to go from corporate strategy and development to field sales and marketing. So I was like, I thought that there was no better way to learn it than just to roll up my sleeves and get into it. And so I went from making PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets to being out in the field. So I went from being in Minneapolis to Nashville, where I was doing Therapy Development Specialist. So it was a hybrid between sales and marketing. And I spent a lot of time in hospitals. And the part of my job was essentially to grow the pie for thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysm stent grafts, and then grow our piece of the pie. So I was in surgeries, but I was also doing strategy and sort of marketing and attracting customers and refer referral patterns. And it was great. This was like, this was magical to me. And I had no idea before I got into Medtronic that this was a world that was even open to me. And so I just got deeper into it. I did product management, did value based healthcare and pricing.

I did a stop for a couple of years in K 12 education. I'm very passionate about closing the health, wealth, and education disparity gap in America. And so I was a Broad Resident for the system management of school systems. And so I led strategy for a charter school system in Nashville, but went back into working with, with life science companies at a small consulting firm, and then was doing some independent consulting, started doing executive coaching, specifically within medtech for those people who are trying to get to that next level of leadership and trying to figure out how do you run multi generational teams? And then I was at Abbott for a little bit as a Global Director there and built a team there. And now I do management consultant. And so I've been in medtech now for 20 years. And what I love about being a consultant is that I get to take all of those experiences and how companies bring innovations to life.

[00:06:20] Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for sharing about your background. What an amazing breadth of experience you have. And also I love the thread of your lifelong learning and curiosity. And, oh my gosh. I mean, so I looked at your, LinkedIn profile and I was like, okay, so you have a BA, a BS, an MEd, and an MBA. So clearly education.

[00:06:50] Nile Harris: I do I believe education is important and so the BS in finance and the BA in communications happened because at the University of Illinois, you can get a BA in Finance or a BS in Finance. And so I went the BS route, but it was very technical. We had these highly technical economic classes, statistical modeling, all these things. There weren't a lot of soft skill classes, and I wanted to incorporate that into my experience. And then I realized, well, if I earned a certain number of hours, I could be a dual degree versus dual major. And my junior year, I had no idea, but my junior year, I got this letter from the university saying that all of my advanced placement classes from high school transferred and I had a semester's worth of additional hours. So I spent an additional summer after I finished one degree and then I was able to finish the second degree. So I did both in four years.

[00:07:52] Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. Holy cannoli. Okay.

[00:07:54] Nile Harris: I'm a lifelong learner. I believe you need to always be learning. And the curiosity is, I think a lot of times I've gotten the feedback of, "Well, you're kind of all over the place." But not really. I am curious about what people do and how they do their jobs. And I would, when I was in strategy and development, my role was to lead the strategic planning process, and I had access to all of the business leaders, all of the presidents, all of the leaders that they worked with. And that was just awesome. That in itself was just a college education. I had ready access to ask them about their businesses.

But I also asked him, "Well, how can I be a better partner for you? If I'm in corporate, how can I be a better partner for you?" And one of the things that came up over and over again was, "Understand my business better. I understand that you have to run the process and you're focused on getting all of the parts and pieces together. But what would help me is if more people in corporate understood my business." And I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go into sales."

[00:09:04] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. Wow, that is so incredible. And, leadership and management, and now with your executive coaching, obviously that's a been a running theme and will continue to be. And I'm really curious what is maybe your top couple pieces of advice for those who are looking to either become better leaders or to even start being a leader?

[00:09:32] Nile Harris: That is a great question. I think, first of all, I counsel people to develop your personal leadership philosophy. What type of leader do you want to be? What is the legacy that you want to leave with people? What is it that you want them to remember you for? For me, it was being a servant leader. I see myself as, "People don't work for me. I work for them." My job is to remove obstacles, build them up, set a vision, set the container in which they work and then support them in that. Set the example, model the example and and I always say, you know, the book "Leaders Eat Last." Well, I say, "Leaders eat last and they're the first to the fire." And so you develop that philosophy and talk to people. Like I said, I had access to some amazing leaders and I watched them and I talked to them and I asked them and so, interview people, talk to people who you think are great leaders.

The second thing I would say is learn from people who you think are not great leaders. Let them teach you about what you don't want to be as a leader. Right? And the third thing is talk to people. I had one mentor who used to say his version of a quote from Abraham Lincoln, which was, "You can't lead without the consent of the followers. Find out what the followers need and give them that." And leadership is for the people who are following you. Promotions or accolades or rewards are for you as an effective leader, right, for getting results. The leadership is what you are providing to others.

[00:11:19] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, that's great advice. Thank you for sharing that. I think especially your middle point about learning from leaders that you don't look up to, but that have actually a lot to teach you is such a good point too, because, in general, we look up to the people that we go, "Oh my goodness, I love the way that this person leads. I really admire what they bring to the table." And then, that's great, but it is also such an experience to learn from somebody that doesn't have maybe the leadership qualities that you aspire to have. And so you're able to go, "Okay, so this is what doesn't work. Let me figure out what does."

[00:11:58] Nile Harris: Exactly. And even the leadership style, even if it doesn't work for you, even if it doesn't work for 95 percent of the organization that person has been put in charge of, that there's something that they do that you might like. So don't necessarily throw the baby out with the bathwater and just say, "Oh, they're a terrible leader." What they're doing something, they did something to be able to get in that, into that position. Learn from that as well.

[00:12:25] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Ooh, taking it a step further. I love it. You know, one thing I really enjoy-- oh, I very much enjoyed reading your LinkedIn profile, by the way-- but one thing that really stood out to me, and I would love if you could talk a little bit about was somebody at some point told you that you have an amazing ability to "seamlessly switch between strategy and tactical execution." Could you speak a little bit to that? That is so cool.

[00:12:51] Nile Harris: So this is funny. This is a very funny thing. So that was a manager who I did not get along with. We did not see eye to eye. And we had a facilitator come into our team meeting one day and help us to figure out how do we work together and collaborate as a team. Like, how do we pull out the gifts right in each other? And so the facilitator went person to person and asked, "What's your gift? What's your gift? What's your gift?" And so when he got to me, I said, "Oh, my gift is my organizational skills. I'm very organized and I can connect all these dots."

And so my manager, who I did not get along with, says, "Your gift is effortlessly going from strategy to tactical execution. You can be in the clouds and then on the ground. And it is a clear stream and it is effortless." And everybody in the room was like, "Yeah, well, where did you get organization from?" I was like, "Wait, where'd you get that from?" I didn't see that in myself. It didn't, it didn't occur to me that's what I was doing. When they pointed it out, I didn't realize it was a gift. Because I just do it. And then they were like, "Not everybody can do that." And I thought it was so odd that this person who I had sort of like this ongoing strife with was the one to point it out.

[00:14:27] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, that's irony for you, but what a gift though, because then yeah, to understand, "Oh, this isn't something..." I think that happens a lot where you get to it's really helpful to have somebody who's outside perspective who can say, "Actually, this is your superpower because most people can't do what you think just comes naturally to everyone." If only.

[00:14:51] Nile Harris: Yes. And 'cause a lot of times I actually got this question, somebody else was going through my LinkedIn profile and they were like, "Well, how did you develop that skillset?" And I told him, "You know, I didn't do it intentionally. I didn't set out to say,' I'm going to go from strategy to execution effortlessly.'" I think it was the act of doing it. So being able to say, "Well, I don't want to be in financial services, but now I have that financial skill and acumen. I'm going to leverage it to change industries." And then being in this tactical position of putting together models and PowerPoints. And I was putting together PowerPoints for like our executive committee.

So I'm this very, I'm doing something very tactical, but at a strategic level. And then to go from that to say, "Well, I want to really understand how these things connect together." All right. And so I go to sales. And so I think it was just the, I followed the trail of the curiosity and I learned something along the way by doing that. And so it ultimately, it just sort of naturally, I think cultivated what I do know that I'm really good at is seeing patterns and connecting dots. And I think it just sort of came from that.

[00:16:11] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think, to your point of you having demonstrated your willingness to continue to learn and to step into different roles, so that you were able to continue to expand your knowledge and your skill sets, I mean, you know, it's funny. And I know a lot of people talk about the idea of generalist versus specialist. And being a generalist does have a lot of advantages in terms of, when you have this crazy diverse skillset and even experience in multiple industries, then all of a sudden you can draw from, "Oh, you know what? I remember this really random thing back in when I was doing financial services that actually would really apply here. I don't, I wonder if anyone has ever thought about that!" And then you keep connecting those dots, like you said, so.

[00:17:03] Nile Harris: Exactly. And that's exactly how it happens in my brain. Right? Like my brain will reach back to, "Remember when you worked on this project and you did this really random thing." And I'm like, "Yeah!" My brain's like, "It applies here." I'm like, "Okay." But I did Strength Finders and one of the strengths, it was described as, I didn't necessarily agree with the word that they use, but when I read the description, in the description, it said, "I am a collector of information."

And I'm like, yes! I have every notebook that I used to take notes for work. I have every notebook going back to my first job out of college. And I use Evernote to collect, literally collect articles across the internet. If I'm like, "Oh, this is interesting," I'll clip it into Evernote. And so now I've got sort of this encyclopedia of information. And so if I want to, think about, "Oh, I read this article about this medtech company that was doing this thing," I can search my little encyclopedia and find out. So that also is the whole connecting the dots. And Steve Jobs had a, and I'm going to butcher the quote, but he had a quote about "being innovative and being creative is about having enough experiences that you can connect."

[00:18:32] Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, I love that. Oh my goodness. Yes. I cannot agree more, and I think the ability to be creative does often come from being able to draw from lots and lots of different sources and then putting them together in a new way. So, oh my gosh, I love this So, you know another thing that stood out in your profile was, you have a wonderful ability to "plan meticulously and then adapt rapidly," and obviously your career path has really demonstrated that but I'm wondering is that in particular a skill set that you developed over time, or have you always had a tendency towards very careful planning, but at the same time holding those plans loosely enough that you can adapt quickly?

[00:19:21] Nile Harris: Yeah, there's a little bit of both. It's inherent in me to want to plan, want to know where things are. That just gives me a sense of comfort. I did not always adapt rapidly. That was working in the strategy and corporate development, working with a bunch of C suite, the CEO, the COO, the presidents of all the businesses, adapting rapidly was a requirement. And things would change super fast. The meeting might start off about one topic and then it ends on a totally different topic. So having to pivot, having to go. But then that also helped me with, "Okay, I'm going to have a plan a and plan B and a plan C," because then I started to learn how to anticipate and I would know, "Okay, if we're going to go through this particular presentation, which is about this piece of the strategic plan, it could go one of three ways. And I want to be prepared for all three ways." And so over time, I became known for my ability to pivot real quick or have something in my back pocket. So people would always then be like, "Oh, Nile, we know that you have a plan B. We know that."

And we were doing a sales meeting. I worked under the president of the cardiovascular business, and we were doing a sales meeting and his video or presentation clip, whatever was on this sort of --this was a long time ago. So it wasn't transferred digitally. It had to physically be burned onto a tape or a CD or some medium. And I had to physically transport it with me from Minneapolis to Las Vegas, where the meeting was. And I said, " Could you make another one so I have a backup?" And the guy was like, "Come on." And I was like, "Nope." So I gave the first copy to the person I was supposed to hand it off to. Get to Las Vegas, and they called me over to the hall for rehearsal. And they're like, "Hey, we can't find the first copy." And I was like, "No worries." I pull out the second copy out of my little bag. And the president of the business was like, "Yep, that's Nile." And they were sitting there and they said, "Yeah, the president, he wasn't worried at all. Like we were freaking out and he was like, 'Nah, just call Nile.'"

[00:21:36] Lindsey Dinneen: Oh.

[00:21:37] Nile Harris: And they were like, "Wow." And he was like, "I told you." And so then being in sales is nothing but adapting rapidly. That is what, that is all day, every day. So that adapting rapidly was, it was taught. But I think being planful was my natural inclination.

[00:21:57] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Well, what a great reputation, too, to have. "Just call Nile. It'll be great. It'll be fine."

[00:22:03] Nile Harris: "It'll be fine. Nile's got covered."

[00:22:05] Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. Yeah. So what are you really looking forward to maybe both personally and professionally in the next couple of years?

[00:22:15] Nile Harris: Now that I'm in a bigger management consulting firm not doing the independent piece, but I'm part of this bigger entity, there is so much happening in medtech and medical device and life science in general, with generative AI, health care equities, just so much happening. And I think that we are reaching a really a big pivot point also with like digital health care and collecting data and on patient care, predictive medicine. We are at this next evolution of care, and I'm really excited to help usher that in by working with other, with companies, with innovators in this space. The AI with imaging and streamlining workflows and helping to close healthcare disparity gaps, to be able to contribute to that in a much deeper way that you can't when you are a independent consultant.

The other piece is, I really love helping to build those high performing teams. And I, there's like with coaching, I love that aha moment, that moment when somebody is like, "Oh, wow." That moment I had when my manager said my gift is going from strategy to execution. I love helping other people have that moment. So I'm looking to help build that next level of leaders that will be better leaders than I am, better leaders than I had. And then that the next stage for me is how do I again, take everything I've learned and pay that forward. , leave a legacy.

That's, and I might be talking about like, it might seem like I feel like I'm old because in two years I'm still going to be working. I'm still going to be doing things, but that's when I feel you start to get into the part of your career where you're leaving that mark, you're leaving that legacy. That's the thing that we want to know Nile for in the medtech space. And then really also outside of work, more personally is, I feel very strongly about the health, wealth and education disparity gap and America and being able to contribute to health and equity where we have two demographics of people who get a disease at the same, same rate, but they don't have the same outcomes, the same treatment outcomes. Like, why is that? So how can I contribute to that?

[00:24:57] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are all wonderful things to be thinking about and working towards. So yeah, I really appreciate just-- you talked about how you are a servant leader, but you just have such a beautiful heart of service. And I mean, I could see that throughout even your volunteering and your mentorship and things that you do. So, gosh, yeah. Thank you for sharing about that.

[00:25:21] Nile Harris: Yeah.

[00:25:21] Lindsey Dinneen: So I'm curious. Along this journey, especially in medtech, have there been any moments that stand out to you as really clarifying to you, "Wow, I am in the right place, at the right time, in the right industry?"

[00:25:36] Nile Harris: Oh, oh. There is a moment where I almost quit and it was when I was in sales. And again, it was a hybrid sales marketing role, but I was, it was doing my field training and I'm so excited to be out there. And I, you know, completely committed to the mission and we help people in these devices. They go in people and they restore health and they do all of these things and these things are great. And I was, In the hospital one day with one of my training reps, and we got a call to the E. R. There was a patient in there with a ruptured aneurysm, aortic aneurysm, and he was, I don't know, in his eighties, mid eighties.

And we looked at the film to see if the device, the stent graft, it's minimally invasive. The other way you repair an aortic aneurysm is to open somebody all of the way up and take out their aorta and put in a different type of graft. And when we looked at the film, this was a ruptured something like a 10 centimeter aneurysm. And this patient was actively bleeding out. And the rep asked me, " What do you see?" And that's what I said I saw. And she said, "Well, okay, so what are we going to do?" And I'm like going through my training, flipping through my training and everything in my training said, "There's nothing that we can do for this patient." And so I say it to her and she was like, "Correct." And so essentially once you've ruptured to this point, they were just making him comfortable at this point and he was going to expire.

And I conceptually understood that people pass away. We can't save everybody, but to have to sit there in that moment and look at looking at this film and you are dealing with a human, is a human being on the table and you are saying it's "Wow. This is the moment where you can't do anything." So we left there and I just went back to my hotel and I was like, " This is stupid. Like, why am I doing this?" And my manager called me and I told him, I was like, "You know what? I don't think I'm cut out for this. I can't do this. I can't not save people. I got into this to save people." And he said, "If you had any other reaction, I would be worried about you." He's like, " Give it 48 hours and call me back." So I gave it 48 hours. I called him back and I was like, " No, I'm supposed to be here. I'm in the right place. I love this work. I love what I do. I would not have been so upset if I didn't. If I didn't love what I do, if I wasn't in the right place, I would not have been so upset. So that was to me was a defining moment of that's why I love this work."

[00:28:41] Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. Oh my goodness. What a powerful story. Thank you for sharing that.

[00:28:46] Nile Harris: Yeah. You're welcome.

[00:28:47] Lindsey Dinneen: You know, I really appreciate-- that's such a human moment to have. And of course we all have them, but we don't always talk about them because it doesn't always feel good, but that is so powerful that you were able to take what, it was such a difficult moment but use it as a little bit of motivation for your why as well. Wow. Yeah, that is amazing. Thank you.

[00:29:09] Nile Harris: Yeah. And yeah, you're welcome. And I had two primary trainers in Tennessee. They were like in different parts of Tennessee, and the primary trainer told me when I, first day of training, he said, "If you always do what's right for the patient, everything else will come.

[00:29:24] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, there you go. That's "great.

[00:29:27] Nile Harris: Yep.

[00:29:28] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, well, pivoting the conversation just for fun, imagine that you were to be offered a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want. It can be in your industry, but it doesn't have to be. What would you choose to teach and why?

[00:29:44] Nile Harris: Oh, this is such a great question. I don't know how I would do it. But I would teach people how to, how do I put this? I would teach people how to go from like strategy to execution but in a, I think maybe in a broader way, I would teach people like how to connect thoughts or how to be curious or how to always be learning. I don't know exactly how I would do it, but I would teach people to be explorers their life.

[00:30:13] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. Oh, I love that so much. Yes, amazing. Yeah, well, whenever you put that together, let me know because that sounds incredible.

[00:30:24] Nile Harris: Yeah. I mean, I just wrote it, like I wrote it down, right? Like, I like, that's what I would do. I would teach people to be explorers, because then if you teach people to be explorers of their own life and curious about their own life, they're going to end up where they're supposed to end up eventually, right? So whether it's medtech or whether it's this or that, like you're going to end up where you should be because you've been curious about your life. And, yeah, that's what I teach.

[00:30:52] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I love it. And also, I think the benefit of the explorer mindset is that you are, because you are choosing to view life as an adventure and you're constantly learning and growing, there really isn't such a thing as failure. You're exploring. So if something doesn't go the way that you hoped it would or planned it would or whatever, you go, "Okay, that exploration didn't go as planned. What did I learn from it though?" And then let's move forward.

[00:31:21] Nile Harris: Yeah, that's exactly how I look at it. Somebody asked me If I have a fear of failure, and I said, "I don't." And they're like, "That's crazy. Everybody has a fear of failure." And I was like, "No, because I tried something didn't work out. And now I know." Right? Or, "I didn't do it the right way. Now I know the right way, you know?" So I was like, "I don't have a fear of failure. I have a fear of doing things badly, not performing well." But failure? No, it's all exploration, it's all learning."

[00:31:46] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Ah, perfect mindset. I love it. So, and then you touched a little bit on this, but just to dive a little bit more into it, how do you wish to be remembered after you leave this world?

[00:32:01] Nile Harris: As a servant. Yeah, I, that's a, yeah, I don't think there's more... I want people to remember that I contributed, that I gave more than I got, that I helped others, and I'll be happy with that.

[00:32:22] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and then final question. What is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?

[00:32:32] Nile Harris: Dogs! Dogs!

[00:32:36] Lindsey Dinneen: The end.

[00:32:37] Nile Harris: The end! See him on the street? Smile. Go to the dog park? Smile. Look at my own dog? Smile. Dogs are our partners in life. They are like four legged dopamine molecules. They are just amazing. And, they're always such a good energy boost, mood boost. Somebody asked me this, " If you quit MedTech tomorrow, what would you go do?" And I'm like, "I would open a doggy daycare."

[00:33:06] Lindsey Dinneen: Amazing. I love it. Yeah, they're just little bundles of joy. I mean, how can you not just be so excited to see... Well, I view it that way. How could you just not fall in love? I fall in love all the time with dogs.

[00:33:17] Nile Harris: Yeah, the dogs are amazing, I always feel like they make a family complete. I love, and you specifically said "see," so when I see dogs, but I think what gives me energy, I'm kind of, I'm kind of adding a part B to this. I think what personally gives me energy is being around my family. I come from a really big family. And so being able to share that family energy is energizing. But when I see a dog, I'm insta happy.

[00:33:46] Lindsey Dinneen: I love it. And I love your part B too. That's a really compelling secondary answer too. So yeah. Thank you for that. So, yeah. Well, Nile, this conversation has been amazing. You are amazing. You're such a powerhouse, and it's, it's such a joy to get to talk with you today and learn from you. So thank you so, so, so much for your time. And we are so honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to Opportunity International, which works to end global poverty by creating and sustaining jobs while also providing small business loans, savings, insurance, and training to more than 14 million people in the developing world. So thank you so much for choosing that organization to support. And we just wish you the most continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.

[00:34:40] Nile Harris: Thank you so much. I enjoyed our conversation. This was so much fun. Thank you for the invitation.

[00:34:46] Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. Yes. And thank you so much to our listeners for tuning in. And if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I'd love it if you'd share this episode with a colleague or two, and we will catch you next time.

[00:35:01] Ben Trombold: The Leading Difference is brought to you by Velentium. Velentium is a full-service CDMO with 100% in-house capability to design, develop, and manufacture medical devices from class two wearables to class three active implantable medical devices. Velentium specializes in active implantables, leads, programmers, and accessories across a wide range of indications, such as neuromodulation, deep brain stimulation, cardiac management, and diabetes management. Velentium's core competencies include electrical, firmware, and mechanical design, mobile apps, embedded cybersecurity, human factors and usability, automated test systems, systems engineering, and contract manufacturing. Velentium works with clients worldwide, from startups seeking funding to established Fortune 100 companies. Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.