The Leading Difference

Etienne Nichols | Greenlight Guru | Gratitude, Writing to Reflect, & Furthering the Medtech Industry

Etienne Nichols is a mechanical engineer, PMP-certified project manager, the host of the Global Medical Device Podcast, and the builder of the Greenlight Guru MedTech Excellence Community. In this episode, he shares a plethora of advice and great stories, including why gratitude and curiosity matter so much, how writing helps you to identify what you truly believe, his passion for furthering the medtech industry, and how an article he read changed his life. 
Guest links: https://www.greenlight.guru/podcast | https://www.greenlight.guru/etienne-nichols-thankyou | https://www.linkedin.com/in/etiennenichols/ 
Charity supported: Polaris Project
Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 
PRODUCTION CREDITSHost: Lindsey DinneenEditor: Tim OliphantProducer: Velentium
 
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Episode 009 - Etienne Nichols
Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
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.
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.
Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
Hello and welcome to The Leading Difference. I'm your host Lindsey, and I am excited to introduce you to my guest today, Etienne Nichols. Etienne is a mechanical engineer and PMP certified project manager with a wealth of experience in the medical device industry. He's worked with Fortune 500 and startup medical device companies and has taught classes on quality management systems and design controls for Regulatory Affairs Professional Society and American Society for Quality. He is a frequent speaker at MedTech conferences, the host of the Global Medical Device Podcast, and the builder of the MedTech Excellence Community. Thank you so very much for joining us, Etienne. I'm so excited to have you here on this show today. Welcome.
Etienne Nichols: Thank you. I'm excited to be here as well. I'm super pumped to be with you today.
Lindsey Dinneen: Awesome. Well, I would love, if you wouldn't mind starting by just telling us a little bit about yourself and your background and how you got to where you are now.
Etienne Nichols: Sure. I guess if I was to break down as simple as possible, I'm the host of the Global Medical Device Podcast, and I say that partly because we just interviewed Dan Purvis, the CEO of Velentium on his book, "28 Days to Save the World." Loved that, but, anyway, just had to throw that out there because I'm just such a big fan of you guys as well.
Okay. To your question, specifically, my background, the word background can meet a lot of things. I just finished a book called "Livewired" by David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist at Stanford. He basically says, our brains aren't so much observers of reality, but filters. So we filter out our past, we hone in on certain things. Okay? I say all that to say when I think of background, I imagine a picture of Mona Lisa, what's in the background? You think Mona Lisa, what's in the background? Only things that matter to Da Vinci. So I'd like to tell you a quick story. It might not seem super relevant, but this is a story of kind of help shape who I am.
When I was in my early twenties, I thought I was in love, but it turned out that it wasn't meant to be. So as an early 20 something without a fully grown prefrontal cortex, I did what any self-respecting Oklahoman would do. I signed up for Terry Don West School of Bull Riding. Terry was a world champion bull rider 1985 to 2003, and he had a school outside in Henrietta, Oklahoma. So I went there. I was the only city kid there. After a few rides, like I literally got on multiple bulls and I got on one where it laid down in the shoot, it was bucking around and laid down in the shoot and it, it was dark down there. And my brain immediately said, "abort mission, jump outta here, jump outta the shoot." And I jumped out and I was terrified. Terry ran over, he yanked me by the collar, he stuck his gloved finger in my face, and he said, "you never ever ever get off a bull in the shoot."
And so I, I'd say that story to say, when I think about background, that was a pivotal moment in my life when I thought, you never give up. You know, no matter how dark or scary it is, you never give up. So that, that was one of the things that before I was engineer, that was one of the pivotal moments.
 I'll talk about my real background, I guess that's more traditional. I'm a mechanical engineer by trade. Before coming to MedTech, I worked in aerospace, the steel industry, so both regulated and unregulated. I'm gonna close my window because I actually have a rooster right outside my window.
Lindsey Dinneen: I've been enjoying him.
Etienne Nichols: But I've worked in manufacturing regulatory. I actually got my project management, professional certification on a regulatory project product development. Finally was a project manager of a drug delivery combination product. So, all of those things before I came to Greenlight Guru, which is where I am now. I've worked with dozens of companies to help them set up and implement their quality management system. And so as I mentioned before now, I manage the Global Medical Device Podcast. So it's been a really fun ride.
Lindsey Dinneen: Awesome. Yeah. And a very eclectic ride. It sounds like you have come at this in a very unique way. Okay. I would love to hear a little bit more about your story on joining Greenlight Guru, because I recently read a post on LinkedIn about it. I just thought, "wow, what a great story." I'd love if you'd share that with us.
Etienne Nichols: Sure. This was several years ago. I was working as a project manager for a drug delivery combination product company. I walked into the VP of Engineering's office. He and I were talking about some things that were going on, and I thought, I need to do a little bit of research. I went back to my computer. I started looking for an article, and that was when I first stumbled across Greenlight Guru. I came across the article, "DHF Versus DMR Versus DHR." It's a helpful article because FDA and their acronyms, if you're familiar with those. So after reading that article, I did what anyone would do. You know, you reach out to the author, thank them for their writing. And so I, I reached out to Jesseca Lyons who was the author on LinkedIn, and I told her I really appreciated the things that she had written, and she just responded, "yeah, you're welcome."
The very next day she posted, "Hey, we had a great quarter last quarter, and by the way, we're hiring" and I thought "hiring?" So I clicked on the link and it looked really interesting and I just applied on the whim. I was not looking for a new job. I wasn't interested in getting a new job, but I wanted to learn more about this person and their company. And after my first interview with her, she literally put a Zoom meeting on my calendar that afternoon. Three days later I had an interview with Tom Rish. Four or five days later, I had an interview with Fran Cruz, who was the VP of Customer Success at the time. And I basically had an offer in less than 10 days, I I believe.
 So, Jessica and I joke about that article changing my life a little bit, but it's a really good article. But it's been a fantastic ride and I've really enjoyed my time at Greenlight Guru. And I'll say one other thing, it felt like a big risk at the time to move because I was in a great position. I loved the company I was working for. I really respected the CEO. But after looking at this company, it felt like a risk, but the more I thought about it, it was so in line with what I really loved doing: content creation, interacting with customers directly, and the potential to get on stage and speak on the podcast or at conferences. I felt like it was a bigger risk not to take this job.
So this is something that I would throw out to some of the listeners is you may be facing different career steps and there's always a risk no matter what you do, but you always have to think about the risk of not taking a risk. And I think that's something we sometimes forget. So I dunno if that answered your question. That's the story as least as it's coming to me at the moment.
Lindsey Dinneen: No, That's a great answer. Yeah, I love those collisions, I like to call them. All of a sudden, things work out, but it takes intention, right? You read an article and then you reached out to the author and that led to a series of events, and here you are. But, I just love when those, those kinds of things happen. Those stories are my favorite.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah. It makes me think-- oh, I'm probably gonna butcher this-- but the definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes.
Etienne Nichols: And I think if you're always preparing, you, you may or may not be lucky. The opportunity may or may not arise, but when they do, you know, you almost have an obligation to take that sometimes.
Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely agree. Yeah. A theme that I have picked up on from following your work on LinkedIn and whatnot is gratitude. And I would love if you would share just a little bit maybe about your philosophy behind it, because it seems like something that you often express gratitude, whether it's to the author of an article that you appreciated or it's to an interviewee that had a particularly inspiring thing to share. I just have noticed that theme throughout your work, and I would just love to hear your perspective on it.
Etienne Nichols: Wow. I actually got like little chills when you were saying that because I don't think anybody, nobody's ever mentioned that or called that out. So I'm glad that's showing through, for sure. I'm really thankful, I'm thankful that's showing through. It's funny, let me rewind to a period in my career that I thought this was one of the toughest parts of my career. It, looking back, it was one of the toughest. I was in a situation where I was leading a project that if this project did not succeed, many, probably dozens of people would be laid off because the company wouldn't be able to support them if this project didn't succeed.
That was my perception. And I think even looking back, I think it's accurate. So, I was really stressed at the time. We were working 60 plus hours a week, me and my team, And during that time, I honestly thought a lot about giving up. I never gave up. I told my wife, no matter how hard it is, I've gotta finish this. And then, if it's still difficult, after we're done, we're gonna move on. And that is what happened. We brought the project to fruition and moved on.
But during that time, I remember standing outside a conference room and I stared at an empty whiteboard and I looked at that whiteboard and I thought someone should put something in there. So I put just a question. "What is your definition of success?" I believe that was the first question. A few days later, I walked by again and lots of people had answered that with their different definitions, and I thought, huh? I took a picture, went home, and I wrote a memo. I said, "what is your definition of success? This is what you said."
I went back to work and I sent this out to, I don't know, 20 different people. I didn't know who had answered on the whiteboard and I wrote a lot of these different things and people kept telling me you know, appreciate you translating our words into this memo. Just kinda your giving it your own thoughts. By the time I left that company, I had over a hundred people who I was, you know sending a Monday memo to, and I learned somewhere along the way that people don't mind getting a little bit of encouragement. During that time, the way I was able to get through the stress was every morning I would write that Monday memo. I would think about those things people were saying, and I would try to focus, what am I really grateful about these people? And that's really what helped me get through.
So, that was kind of a circuitous way of answering your question, so I'd like to be a little bit more succinct here in the, my last couple phrases here. There is, there's a lot of scarcity in the world, but gratitude really shows you what you have. When you start looking and comparing your life to other people's, it's easy to wish you had this, wish you had that. When you're grateful for what you have, you start recognizing all the things that you do have. And so it's more of an abundance mindset. So that's been my philosophy. I believe gratitude is at the heart of of an abundance mindset.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. And that story is pretty awesome. So was that maybe the start of your content creation journey?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, I do think that. Oh,, if you'll let me go through another story, which is
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, please.
Etienne Nichols: When it comes to content creation I'm a big believer in writing and having a writing practice of some sort. So, to answer your question just directly, yes. that was the beginning and I learned the value of writing every morning. In fact, at that time I was very disciplined. I have three kids now, I'm not quite as disciplined. I would get up at 4:45 every morning. I would go work out and then I would stop at a coffee shop on my way to work. I would write for 30 minutes, and then I would go to work. That was before the pandemic, coffee shops closed. And it was before kids and all these different things, but that's when I started writing.
Fast forward to Greenlight Guru. I was working with different customers and I was loving what I was doing. Occasionally I would post on LinkedIn just a long form article about, this is something I learned about, I don't know 21 CFR part 820.40 document controls. Why do you need to show a Rev A to Rev B? Why do you justify those changes? All these different things. I've just wrote an article about that, and I would do that every now and then. Well, while I was in that position here at the company at Greenlight Guru, the CMO, Nick Tippmann reached out to me and said, "Hey, we're thinking about building a community and we want you to build the community. I've been watching what you post on LinkedIn."
So this is a guy I'd never met before. He's within my company, but he saw what I was doing on LinkedIn, the content creation. At the same time, the founder of the company, Jon Speer reached out to me and said, "Hey, I've watched some of the things you wrote on LinkedIn. Wondered if you'd be interested to be a co-host on the podcast." And so these are two separate situations happening at the same time because of the content creation.
Now I'd been writing for years up until this point. And I'll tell you one more thing about writing is it helps you identify what you truly believe, what you actually think. You may think something, but once you write it out, you may change your mind or tweak it slightly. And so that really helps. And so I've been doing this for multiple years and it got me to a point where two different people approached me and I was able to accept that, and it's been really fun.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I love that story. When you had the opportunity to do the podcast, was that something that you felt immediately comfortable taking on? Was that something that took a little bit of a learning curve, or how did that work for you?
Etienne Nichols: The way I would describe it was terror. I had never met the founder of this company. And not only was I meeting the founder, we were interviewing the best in the field-- people like Mike Drews or your CEO, Dan Purvis. Every time I saw those names on my calendar, the pit of my stomach would ball up and I'd go through some breathing exercises, do some squats, whatever. And it's okay, we could do that. But, when you get scared like that, to me, you, you have to qualify it a little bit, but a certain amount of that fear, to me says this is the right direction for me. And the same thing happened at multiple points in my career that sort of confirmed this is the right thing and that little bit of fear is one of 'em. You can look at it as fear, but you can also be excitement because I'm reaching beyond my grasp, and if I keep reaching, I'll grow and I can actually reach this thing. So that's how I looked at that.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I was once told by a friend that she felt that whenever you were nervous it was because you cared. And so use that nervous energy to do a really good job because it can be harnessed, right? That fear, that, that nervousness, but it's not a bad thing, it's just along for the ride. It's there to help give you a little extra boost and that's okay. And I've always kinda liked that.
Etienne Nichols: So I'm curious about you because I love talking to other podcasters, so I just, if we could flip the script just for a minute. I'm curious how you handle that nervousness or is, are there any specific things you do?
Lindsey Dinneen: That is a great question. Yes, I still do get nervous. And it does depend on the situation, but I think one thing that I have learned is that being yourself, being just normal and natural and a little vulnerable and a little bit not polished is actually a lot more relatable to people than being perfect. And I'm not perfect. My interviews will never be perfect, but I can do my best and I can be me. And the more that I embrace that, the more comfortable I am.
Etienne Nichols: Oh, yeah. I think that's great. The one thing that I I can't remember who told me this but curiosity-- you talk about like what is the opposite of love? Is it hate? Some people may say hate, but I actually think it's indifference. Indifference to me is the opposite of love. So what's the opposite of cowardice or being afraid? The opposite of that isn't courage, because you have to be afraid in order to have courage. To me, the opposite of being afraid is curiosity. Someone may disagree with me, but that's the way I banish fear is, man, be really curious. " Why did I react that way? Or what are they really trying to tell me?" And instead of thinking, oh, this person's title is this, and this, I'm like, "what are they actually saying?" This is really interesting. So that's how I look at that.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. That's great advice too, just in general because curiosity allows you to explore and exploration is always a success, right? It doesn't lead to failure, it's just a way to learn more about the world around you.
Etienne Nichols: Absolutely.
Lindsey Dinneen: Well, okay, so you have mentioned that there have been a couple of moments along your journey that I guess confirmed to you that this is the right path. But I'm curious, specifically in the medtech industry, what is it that drives you, that gives you that passion to continue doing what you're doing?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, I can tell you a couple different things. So the spark I would say happened when I was in college. I broke my arm and it was a go-karting accident. And I went to school with arm in a cast. But before I got my arm in a cast, the guy's name was Garrett Watts, the hand doctor who put me back together, and he knew I was a mechanical engineering student. He talked to me about the Synthes DePuy, I don't can never pronounce that word, but the little piece that was going to be placed into my arm with different screws and talked about the physics of it really fascinated me. I thought, man, as a mechanical engineer, I could contribute to this industry. That would be great. That was a spark.
Then when I met my wife, she has had a pacemaker since she was 11. So, I've seen her through multiple surgeries to get new pacemakers. And every time I see that, it's man, I am so thankful somebody developed this medical device. There have been other times when I had to watch a loved one go back to the OR, and just talking to the surgeons afterwards and learning about the things that they have to go through. I want their life to be easy. I want them to be able to do their job efficiently. And so I really am passionate about the medtech industry for those reasons.
You know, I love all of the things that go into engineering. I will never be the best at those things. And I kind of had to realize that somewhere along the way. The people who are really the best at anything are the people who do it for a living and also do it for a hobby. And those are the people you want in your life in different roles leading technically and things like that. But when it comes to MedTech, I realize I could be passionate about this product because I know the end user is going to be truly affected by this. Not only some unknown person, it could even be my wife, my son, anybody I love could be affected by this. To me, MedTech is really personal, and that's what confirmed this industry.
For different roles, I see myself as, I just want to help the industry and so whatever role I can be in, whether that's mechanical engineer or a project manager, or a regulatory consultant or a podcaster. However I can help further the industry to where we work more efficiently and more streamlined in a way that produces safe and effective medical devices. That's the role I want to be in, whatever that role is.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You've mentioned having opportunities to be in leadership roles, to lead teams, and we've had that discussion in regards to gratitude specifically, but I'm curious, how would you define leadership? Or what does it mean to you?
Etienne Nichols: That's a good question. And so two things come to mind. And they're actually both books, and so you don't have time to quote an entire book, but all my best thoughts came from someone else. And so even that's a line from someone. But the two books I could think of first one is "Leaders Eat Last," I believe it's by Simon Sinek. And it's really the idea that leaders are meant to build others up. In fact, actually, a third book comes to mind. That's "28 Days to Save the World" by your CEO dan Pervis. That's a fantastic book. I really recommend that one as well. And I'm not just saying that because it's your, it's your guy. He covers so much ground in that book. It really was something that you almost need to read multiple times.
But the second book that I recommend is "Captain Class" by Sam Walker. So he talked about the captains of teams. So usually when we think of a leader, we might think of the CEO, we might think of the executive team, and those certainly are incredibly important. But the "Captain Class" by Sam Walker, he's actually a sports journalist, if I'm remembering all of this correctly. He analyzed all of the great sports dynasties, not just someone who wins one off, but he gave certain parameters as to what he would define as a team sport and a team and a dynasty, and all those different things at the beginning of his book. But he talks about " what do they have in common?" And he looked at the coaches, he looked at the budget, he looked at the manager, he looked at the location, all these different things.
And the thing that he found that was really consistent across all of these dynasties was the captain of the team. It might not be the best player. It might not be the person who's most outspoken, but it's that person who brings a certain energy and can recognize when things are going sideways or things are changing, and he somehow tweaks the team in such a way that they can reorient and get back on track.
So you want your best player shooting hoops, shooting those free throws. They don't have to lead, they just do what they do. Put your best players in the positions where they can excel. But the captain, like I said, they may not be the best player. They may not be the best person on the team, but they're the person who's kinda like the glue, who gels everybody together. And so those two different concepts are what I think of a real good leader. Number one, leaders eating last, and the second one being that glue who's able to look at a bird's eye view and determine what direction we need to go in, what attitude adjustment needs to happen.
I'll give you one more little anecdote that you may have heard before, say you have a bunch of people working their way through a woods cutting with axes trying to get through the woods. The manager is the one running around saying, "Hey, do you have the right ax? Do you need this sharpen? Do you need this? Let's help you out." It's still a servant role, but the leader is the one who climbs the tree and looks up and says, "Hey guys, I think we need to go in this direction." So that's the leader in my mind.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. So the visionary and the person who is the cheerleader and motivator and helps bring people together towards a vision.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, so my, my dad actually told me something once that he probably got this from someone else, I'm not sure, but he said, " you know, Etienne, a leader without followers is just a guy taking a walk." And some of us are just taking a walk, but a leader is someone who people are willing to follow too. So yeah, there's lots of different facets. It's a good question.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. So you mentioned curiosity before, which I think is a really important theme. And so I'm wondering how that plays into your continued growing and learning as a leader yourself. Obviously, you have had a bunch of different roles even within the industry and through various companies and I'm sure each one of them has prompted you to learn and grow in different ways. So, how do you continue to prioritize that these days?
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, that's a good question. I've gotta speak to your question about curiosity first. In every role that I've been in, one of the things that's really important to me is to understand how this role that I'm working in interacts with every other role in the organization. I'll give you a quick anecdotal story, I guess, for that. I was at one company where they put me in a cubicle that was right outside the break room, and that's a terrible idea. You do not put an engineer right outside the break room. The people had to walk out of the break room and either turn left or right or go straight into my cubicle. Since I was new, they told me that my cubicle was cursed. Nobody had managed to be there for more than three months. And nobody knew why. It's just cursed.
I'm like, okay. Well, I figured out pretty quick why. It's because I started writing down how many people came into my cubicle to say hi to me, and it was in the 30 to 50 people a day and I was not getting things done. Just a few minutes with each person, and that becomes hours a day. So I realized quickly that this is a problem or an opportunity. And so I tried to treat it like an opportunity. The next engineer who came into my desk or came into my cubicle, I said, "Hey, can you help me with this thing I'm working on my spreadsheet?" And they said, "oh yeah, you just do this, and this."
And my 15 minute task turned into a one minute task. And so that happened multiple times. Pretty soon I was getting more things done than pretty much anyone else on my row. And so being curious about what that person knew was really important to me. And I realized it clicked in that role early on in my career. And I said, man, I need to learn what everybody in the company does. And so I started actually making a running list of who is everyone in the company and who do I know. And I put a check mark next to their name and I said, "okay, I gotta meet this person and find out what they know. Meet this person, find out what they know."
It wasn't all me. When I came to that company, this is actually a really fantastic practice that this manufacturing company had done. They gave me a list of every machine in the entire company. And so we had multiple buildings, you know, out there. And they said your first job is to find every machine, learn who runs it and what product it touches and how that machine interacts with that product. And that's a big homework assignment. So if I wasn't interested, that would've been hard to accomplish. So, between my situation being outside the break room and my forced interest in the manufacturing floor, I decided to make it a personal goal of mine to meet everyone in the company and to learn exactly what they do, a little bit selfishly, to see if I could make my job a little bit easier to learn what they knew and so forth. And so that really helped. And that really reinforced the importance of curiosity.
Lindsey Dinneen: That's a great story and I'm sure you looking back are also quite aware, obviously of how things evolved in your own career. But it's fun to hear it from an outside perspective and go, okay, I see how certain things that you did, maybe just because you were curious, led you to be in a position now where you are comfortable-- maybe still get nervous-- but in general comfortable talking to all sorts of different people cuz hey, you were just going around meeting everybody, learning what they do anyway.
Etienne Nichols: Oh yeah. It's crazy to look back. When we look back, we can connect the dots easily, but when you're in that soup, you're in the moment you're like, oh, my life is a mess. You're not really exactly sure. But yeah, yeah, you nailed it, that's true.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And then nowadays your continued learning and growing as a leader in the medtech industry? Yeah.
Etienne Nichols: So the way I answer that, the way I prioritize it is it's true. We all, we only have so much time in a day. It's difficult to get those things in. I try to double dip as much as possible. And so what I mean by that is, let me give an example. The best way to learn something is to teach it, right? When I was approached, I looked at myself, I said, "Etienne, you don't have what it takes to do these things." And that was just my honest assessment of myself. But I said, but I'm gonna take this on and I'm going to get what it takes.
And so, after I was in the role a little bit, I started looking at the different conferences I could potentially go to learn more about these things. And you might make the argument, okay, going to a conference. That's a continuing improvement, right? You can learn there. Well, that wasn't good enough for me. So, I have a specific story about this. There's a conference called CMX. It's the number one conference for community building, I believe. I found that and I thought, "okay, I want my company to send me to this conference, but I don't just want them to send me, I want to speak on stage, even though I've been in community for only a few months."
I'm going to come up with a problem that I've faced and a problem I've solved, and I'm going to write a proposal for me to speak at this conference. So I sent it in. I sent my proposal in and they wisely said, "no, but you can moderate a panel." I thought, "okay, well that's good enough." So I went to the industry. I moderated the panel, but because I was speaking and I was gonna be on stage, I now had access to all of the voices in the industry who were speaking. So I sent them all messages, tried to socialize with them prior to going to that event. And I now have dozens and dozens of really valuable connections in the industry to that specific subset of an industry. So that's one example.
Another example I'd give is double dipping. I gotta describe something real quick. So there's something that I learned early on. Have you ever heard of " The Seven Spoke Wheel of Life" by Zig Ziglar?
Lindsey Dinneen: I don't know that I have.
Etienne Nichols: Oh, man, you've got to check that out.
Lindsey Dinneen: Okay.
Etienne Nichols: So I learned this in college, lets see if I can remember them all. But see, he has the Seven Spoke Wheel of Life. Essentially, what he says is there's seven spokes. You have family, career, intellectual, social, financial, physical and spiritual. I think I did it unless I repeated something. So all seven of those spokes essentially make up your life.
If you have a broken spoke, you have a flat tire, just think of it that way. So I looked at that and I said, "okay, well, I go running with different people and we usually chat about the same old thing." So I said, I'm gonna start using this Seven Spoke Wheel of Life as much as possible. And so the next guy who I went running with, I told him about the seven spokes. I said, why don't we pick a different spoke every time? We'll just talk about that while we run our 10 mile run or whatever it is. And so we would do that and we'd cover more ground.
And so when I say double dip as much as possible it's making those different spokes cross over each other. So that was, let's say, intellectual. Maybe I'm gonna meet with some engineers to go running. So that's a physical thing. That's an intellectual thing. It's a social thing. I have now met three needs in one interaction. Or maybe I'll go to a coffee shop in the morning. I have a book club that I meet with every week to discuss a book that we're talking about. So there's a social interaction, there's our intellectual interaction and it forces me to be reading. If you can double dip, even the podcast-- I get to practice my public speaking. I get to extend my career perhaps. But also meet with people like you, Lindsey, and other people in the industry, and it's really fun. So double dip as much as possible and don't feel bad about it.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, that's great advice. I really like that. I like, I like the double dip because that's a little better than multitasking, right? Because we're actually not wired to do that. But I really like your idea of combining a couple of different things together for the win. So.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, and I love that categorization. It helps me anyway to kinda have that seven spokes, so you kind of differentiate for yourselves. Okay. This truly is doing multiple things. it's beneficial for me anyway.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Just pivoting a little bit, just for fun. Imagine someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want, doesn't necessarily have to be in your industry, but it could be. What would you choose to teach and why?
Etienne Nichols: A million dollars! Oh, okay. Well, So the thing that comes to mind for me is listening and I know it's a soft skill. And if I thought long enough, maybe I could come along something technical and specific to medtech. But for right now, listening comes to mind. So few people really listen. And sometimes I struggle with this myself, but most of the time we're just waiting for our turn to talk and you've actually done a really good job. I'm actually pretty impressed with your capability and your listening. It's really cool, Lindsey.
 But a lot of times when we think we're listening, we're coming up with that next thing to say, but instead if we're able to ditch those lines and listen with your whole body, your whole mind, your whole soul, make this person in front of you the most important person in your life. That changes everything because what I've realized is people are willing to give me the amount of attention I give them and not a whole lot more. And so, you've really gotta learn to listen to, to really succeed.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I love that. And actually to your point, I'm curious how do you manage that as a podcast host and when you're moderating panels and things like that because part of your job does entail a certain amount of preparation. So how do you balance the two? Because you, you wanna get to the questions that are important for you, but then you also, of course, wanna be actively listening so that you can have a real conversation. Have you found a good way to balance that?
Etienne Nichols: It is really difficult. If anyone ever says moderating a panel or moderating a podcast is easy, I don't know that they really know what they're talking about. It takes a lot of focus. I go back to a quote, I guess, I think it's, was it Eisenhower who says "planning is everything, plans are nothing." And when you go to a, an interview like that or a panel is a good example. I'm glad you mentioned that. When you go to a panel, you probably have a list of questions that you want to get to, but it's hard for our brains to remember every one of those little points that we want to ask. So if you instead focus on the overarching theme that you want to cover, and this is the advice I give people, is focus on the overarching theme and then when you're talking to those people, you have your initial question, you'll ask that question and they'll answer, really listen, because most likely the gold is somewhere in that question that they asked.
I'll see if I can think of a example. If they're answering a question about the time that they, took a company public and it was pretty stressful at the time. They managed to get it public. They signed all the papers and now they're retired, but they're really excited because now they're advising other people. I'm like, okay, there's something stressful. I heard them say that. I wanna know, what did your wife think when you decided to take that public? What did your executive team, or what did the people who work for you think? I may have a list of questions, but I really want to dive in and just treat it like a conversation keeping in mind the overarching theme of the panel. So I dunno if that answers your question, but that's how I approach it.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I really like that. And something that came to mind as you were talking about the overarching theme was sort of in tandem to that-- maybe the idea of what do you hope the audience will gain from it? So if you have that perspective of I want the audience to feel inspired or I want them to know more about this particular topic by the end or whatever, then that can help guide the conversation too. Especially if it doesn't go quite the way you anticipated.
Etienne Nichols: Yes. I love that you said inspired or I want to make them feel inspired because that's a really good point. I told someone this recently, man, everything on the panel you could probably Google. Sometimes there's really good tidbits, but for example, Dan Purvis and I, we did the the interview a few weeks ago and it was a fantastic interview and you could go and read his book and maybe get a lot of the anecdotes that he told us about. But you're not gonna get the feeling of passion for the industry or excitement for the future and all these things. And so, that's really what a lot of these live events will give you. It gives you a feeling to move you forward and we think, "oh, that's wishy-washy. We're technical, we're engineers," but you can't forget that we're humans. We're driven in a certain way.
And so these interactions that make our job easier, a lot of that is softer skills or softer experiences and not necessarily hard technical things. As important as those are, you have to have the things that pull you forward. So I love that you mentioned that inspiring the audience and things like that.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, definitely. So speaking of inspiration, I suppose, what is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?
Etienne Nichols: I think it's interesting that we even want to be remembered. When I'd step outside myself and look at myself, I'm like, why do you wanna be remembered? But you do. And so I can't really get rid of that. That's fine. So when I think about that, the answer I think I would have is the strength of my kids. I heard someone say this once. See if I can remember exactly how it goes. I want my son to be the strongest man at my funeral. It's my job to make that happen. When I think of being remembered, I think about being remembered through my kids. There's another ancient writing that goes something like, "like arrows in the hands of a warrior so are the children of one's youth." So being a good dad, that's probably the most important thing to me in my life.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. And then final question, what is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?
Etienne Nichols: Oh, It would have to be my daughter. She's 13 months old now, and if a rainbow could become a person, that person would be Darcy, my daughter.
Lindsey Dinneen: That's wonderful. I love it. Oh my gosh. Thank you so very, very much for joining me today. This has been so much fun. Speaking of inspiration: lots of it, lots of great advice and your stories are fantastic. So thank you so much for sharing all of that with us.
Etienne Nichols: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much, Lindsey. I really appreciate you inviting me onto the podcast and excited to work together in the future.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, and we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to the Polaris Project, which is a non-governmental organization that works to combat and prevent sex and labor trafficking in North America. So I really appreciate you choosing that organization to support and just again, thank you so much. We just wish you continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.
Etienne Nichols: You're so welcome. Take care.
Lindsey Dinneen: Of course, and thank you also to our listeners for tuning in and if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I'd love it if you share this episode with a colleague or two and we will catch you next time.
 The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.
Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.
Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.
Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.
Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

Diane Bouis | MedTech Innovator | Connection & Mentorship, ”Switching,” & Being a ”Nerd in a Suit”

Diane Bouis is a scientist-turned-startup leader and ecosystem connector with MedTech Innovator. In this episode, she shares how accelerator programs can make a big difference in the success of a medtech startup, her passion for mentoring scientists leaving academia, her unique ability to "switch" easily and effectively, and why she self-identifies as a "nerd in a suit."
Guest links: https://medtechinnovator.org/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/diane-bouis/
Charity supported: Save the Children
Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 
PRODUCTION CREDITSHost: Lindsey DinneenEditor: Tim OliphantProducer: Velentium
 
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Episode 008 - Diane Bouis
Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
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.
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.
Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
Hello and welcome to the Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host Lindsey, and I am so excited to introduce to you as my guest today, Diane Bouis. Diane is a scientist turned startup leader and ecosystem connector. She is the director of the US Program of MedTech Innovator, which is the largest accelerator for MedTech in the world. Diane, thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited you're here.
Diane Bouis: I'm very excited to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. Well, I would love if you would just start by introducing us to you. Let us know a little bit about yourself and your background, kind of what led you to this industry and this field.
Diane Bouis: Thanks for that question. Quite a few years ago. I told my parents at age 14 that I wanted to become a medical scientist and solve HIV/ AIDS, and cancer. No lack of ambition there. And I'll say unfortunately, I have not managed to solve either of these two problems so far. But I became a medical scientist, did my PhD in the Netherlands and then moved to the US right after my PhD to do a postdoc at University of Michigan. So, classic scientist trajectory, you do a PhD, you go to the US to do a postdoc and then you go back to Europe to become a professor.
I'm originally from France and so, so any European country would've done, but really loved it, loved the research that I was doing in cardiovascular research and stuck around and eventually left academic research by way of an MBA. And discovered startups and discovered the fact that science and business folks don't always speak the same language. And I often jokingly describe it as the dichotomy between the scientists who look at the business people just as suits, and the business people who look at the scientists as nerds. And so I always say, I'm a nerd in a suit. I am business and science, and that's an excellent place to be. So my motivation remains to save lives, but it has broadened a little bit from two very specific diseases to saving and improving lives across the industry.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, I love that. And oh my goodness. Yeah, you were definitely ambitious right from the get-go. I love it. I love it. And I love how your path has changed along the way, but you have clearly stayed open to all sorts of different opportunities and that has led you to experience some really amazing things, and like you said, you get to be a part of a lot of different discoveries and innovations and I think that's awesome. Well, thanks for telling us a little bit about your background. I am curious what you do now and how has that all come about?
Diane Bouis: So I'll take a step back and tell you a little bit about MedTech Innovator. And I appreciate that you mentioned in your introduction. We're the largest accelerator for MedTech in the world. And MedTech Innovator has been around for a decade. I am rather new into my job. I'm less than a year with the organization, so I don't really have merit in building this fantastic organization. However, we run an accelerator program between the month of June and October. But taking that a step back to, to really where we are and what we do. We work with startups in MedTech and we define that as medical devices and healthcare IT. And we work with startups in MedTech between the seed stage and the series C, so that's a very broad swath, I would say our cohorts are roughly split in two between the earlier stages, so seed and series A. And the later stages, B and C. And we work closely with our strategic partners. MedTech Innovator is a nonprofit, and so we're not asking for equity, we're not asking folks to relocate. We are really the conduit to great partners and mentors. And that is with great names in the industry and as well as investors. Basically, we connect you to people who can help you get to the next level. That's what an accelerator does, and we do it uniquely in MedTech.
And so I run the US program. That is the largest one, the flagship one. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the other two programs. We have an Asia-Pacific program that Sakeena Tan runs out of Singapore. And we have a BioTools program that Ayelet Marom runs. She's also in LA and so, specifically BioTools and MedTech innovator, we're in the same geography. We are working very closely together as we are recruiting startups. BioTools is adjacent and between the two programs, sometimes the applications overlap. MedTech is anything that impacts patients, whereas the BioTools application could be a startup that is in research tools or that is in platform technologies for personalized medicine. So those are the three programs. That's that's really where we play. And I personally run the West program, which means finding great startups, soliciting applications from great startups, and then facilitating some of the review. We have fantastic partners and reviewers and judges as well as then creating the program that really helps those companies accelerate.
Lindsey Dinneen: Thank you so much for that background, because that does provide a lot of context for our conversation and obviously for the amazing work that MedTech Innovator does and I can personally say from having attended just one event last year, that included some of the MTI companies that are part of this experience-- oh my goodness. I mean, it was so inspiring to hear from these inventors who are coming up with just amazing, life-changing devices. And wow, those stories must inspire you every day.
Diane Bouis: I agree. I always say 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. And the inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. And so I get to work with the greatest people.
Lindsey Dinneen: Well, so you mentioned a little bit when you were talking about your background, and I think this is a great thing to touch on, there can, not always, but there can often be a little bit of a disconnect between what you referred to as suits versus, did you say nerds or geeks?
Diane Bouis: I said nerds. I self-identify as a nerd.
Lindsey Dinneen: Okay, perfect. So what have you found that has really helped bridge the gap between those two, especially for, say these brilliant scientists and nerds, who, you know, have fantastic ideas, but maybe don't have as much of the business background to really bring those ideas to market , to actually market them, so that people can actually know that they exist and things. So, how has your interconnectedness of those two elements played out through your own career and as you are now in this role.
Diane Bouis: There's a couple of things that come to mind. One: it is very hard for all of us to know what we don't know. And so if I know, I don't know something, I can seek knowledge. I can ask someone questions. I can go and find a book and read it. I can get a course. If I don't know that I don't know, something, that's much harder. And so, every single one of us can strive to uncover the unknown unknowns. And one of the ways to do that is to surround yourself with people who are somewhat different from you and who know different things than you.
And so to come back to the inventor who has found a really fascinating phenomenon or who has invented a really interesting device but may not know a good way to get it into the world, to bring it into the market. In many ways, it's a matter of asking questions because when I meet someone for the first time, I don't know if they have perhaps previously held commercialization positions and know what they're talking about or not. And so asking questions: " who would use this? Do you know what the need is out there?" Depending on the situation and the level of comfort, it crystallizes to "who cares?" but saying, "who cares?" can feel adversarial. And so you've gotta pick your words wisely there.
But asking questions and learning and than bringing up the concept of the unknown unknowns to simply put that out there, you, and I say you in this case, to an inventor, maybe the world leader in a particular area of science. And while during my days in the lab, I was definitely very conversant in my particular scientific niche, I also recognize that there are areas of science that I'm not that conversant about, and so everybody understands that they're very good at something and maybe less good at other things. And so just opening that conversation. Once we both agree, maybe you don't quite know how to get to market, then we can have the conversation around, "okay, well what are the resources available to you here and elsewhere to learn about this and to learn what you might be missing?" And then sometimes I can connect someone to resources, accelerators are a good one, but very often there's grant funding opportunities. There are local economic development entities. There are other entrepreneurs. There are entrepreneurial organizations from whom you might be able to learn a thing or two. We learn a lot from our peers and so even recognizing that you may need a peer group can be helpful.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. So I'm curious, is there a particular moment that stands out to you because it clearly confirmed that this was the right career for you?
Diane Bouis: I will say for me, there have been several interesting moments of change and getting into accelerators was not an obvious choice. While a lot of our world was was slowing down due to the pandemic, I had the opportunity to help someone I know design a curriculum for a digital health accelerator and had a ton of fun with that. That person knew that I've done programming. I co-founded a healthcare hackathon nonprofit. I've run events that help healthcare innovators in many different ways. And so they knew that I could help with that and and so I did. And I had a ton of fun designing a curriculum and running a curriculum. And while that was supposed to be a one-off during the pandemic in my spare time, I recognized I had a ton of fun with it. And I think whenever, in our careers we realize, I'm doing something that is valuable, that people appreciate and that I'm really enjoying, ask yourself, is there a job where I can do more of that or where I can do that all the time? And so I, I did what any reasonable person would do. I Googled top "10 medtech accelerators." Lo and behold, as you would imagine the top result was MedTech Innovator and I had run across some social media posts from MedTech Innovator before so it wasn't completely new, but I thought, "gee, that seems to be the right organization for me, let me reach out to them." And I'm very fortunate that a little over a year later, here I am.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, I love that. What a great story. Do more of what you love when you can. Well, now obviously you have held a variety of different positions throughout your career, and it sounds like leadership has been a running thread, and so I'm curious, how would you define leadership or what does leadership mean to you?
Diane Bouis: I would say leadership is defining a shared goal and aligning one's self and one's actions to it, which then in turn also means aligning a team towards those goals. And so when the goals are very clear, we can all move in unison towards them. A friend of mine once said, "just hire great people and get out of the way." And I think that is correct, but that only works if you have a great shared vision where everybody intuitively knows we're all moving in this direction, therefore this is the correct action even if I don't have the opportunity to ask you for direct feedback. And so give a lot of feedback in the beginning and then align to that shared vision that we're all pursuing. So, to summarize, set a shared vision and and then go after it together.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, I love that. Very good. Yeah. And then what would be your best piece of advice for someone who maybe is early on in their career or is looking for the next step or whatnot, then they're interested in obtaining a leadership role within the medtech industry. What would you say to someone who might be wanting to do that?
Diane Bouis: The advice I always give to my mentees is, of course, get your name out there. And so say yes to opportunities, even if it's not immediately obvious how they will benefit you and in ways that are somewhat transparently self-serving. When you have opportunities to, for example, participate in ecosystem events. When you can give advice to a budding startup, when you have an opportunity to be on a panel or in a speaking role at a conference, those are ways in which you can showcase your leadership in the field, showcase the leadership, thought leadership of your organization. That's one of the ways a rising manager, a rising person in our industry really can get out there. I would also highly recommend joining professional organizations and joining a committee. It is about giving back to the industry, but it is also about the other members of that committee. We are at the same time, a large industry as well as an industry small enough where you will encounter people again, maybe not next year, but maybe 2, 3, 5 years from now. And so, be a good citizen and involve yourself in things that are directly useful to you professionally, as well as not immediately useful to you, but perhaps useful to others. It's a great practice to grow oneself, but it's also leading by example for the people you work with. Just because telling people to do something is one, doing it is the other. People will observe what you do and what you prioritize and will make similar choices.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. So, being a model, even if you are not yet in that position, but you are modeling the kinds of behavior that a good leader would want to exude anyway, so you can start doing that no matter what your job title is or where you are in your career.
Diane Bouis: I would agree especially , with the complexities in the MedTech industry, nobody knows everything and we sometimes don't know what other people know. And so, speaking up when you have knowledge that could benefit someone, is really helpful. I consider that as I still mentor scientists leaving academia. I consider that one of the biggest differences between academia and the business world. In academia, you only speak up when you truly know. In the business world, nobody has time for that, to wait until the last person might have gotten enough data to make a call. And so if you know something, speak up. There's opportunity to be heard. And if you have something to contribute, it would be a mistake to not contribute it. Together, we can truly make a bigger difference than individually.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. I love that advice. And I'm curious because you've mentioned you don't know what you don't know, adopting kind of a growth mindset and your own continuous learning and growing as a person. And I'm curious, as a leader, how do you prioritize your own learning and growing?
Diane Bouis: While I was still a scientist and contemplating getting an MBA, a friend of mine who had walked that path from PhD to MBA before suggested spending 10 to 20% of one's time on personal growth and personal growth is sometimes giving back to the ecosystem. So sometimes that's giving somebody else career advice, but also spending time reading something that is not directly pertinent to your work. And so, it can be a newsletter from a different industry. It can be a scientific article, it can be a book. Often concepts from other industries can really help. And so, making sure that you take the time to grow yourself beyond just the ability to make interesting small talk at the next conference, but really thinking about what the future looks like, the future of our industry, but your personal future and the world can lead to choices of books, of courses, of where is the world going to be in 10 years, and where do I want to be in 10 years? And the answers to those questions should lead to a couple of steps to do every week, every month to keep growing.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. Good advice. Thank you for sharing that. So for fun, imagine someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want. It doesn't have to be in your industry. It absolutely could be if you'd like, what would you choose to teach and why?
Diane Bouis: I think, I would enjoy designing a masterclass in switching, and that might sound funny at first, but I have come to realize that is something that I happen to be quite good at and that not everybody else is good at. And switching for me can be switching between different industries. I've worked industry agnostic almost for the past decade while I come from the biomedical sector. And so I can bring an analogy out of agricultural technology or petroleum refining that someone in the medical industry may not have thought about. So that's switching in terms of switching industries. But far more personally, I happen to be a speaker of several languages. I speak both French and German to my parents, and that's where the accent is from that, that usually tricks somebody up. So it's worth saying. And what I've realized since a very young age is many people speak languages quite well. I happen to be really good at switching and translating in real time, and so I can keep up a conversation with 2, 3, 4 people in 2, 3, 4 different languages simultaneously. And so switching is often the hard part and learning and teaching to really seamlessly go from one language to another or one area of science or a business to another, I think is a useful skill more of us could have. Now I would need at least a month to actually really design that course, but it would be a ton of fun. I think I'd enjoy that.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Oh, well I love that. That sounds like a wonderful skill to have. It peaked my curiosity a little bit because you had mentioned before that transition and for yourself and helping other people with a transition from say, the academic world for scientists or whoever to transition out of that. And I'm wondering for yourself or the people that you mentor, and this is a huge, I would think, shift for anyone. I mean, I've undergone various shifts as well, and it's sometimes it kind of impacts your identity. Do you find that's a component, that is something that you would talk about, say in your masterclass or even that you talk about in real life in your mentoring other people? Is that a component of it that you have found has been something to consider as you're making these life changes, these switches?
Diane Bouis: Absolutely. That's a really great question. We spend the largest part of our waking time at work, and so what we do professionally largely defines us, for better or worse, and that also means that if we make substantial changes that will almost invariably impact how we see ourselves and how others see us. And both of those, how we see ourselves and how others see us have a big impact on our psyche and how we perform in what we do. So it's important to be cognizant of that. And for me, that first step was leaving academic science. I'd been a scientist for a decade, and so "I am a scientist" stops being true when you're an MBA student. So then you're a former scientist, but you haven't quite arrived to, what am I now? And so, so, how do you define yourself? And I will often say "I'm lean startup" and working with startups is far more who I am these days and how I define myself. So helping startups is really the nutshell. But how we define ourselves is important. And it's important to spend some time on it because what we signal to the world, and especially people earlier in their careers, where you have been is evident from your resume, but who you want to be your next step is yours to tell. And so that is really important. And the past informs the future, but doesn't automatically define it.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a subject that is not talked about a lot. But it is so important because it is, it's a huge component of making those switches and being able to make those switches effectively in terms of how you see yourself and like you said, how others see you. It does play a role and so it's nice to have honest conversations about that and, " let's think through that. Let's work through that." Thank you for sharing that. What is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?
Diane Bouis: I would say probably for caring. I care deeply and so most people and organizations and startups I interact with I cannot help but care, but that also often means I lean in and I, I truly do want to help sometimes in unconventional ways. Startups are unconventional, so caring. I think if there's one thing to be remembered for, it would be caring.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. That is a wonderful thing to be remembered for. And then final question. What is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?
Diane Bouis: I would say what fills me with joy and therefore makes me smile-- but it is a more profound feeling of joy-- it is good people coming out of the woodwork when asked. That is the very definition of community. Somebody needs help and asks, and the community comes to the rescue. I am part of a number of local communities, obviously with MedTech Innovator, for example, we just had a call earlier today with a 2022 cohort. So those are folks, most of them I haven't seen since October. And about 25 or so of the startups, of the 50 startups that went through the cohort, showed up just for updates. But then there's always someone who has a question as in, "Hey, have you heard of this conference? Hey, do you know someone who can help with this? Hey, do you know about this?" And there's always somebody who has an answer. And so it's community. It is asking for help and receiving help. That'll make my day every day of the week.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, I love that. What a great answer. I just absolutely love that. Well, I just wanna say thank you so, so very much for your time today. Thank you for sharing your advice, your insight a little bit more about MedTech Innovator and everything that they provide to this industry. I just really appreciate it. We are very honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to Save the Children, which works to end the cycle of poverty by ensuring communities have the resources to provide children with a healthy, educational, and safe environment. That was Diane's choice of an organization to support. And I just wanna say thank you so very much for doing that, Diane, and we just wish you continued success as you work to change lives for a better world. So thank you again so much for being here today.
Diane Bouis: Thank you very much for having me.
Lindsey Dinneen: Of course, and thank you also 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.
The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.
Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.
Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.
Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.
Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

Frank Jaskulke | Medical Alley | Public Speaking, Making Connections, & Being Comfortable with Discomfort

Frank Jaskulke is the VP of Intelligence at Medical Alley, leading the company's startup and global business platforms. He discusses how he got involved ("serendipitously") in the medtech industry, how Minneapolis became known as the United States' "Medical Alley," why he's comfortable with discomfort, and why he advocates that everyone take public speaking classes. 
Guest links: www.medicalalley.org
Charity supported: ASPCA
Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 
PRODUCTION CREDITSHost: Lindsey DinneenEditor: Tim OliphantProducer: Velentium
 
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Episode 007 - Frank Jaskulke
Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
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.
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.
Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
Hello and welcome to the Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host Lindsey, and I am excited to introduce you to my guest today, Frank Jaskulke. Frank is the VP of Intelligence at Medical Alley, a consortium of 800 plus global healthcare companies. He leads the company's startup and global business platforms. Thank you so much for being here today, Frank.
Frank Jaskulke: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on the podcast.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, I'm so thrilled that you are here. Well, if you are willing, I would love for you to share just a little bit about you and your background. How did you get into this industry?
Frank Jaskulke: Yeah. I got into this industry coming up on 18 years ago now, totally serendipitously. Out of college, I was working at our state capital, was just a page, the entry level staff job. And I got assigned to our commerce committee, which at the time was working on legislation to fund joint research between Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota on the topic of genomics. I found that interesting, learned a bit more about it. And when session ended, I needed to find another job until the next session, stumbled on Medical Alley. And honest to God, I got a job at Medical Alley the same day as I got a job at Home Depot across the street from our office and Medical Alley had health insurance. So I went with that and here we are, 18 years later.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh my word. Oh my goodness. What a great story. Okay, so very different potential career paths, and you went with Medical Alley. And obviously that turned out to be a great fit for you, but tell me a little bit about growing up. Was MedTech or healthcare something of particular interest? Was it a family interest or sort of what led you to say, yes, this could be the right choice? Even not knowing that you'd be with them 18 years.
Frank Jaskulke: Yeah, on the background of it, nothing would suggest this is where I would end up. No family history of it. My mom's a teacher and an artist. My dad's a mechanic. I studied American Indian law in school. Like, that was my focus and that is a family thing. But coming out of the session, landing at Medical Alley, what I learned very quickly was we have this community in Minnesota of healthcare leaders, you know, Mayo, Medtronic, United Health Group, 3M, and so many others, that it's kind of, it's the hometown team. If you are gonna be in healthcare, This is a really good place to do it. And I fell in love over time with all of the innovation and the creativity and most importantly, the commitment that the people had. These are all people who are super smart. They could go do anything, they could go do a lot of other things and make more money, have a less stressful life, but they choose to be in this industry and to do the work, whether it's as a doctor or nurse, or as an engineer, as a business leader. Because they choose that, I just found there was such a deep passion and being around that is motivating and enlivening.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. And so can you tell me a little bit about your career progression, even through Medical Alley? Where did you start and what are you up to today?
Frank Jaskulke: Yeah. I started at the front desk, was the receptionist and staff assistant. At the time, opening the mail, sending faxes. The way we promoted most of our activities was to send the fax to our member companies. It still weirds me out to think when I started, I didn't have a smartphone. I didn't have a computer for work at home, and we were sending faxes and that-- I'm not that old, it wasn't that long ago. But how quickly it changes. But the thing that really kept me was, I got lucky early on and I had a boss, woman by the name of Liz Rammer and a CEO, a guy by the name of Don Gerhardt, who just passed away a couple of months ago, who were totally on board with, bring smart people in and let 'em try things out. So from day one, they were having me meet with the companies. They were having me join in legislative sessions. They got me involved in the different aspects of the business. And when I wanted to try something, they let me try it and if I stumbled, they'd let me stumble and then they'd help me out. And for 18 years now as I've progressed up the organization, that has been a truism of Medical Alley as a company, that we've always had leadership who embraces bringing in smart, creative people with diverse backgrounds and then unleashing 'em and letting them figure things out, being there to help 'em. But you know, saying, if you wanna do it, go for it.
Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. That sounds like an absolutely perfect company culture in terms of allowing individuals to grow and be themselves and make mistakes and learn from 'em. I think that's pretty amazing. I can see why you've been there for that long.
Frank Jaskulke: It's not that we don't have challenges, but on that one aspect, I think we've done it really well and it's paid off. Former coworkers who are running businesses, have started companies, are executives in other healthcare organizations, have gone into the legislature. We have a state senator that came out of our office. Like great people have come in, done great work and then gone on to bigger things along their journey.
Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. Yeah, that is fantastic. Well, I'm curious, is there a particular moment that stands out to you because it clearly confirmed that this was the right career for you, that being in the medtech industry was your path?
Frank Jaskulke: I don't know if there was an exact moment, but I do know the string of moments. 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. That simple. That we go and meet with the CEOs of startups, of big companies, of hospitals, of insurance companies, drug companies, and we listen to their problems, and then we come up with creative solutions to resolve those problems as an industry, right? Instead of you having to solve the same problem I had to solve, we solve it once. Once that clicked, it became really easy. I'm gonna hang out with smart people doing great things and my work is gonna make it easier for them to do more great things.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I can understand that. And that brings up an interesting question, presumably-- although you'll have to tell me from your own experience-- but presumably, I would imagine it may have taken a little bit of time to grow into being comfortable in that role. I mean, was this something that you were just naturally extroverted or-- whatever the right word would be-- confident enough to just go into those conversations and, tackle them with ease or is that some element of the job that, you did sort of grow into?
Frank Jaskulke: Yeah, definitely grew into. I'm very introverted. Confidence wanes by the day, right? Sometimes good, sometimes not. But I've never been afraid to be wrong. The idea of the more you're wrong, the more likely you are to learn something, I've always embraced. And so I was super comfortable going into meetings and just saying, "I don't know what you're talking about. What does this mean? What's important to you?" And I took advantage of, especially early on in my career-- I was very young, relatively fresh outta school-- a lot of the CEOs were very open to the idea of they wanted to pay it forward, help the next generation, and were willing to just share their knowledge and help me learn more quickly. So the, definitely not confidence, not extraversion, but just purely being interested and being okay with being wrong. Probably longer than most people are comfortable with being wrong.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. And so can you share a little bit about how Medical Alley does assist its members? I know you have a whole membership platform. I know you do a lot of educational material, you hold events, but I would love to hear from your perspective. Why do people, why do companies want to be a part of Medical Alley and how do you all work together to better the industry?
Frank Jaskulke: Yeah. So companies fundamentally get involved for two reasons. One is they care about their ecosystem and community. They wanna make sure that there is this healthcare and health technology industry, particularly in Minnesota, for the next generation. The other reason is they need help for themselves, for their company. They have challenges they're confronting. That they understand can be better resolved together than individually. So the, fundamental operating model of Medical Alley I would describe as, convening to solve common challenges.
So back up just a moment. Medical Alley is the only group in the country that has healthcare providers, healthcare payers, and the technology firms, medical device, biopharma, diagnostic and digital health as co-equal partners in the consortium. By doing that, we're able to get these sometimes conflicting groups. I develop a device. I need a payer to pay for it. I need a provider to use it. The payer's trying to manage costs and outcomes. The provider is trying to grow patient volume and deliver better quality. Sometimes those things are aligned, sometimes they're not. We're the only group that can bring that whole ecosystem together and work on getting to better alignment, to ultimately deliver better patient outcomes at lower cost. And what we recognized a long time ago, and this goes back to Earl Bach and one of their founders who was also the founder of Medtronic. He recognized that there were often problems that a company would have that a lot of other companies had as well. And instead of one company solving that problem and then another company having to solve it, and another having to solve it, and a lot of wasted resources that don't help the patient get better. He brought the industry together and said, "Hey, we could identify those problems, distribute our resources and work on them collectively. And we'll more rapidly remove those roadblocks and we'll be able to help more patients as a result." And that is still the rallying cry today. Bring this industry together to solve some of the most challenging problems in healthcare that haven't been solved when we've operated separately, when it's only been hospitals or only medical device, or only the insurance companies. We think if we come together as an industry that's all of healthcare, we can have a bigger impact.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I know that the organization does a lot of good for a lot of people. So thank you for being here and for being so supportive of the medtech, the healthcare, all of those industries. That is really an amazing thing. So it's cool to hear from an insider perspective too, exactly what you all are passionate about and why you're here. So thank you for sharing that.
Frank Jaskulke: Oh yeah. Thank you.
Lindsey Dinneen: And then how would you define leadership? Or what does leadership mean to you?
Frank Jaskulke: I always feel like that's one of those questions that we all should have an easy path answer, but it's really hard. I think, for me at least, leadership means one working on things that matter. There are lots and lots of things we could do. There aren't as many things that we should do. And so I think leaders are the kind of people, regardless of where they are in an organization, that get us focused on what we should do. I think the second thing is, I would have always the idea of leaders make leaders. That the true sign of a good leader is the people that come out of their mentorship in support and development and become better leaders than you know, the person they were working with.
And then maybe the last piece, I think a lot about is, not just being the person willing to make the hard decisions, but being the person who enables your colleagues or your team members to make hard decisions and not worry about it. And I think we've all been in that situation. If something didn't go quite right, then now we gotta tell the boss about it and we're worried about the consequence. I think leadership is creating an environment in which when mistakes happen or when hard decisions have to be made, it's recognized, it's celebrated, it's accepted, not denigrated or punished.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, and for folks who might be interested, maybe, especially people that are younger in their careers, what is your best piece of advice for that person who is interested in obtaining a leadership role within the medtech industry?
Frank Jaskulke: Ah, learn how to manage sideways and manage up, early. And by that I mean, I see a lot of people who get really hung up on proving their worth and showing like how good they are at a thing or how valuable they are. And you realize, eventually if you get into a management or a leadership role that like the great ones are the ones who help others be better, not who do great work themselves. And so that, early on, learning about how you help others do their work better, how you help elevate your team members and your leaders and your company. I think that's one of the fastest tracks to then become a leader including the promotions and the pay and the title and all of that stuff that goes with it. Because ultimately that's the leader's job. They're not the one necessarily out making the sale or building the project, but they are marshaling the resources and getting the teams motivated to accomplish things they didn't think were possible. That can be done very junior in an organization. You can make others around you better by your presence and by your leadership, regardless of your title or your role in a job.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, that's true. I think there's a lot of perhaps, haziness, around the idea of a leader. And I think you're right, it doesn't have to be in your job title or even your job description. You don't have to be, directly managing people underneath you are leading people underneath you. You can be a leader in your own right. And set a good example and make a difference without necessarily having the title to match it yet. There are still many opportunities.
Frank Jaskulke: And that's a really good thing you said about setting the example, like modeling the type of culture we wanna have in an organization can be a very powerful part of leadership regardless of your level in an organization. Living the values, making decisions based on those values, and helping others to do the same. But, and I think it's, it sometimes is a big mindset shift for people to make. You know, when you're in an individual contributor role to a great degree, you are measured on what you deliver in the work. Whereas a leader or a manager is measured on what their team delivers or what the organization delivers. And so getting that early mindset of" I'm gonna model those behaviors, I'm gonna help the others around me to be better." I think that's how you get on the rocket ship.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, and to that point, something that you mentioned earlier, which I really loved was that you essentially, when you were having those initial meetings with CEOs and whatnot early on in your career, and you weren't coming from a place of extroversion or confidence, but you were coming from a place of curiosity and genuine interest and a willingness to learn. And I love that. I think that that's a wonderful trait because it can help you continue to learn and grow your whole life. But I'm curious, how do you prioritize your continued learning and growing as a leader today?
Frank Jaskulke: Oh yeah. I don't think it's a matter of prioritization. Learning just has to be all the time. You know, if you're not learning, I don't think you're getting ahead. The world changes far too much. This community and industry is so complex. There's always something new to learn. But then I think even more importantly, it's the mindset of being a learner. You know, if you have a fixed mindset, a mindset of scarcity, you're gonna have a hard time, I think, getting ahead in this world and making a real meaningful impact. Versus a mindset of abundance, of we can make more, and of being open to new ideas and new perspectives, new ways of approaching a problem. So, like for me, learning is my hobby and I don't have other hobbies. I don't play sports. I don't do art. I don't do other stuff. I talk to smart people, ask them questions and learn from them. And I always think of " How to Win Friends and Influence" guide.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. Dale Carnegie.
Frank Jaskulke: Dale Carnegie. Thank you. He had a line in the book where he is " the best way to be interesting is to be interested."
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes.
Frank Jaskulke: And if I had a life motto, it'd be that. I am just interested in anything and everything, and that has been the difference maker. So it's never a prioritization. It just always is.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. So I suppose that in your capacity in getting to continue to interview people because you're also a podcast host. Yeah, I was gonna say, so you get paid to do this, is basically the wonderful aspects of your job.
Frank Jaskulke: Bingo. Yep. And that is why I get passionate. I am paid to every day learn something, if not some things new. And by doing that it works out. And I mean, in a lot of ways it's kind of an old sales thing, right? Like people don't like to be sold, but people like to buy stuff. People may not want to hear your story, but people love telling their story. I want people to tell their story, I want to hear their stories, I wanna learn from it. And then that actually makes the business work even better.
Lindsey Dinneen: Are there any particular episodes or moments from an episode that really stand out to you in terms of either light bulb moment or a story that just kind transfixed you or something? I'm always curious what about from your perspective, are those moments?
Frank Jaskulke: Yeah we've had some fun ones over the years. Recently we had Dr. Bill Maurice, who runs Mayo Clinic Laboratories, and during the pandemic became very prominent because he's a massive, massive sports guy. And he started going on some of sports radio shows to talk about Covid and talk about vaccination. And this is an MD PhD, incredibly smart person, but who also is really into hockey and basketball and football and everything. He was able to connect with a group of people who were not as receptive to the traditional way of communicating about public health and vaccination. And have honest, thoughtful, open conversations about what was going on. And I would argue I probably made as big of a public health impact as anyone as a result. And it, it just really struck me how humble and honest and authentic he was about it. You know, It wasn't an air for him, it was legitimately him and he was excited to be on ESPN sports radio programs, like he was nerding out about it and able to then make a public health impact. So that has stuck with me.
The other one I've always liked, and I've interviewed her a couple of times, Lee Jones, who is the co-founder of a company called Rebiotix, and a longtime Medical Alley board member. She was a Medtronic executive in the medical device industry and started a biotech company in a state that is not known for biotech. But what's crazy, when they started the company, she thought she was starting a medical device company, and so it set it up as a medical device company, did all the normal stuff, and then the FDA said, "actually, you're a drug." And they had to pivot on the fly from a device company to a drug company. And the way she handled that pivot, the people she got involved, she was doing remote and hybrid work back in 2015 with this well before it was much of a trend. That company got FDA approval in September last year. They had a nice exit, great return for the investors, and hearing her story of a successful entrepreneur, a corporate executive, and pivoting from med device to drug and just going with it, I have found very inspiring.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, that is amazing. Wow. Well, on a bit of a less serious note, so I've always wondered this, why Minnesota, why is Minnesota Medical Alley, just out of curiosity. I think Minneapolis is a cool city, but I'm just curious, what is the attraction? How did that become what it is?.
Frank Jaskulke: The honest to God, glib answer, but it's correct, is two things: the Mayo brothers stopped in Rochester 150 years ago, and Earl Bachan was born in Northeast Minneapolis. That was it. Like it wasn't planned. It wasn't a grand design, it was, Earl Bachan born here, started the modern medical device industry, Mayo brothers here, start the modern healthcare system and then we doubled down on it. The industry existed. And then we had thoughtful leadership, Earl Bachan, the Mayo Clinic leadership, a guy named Lee Berlin who came out of 3M, and at the time, Governor Rudy Perpich, back in 1984, they got together and they said, "Hey, we have something here we should build on it." So they created Medical Alley, the company, to organize and promote the industry. So we got lucky. And then if anyone out there, if you've read "Good to Great," we capitalized on our luck, right? We maximized our return on luck by doubling down on the industry, building it up, and creating an environment where if you're here, if you're doing medical device, you're gonna find the workforce, you're gonna find the suppliers, you're gonna find the investors, and you're gonna find the companies that might buy your company. If you're in digital health, you're gonna find the same thing. And increasingly, that's even becoming true if you're doing a biopharma startup here. Over time, a complete ecosystem is built up. But as Warren Buffet used to say, "we hit the genetic lottery" in having Earl Bachan born here and having the Mayo brothers stop here.
Lindsey Dinneen: Very nice. Okay. There we go. Now I know. Well, speaking of not quite as serious questions, but imagine someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want-- does not have to be in your industry-- absolutely anything. What would you choose to teach and why?
Frank Jaskulke: Oh, that, that's easy. I would teach a class on the fundamentals of public speaking. Yeah. It's a skill that, no matter what you do, whether it's big business, a nonprofit, government, anywhere, public speaking, communication is so fundamental and a lot of people are scared by it. And then there's a lot of people who aren't scared by it, but do it poorly. And, harm their ability to drive their cause forward. So yeah, I'd do that one for free, but I'd certainly do it for a million dollars.
Lindsey Dinneen: Amazing. Well, okay, so that does generate a follow-up question then. Did you take extensive public training courses or classes or Toastmasters or anything like that? Or is your own experience over the years led you to a place where you would be confident in teaching a class.
Frank Jaskulke: Yeah. In high school I got very lucky and was recruited onto the debate team, had no idea what it would be about, fell in love with it and then joined the speech team and that has been more useful and a bigger contributor to my success professionally and personally than my undergraduate degree, than my graduate degree, than anything I've done. High school speech and debate is the best thing I've done in my education.
Lindsey Dinneen: Agreed. Yeah. I will second that. I actually also did speech and debate in high school . Yeah. And I do agree it is one of those, or two, of those classes or activities that you can do that actually do carry over substantially throughout your life, so.
Frank Jaskulke: Anyone out there if you've got kids that are thinking about stuff, it is well worth encouraging your kids to check it out. It is such a force multiplier.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. Agreed. What is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?
Frank Jaskulke: I don't really care if I'm remembered or not. It kind of gets to the why, like the only thing I'm really interested in is that the impact happens. Whether or not people know I had a part in it, I'm okay with, I'll know.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay. And then final question. What's one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it? .
Frank Jaskulke: Oh, that's easy. That'd be my cats. We've got two cats, Astra and Zeneca. They're getting up there in age, but they're still, get home. They come and welcome me. Sleep on the bed all night. If days are warm or cold, they're always there. The cats.
Lindsey Dinneen: Aw. Well that's amazing. And it sounds like they're actually rather social for cats cause I think sometimes that's at risk.
Frank Jaskulke: Yeah. They're a little bit dog-like in how like clingy they can be. Um, not the aloof cats that we normally would think.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh my gosh. Now, did you grow up with cats or was that something that you had, as an adult or where'd your love of cats come from?
Frank Jaskulke: I've always had pets. Yeah. We always had at least two cats and at least one dog forever.
Lindsey Dinneen: That's wonderful. Well, Frank, I just wanna say, this was so much fun to hear about you and your background, why you're passionate about the industry, what Medical Alley has done, not only for you personally, which is wonderful, but obviously for the world, how it's impacting lives. So I just wanna say thank you for sharing all of those stories and the behind the scenes. I love hearing that. And we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which is dedicated to preventing animal cruelty in the United States. We really appreciate, Frank, you choosing that organization to support and thank you just again, so very much for your time here today. It was so much fun to talk to you and get the behind the scenes, and I just wish you continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.
Frank Jaskulke: Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on and letting me share a bit about what we're up to, and I appreciate that Velentium is collecting these good stories to share more broadly, and has been a part of the Medical Alley community. And to everyone out there, thank you for listening to this story and helping to spread it. Medical Alley is always here at your service.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. Thank you again, Frank, and thank you also to our listeners for tuning in, and if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I'd love it if you share this episode with a colleague or two, and we will catch you next time.
 The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.
Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.
Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.
Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.
Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

Shannon Clark | Founder of UserWise | Human Factors Engineering, History, & Her Entrepreneurship Journey

Shannon Clark is the founder and principal of UserWise, a consultancy that helps medical device manufacturers and startups to design safe and easy-to-use medical devices. In this episode, Shannon discusses her experience founding her company, the importance of human factors engineering, her love of history, and why she's so happy about her recent "demotion."
Guest link: www.UserWiseConsulting.com
Charity supported: Equal Justice Initiative
Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 
PRODUCTION CREDITSHost: Lindsey DinneenEditor: Tim OliphantProducer: Velentium
 
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Episode 006 - Shannon Clark
Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
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.
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.
Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
Hello and welcome to the Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host Lindsay, and I am excited to introduce you to my guest today, Shannon Clark.
Shannon is founder and principal of UserWise, a consultancy that helps medical device manufacturers and startups to design safe and easy to use medical devices. Before founding UserWise in 2014, Shannon was a human factors engineer at Intuitive Surgical and Abbott Laboratories. Shannon graduated from UCLA with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a technical breadth in technology management. Shannon is additionally a certified professional industrial engineer, holds two patents and has written and published three books. Clearly an absolute rockstar, thank you so much for being here, Shannon.
Shannon Clark: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. Well, I would love, if you don't mind just sharing a little bit about your background and maybe how you got to where you are. I know, you've gotten to do some really amazing things. You have an amazing company. I would just love to hear a little bit of that backstory.
Shannon Clark: How far back should we go? I think it's interesting that on my application to USC, I ended up going to UCLA, but I did apply and get into USC, just for the record, and on my application. I said that my dream job, I was 17 years old, would be to run a product design firm in Spain. It's pretty interesting that I kind of ended up there and I kind of had that idea so early on, but I didn't really fall in love with human factors or even know about it until I was working at Abbott Laboratories and I had this unique opportunity to apprentice one of the world's leading experts in human factors named Ed Israelski. He was the Director of Human Factors for Abbott for many years, and laid all the groundwork for the international standards and it informed the FDA guidances around human factors, so it was a really unique opportunity to work for him. And from there I was able to really dive into human factors with that practical experience at Abbott. And I knew that I wanted to run my own company basically. And I think I, I finally made it there in 2014 when I saw some great opportunities to help fledgling companies out of Stanford Biodesign and Fogerty Institute for Innovation. And I started out with just myself consulting, and then from there built a practice and pretty soon it was 30 human factors engineers, recruiters, and operational staff as of 2022.
Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. That is amazing. Congratulations. That's, that is no small accomplishment. That is amazing. So human factors engineering specifically wasn't necessarily, it sounds like, the first intention that you may have had going into school. So it's awesome to hear that having that experience is what sort of led you into your career path, but I'm kind of curious, were you always very technically minded, kind of interested in user experience growing up or what was, even going back a little further, what was the spark that interested you in that field in general?
Shannon Clark: Well, I had actually never heard of engineering. My mom's a lawyer, my dad's an accountant. So I didn't know what engineering was going into college, and so I was gonna, study Latin or Spanish or something. But then I thought I don't really know what I'm gonna do after college if I study that. And I had an uncle who was an engineer who said, "you really should check this out." So I took some coursework and I thought I could probably do this. And to be honest, mechanical engineering was a big struggle for me, having not taken any of the AP courses. I took AP Latin, AP Music Theory, all the APs that you don't need for engineering. So I came into school pretty behind and feeling behind, but I made it through and I kind of had my eye on this goal of making user experiences easier for people. I was going back even further, I was really inspired by my uncle Peter Skillman, who's now with Phillips I think in their Design Center of Excellence. And he worked at IDO at the time and he was 35 years old and contributed to this project that was featured on 60 Minutes to redesign a shopping cart.
And it was really inspiring to me at the age of 10 or seven or however old I was, to watch someone take something so mundane as a shopping cart and uncover all these issues that exist with shopping carts everywhere, and then completely rethink the design and improve it. And rewatching that video I can now kind of see with another lens that they even started on the basis of safety and designed for safety, which I believe is so important when prioritizing design efforts to think about, " well, how many injuries are there to toddlers every year in shopping carts and how can we address this and how can we make it better?" And then just a month ago, I actually had my toddler in a shopping cart and she got stuck because the seatbelt wouldn't unlatch. And then it made me think that's interesting, full circle.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, that is interesting. Oh, the irony. Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. So designing for safety first. So I'd love to hear the evolution of you just starting this consultancy by yourself. And I mean, so you were literally doing all the things, you were marketing, you were doing the actual consulting, you were doing the accounting, I'm assuming. How did that all evolve and how did your leadership ability evolve as you've grown your business?
Shannon Clark: Well, I started out with no management experience, quite young. I started out with just myself. I hired some contractors here and there in 2015 . 2016, hired my first employee and I gotta tell you, I was the worst manager. And she was like, patient zero, she's now at Intuitive Surgical. But I think overall it was a great step in her career, but good for her for getting through, I think, four years of reporting to me as I was learning to be a manager. And I think over time through trial and error, I became a better manager. That was sort of a learning experience for me. And something that people were always telling me as I was starting my company was, " you should learn on someone else's dime. Don't start a company and then learn these hard lessons on your own dime."
But I'm happy that I didn't listen to them and sure there were a lot of really expensive life lessons, like the time we didn't expense $150,000 of expenses because I didn't realize that someone wasn't doing their job for four months. There's all kinds of things that happen as you're start a company. But you just have to learn from them and then embed processes to address any gaps that you uncover along the way. And so at this point, we're just such a strong company with so many internal processes and trainings and rigor, and it's really exciting to see how much it's matured over the past eight years.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you recently, in fact, had a bit of a transition even for yourself, for your role. Is that correct?
Shannon Clark: Yes, we brought in a new CEO. I was able to secure significant private equity investment from a private equity firm called NaviMed. And so we're forming a new umbrella organization called ClariMed. And so that's sort of a broader quality by design thesis where we're bringing together a bunch of like-minded organizations to help support product development, specifically in the medical space. And we're starting that organization with two human factors consultancies. So it started with UserWise, my company, which was acquired in August of 2022. And then in January this year, 2023, we acquired Harvey Medical, which is a seven or eight person human factors consultancy in the UK and the Netherlands. So, that's where we're at today and I'm thrilled. I, I probably put on LinkedIn that I'm thrilled about this quote- unquote "demotion" to Principal Human Factors Engineer, 'cause previously I was Director of Human Resources, CFO, CEO, and Principal Human Factors Engineer, and it was a lot. Yeah. Let's just say I didn't get a maternity leave. But now I'm just really excited for the future and I have a CEO with 17 years experience running and growing a regulatory consultancy. So I, I'm just really excited to report to her and she's an inspiration to me every day, Kelly Kendall.
Lindsey Dinneen: Awesome. That's fantastic. How has the transition been for you? Did it take a lot of transition or did it come easily? How was it for you?
Shannon Clark: It's been a huge transition, cuz Kelly runs the business based on data and I think when you have investors involved, you have to really present a lot of data to them. Whereas before I didn't have to report to anyone or speak to anyone or ask anyone any questions about what I'm doing, which I think we're a lot better off now cause I'm not just making decisions as I go along. I have a, a whole support system to help me through all the decisions on a day-to-day basis. So, that's been really relaxing to share the responsibility and, and have support. But yeah, it's been a lot of work to try to come up with the data. We're trying to integrate Salesforce. We're just kind of like a small company, quickly growing, so there's a lot there to work on.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Absolutely. I'm curious, is there a particular moment that stands out to you because it kind of clearly confirmed that this was the right career path for you or the correct industry?
Shannon Clark: It just immediately clicked. Back when I was working for Ed Israelski at Abbott and contributing to standards committees and submitting feedback to the FDA and draft guidances on behalf of Abbott, all of that work really created a spark within me, I'd say. And I think I would pinpoint it on one project I worked on, which was to review all recalls of medical devices by the FDA over the course of time that were due to human error. So, for example, an automated external defibrillator that was on the market, I think this was 2009, where there was a low battery indicator that would blink and falsely cause individuals to cease use of the device unnecessarily. So the idea that they were confusing this red indicator light to mean, "oh, this is broken, don't use it," versus "it's just low battery. Change the battery when you have a chance, but you could have resuscitated the patient."
And I wrote this 80 page internal report. All these events that had happened and it really brought to life the importance of the then new FDA focus on human factors. And the fact that you need to really intentionally bake safety into the design of products from the get-go. It's not something you can just add on post-market or even figure out through human factors validation at the end of the process. It's something that you need to think about constantly throughout design, and again, prioritize those design efforts according to risk and safety and according to patient harm and user harm so that you can, at the end, have a product that doesn't result in a recall like that.
So when I saw all that data, it really centered my focus and brought clarity to me that this is something that I wanna do for the rest of my life, 10 years, 20 years. I don't know. I guess I wouldn't say for the rest of my life. But I really was super inspired to do something about it cuz I also read that there were half a million deaths every year due to preventable medical errors in hospitals alone, just in the United States. So we basically have a whole pandemic happening every year in hospitals. And some of that is due to medication errors and hospital processes. But that figure doesn't even capture instances where they amputated the wrong leg. I mean, these are deaths. And so I'm, I'm really dedicating my career to reducing that number of half a million to something lower.
Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. I'm so thankful for people like you that are doing that research and like you said, safety first, building it into the design from the very get-go. That's fantastic. Yeah.
Shannon Clark: And I love what Velentium's doing with regards to cybersecurity. I think that definitely follows the same kind of premise of protecting users and ensuring safety.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There is so much that goes into it. So any angles that we can take to help protect people is absolutely worth it. So, how would you define leadership or what does leadership mean to you?
Shannon Clark: I think leadership to me is inspiring others to be their best selves and fulfill their own missions, whatever it may be. So sometimes I can spark someone to be inspired to follow my footsteps and become a human factors engineer. Or maybe someone wants to pursue something a little bit different and just letting them uncover their own truths and pursue their dreams. That's probably the main thing I ask in interviews, " what is your dream job?" Because I wanna make sure that you're in your dream job, whatever that may be. So I guess that's what leadership means to me.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. Yeah, absolutely. And then what would be your best piece of advice for someone interested in obtaining a leadership role, either within the medtech industry, or very specifically following a similar career path to what you've done? What would you say to someone who that's a goal of theirs?
Shannon Clark: Well, my specific path, I believe, can in fact be replicated, in that, I saw an opportunity to uniquely become an expert in a field that was emergent. And there's many emerging fields that result from regulatory shifts. And in this case, UserWise, came out of the 2011 draft guidance about human factors issued by the Food and Drug Administration that was later published as final in 2016. And so there from my position at Abbott in 2010, 2011, I was able to see that coming down the pike and I saw the huge amount of opportunity at hand, and I saw where industry was and where it would be going. And out of that, I was able to found my consultancy. So I worked tirelessly to transform myself into an expert, not only by working 12 hour days at Abbott and giving them everything I had, but also reading all the textbooks on the syllabus for human factors master's degrees at various universities and had a stack of 20 books that I was working through. So it was all sort of self-taught, but ultimately I saw this opportunity due to a shifting regulatory landscape and things like that happen all the time in all industries. And there's all these opportunities that exist that are just a great opportunity to create a new business around it whether it's consulting or software as a service. Yeah, tons of opportunities out there.
Lindsey Dinneen: So sort of being open to maybe opportunities that you wouldn't have originally pinpointed for yourself, but being aware of various trends and kind of responding to the situation. Is that part of it?
Shannon Clark: Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I guess I'd describe my business model, if it were to be replicated, if you wanted to have success in this manner is to uncover regulatory trends and then find an opportunity, a business opportunity within that. But I guess more generally, if you're looking for a leadership position in the medtech field, I think that expertise certainly is highly valued. And engineering abilities is also highly valued. So, I think you need to go deep before you go broad. I think I do see a lot of like marketing experts, that maybe haven't gone scientifically deep, end up as CEOs of these companies, but I think the best background of all the CEOs that I work with, I always enjoy working with CEOs that have a technical background cuz they can truly understand the ins and outs. And I, I see limitations among some of these CEOs that maybe just have sales backgrounds.
Lindsey Dinneen: Sure. Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense to me. I can understand that.
Shannon Clark: I think I'm talking to a salesperson right now, so I hope I haven't offended you.
Lindsey Dinneen: Not at all. I am more on the marketing engagement side of things, but I wouldn't be offended regardless, because you're right, you need both to be successful. So, absolutely.
Shannon Clark: Go deep first and then go broad. That's kind of the advice that was given to me as well and I followed that advice.
Lindsey Dinneen: I like it. I like that a lot. Yeah. Well, so I know from your bio that you are a published author three times. Right? I would love to hear about that and what have you written about and how did that all come about?
Shannon Clark: Well, nothing too impressive, and it's quite off topic, but I really enjoy history. So I authored a history of a local neighborhood, which is actually where UserWise is located in San Jose. And so I wrote this 150 page history book and we sold I think 3000 copies. And all the funding went to fund local farmer's markets as well as ultimately the annual 4th of July parade for San Jose. So I wrote that book and then wrote a follow on, a sequel about parades in the Bay Area, California. Have you ever heard of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses?
Lindsey Dinneen: I have.
Shannon Clark: So, we used to have one of those in Northern California. There's a whole Northern California, Southern California rivalry. That was huge when I went to UCLA. But we used to have our parade and our parade died out with the Great Depression, and we tried to resurrect it in 1960, but it didn't work out. So it was just kind of an interesting forgotten history that I wanted to capture in a book before it got lost forever.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. That is awesome. Very cool.
Shannon Clark: And then the third book is how to get a job in management consulting. It's called "College2Consulting." It's a silly book, but I think it's pretty helpful if you wanna get a job at LEK or some management consultancy. I didn't come up with all the material for that, but I was the ghost writer.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, so cool. That's awesome. So what are some interesting industry trends that you are looking forward to as you continue on with UserWise and beyond?
Shannon Clark: I guess when I think of industry trends, I immediately think of what's happening with Europe, with MDR, and where's the FDA headed specifically with regards to human factors cuz that's ultimately what's gonna guide where UserWise is going next. With the FDA, there's been a lot of turnover with their human factors review team over the past five years, and it's created a shift towards requiring more and more. I think that's always the story with regulations where before maybe we didn't submit a full 60 page human factors engineering submission report for a lower risk device and just submit a protocol. These days they're just rejecting a protocol if there's no full backup for all the elements found in a human factors engineering submission report. So I think overall, I guess as always there's just more and more regulations. I do hope to make some progress. I'm headed to the International Standards Committee later this month in Germany, and I hope that I can kind of start socializing some ideas around reducing the burden from an international standards standpoint for human factors.
So, I guess another industry trend that's a little more specific is that we just finished our multi-year study on training decay, whereas in collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration. And to date for combination products, so drug delivery devices, you're basically required to conduct human factors testing with untrained users. And it's created a context where there's some drug delivery devices where if they were pure medical devices, they would easily get clearance. But since they're a combination product, they have a drug, they're reviewed by DMEPA, CDER, a different human factors team. They're just unapprovable because untrained users are not capable of using them successfully. So I'm hopeful that with our research, we can further promote the concept of trained usability testing and invite more devices to the table instead of requiring perfect use for combination products. That's a hope of mine. But again, with more and more regulations we'll see if that comes to fruition.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, of course. Yeah, that sounds like a really good path forward. So it'll be interesting to see, like you said, how the landscape changes over time. So how do you prioritize your own continued learning and growing as a leader these days? I know you mentioned having stacks of textbooks, which I love, but nowadays, how do you continue to develop your own skills and knowledge?
Shannon Clark: Well, I think I mentioned earlier that I am thrilled to report to Kelly Kendall, CEO of our company. And so I learned from her every week by watching the way she runs the company, the way she makes decisions. I've just learned a ton. It's been drinking through a fire hose with regards to key performance indicators and everything to do with running a business in a more formal manner. Cuz I ran my business based purely on intuition and not really on data. And when you really get a grasp of all the data associated with a business, like she says, it's about turning knobs up and down and adjusting and fine tuning once you know what the knobs are. And so, I feel like myself professionally, I've grown so much just having a mentor continuously working with me. I have in the past had executive coaching, but that, that, pales in comparison to what I'm now able to experience having a seasoned and experienced CEO to report to.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, and it's completely a hundred percent relevant to you and your business, which is awesome that you get that experience. Very cool. Okay, so just for fun, imagine that someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want, doesn't have to be in your industry. What would you choose to teach and why?
Shannon Clark: Well, I think the answer that I might be supposed to say is moderating. So I have a lot of experience moderating usability testing and minimizing bias for participants so that you can extract truth. So basically, as a moderator, you don't wanna get in the way of the truth of what a participant is experiencing or feeling or demonstrating through their interaction with a product. So we just launched a moderator course, which I'm really excited about. But I guess after having done all that work for the past months to launch that course, I need a break. So if I could teach a masterclass, I guess it would be on the history of the Maya, which right now I'm trying to learn Mayan hieroglyphs. And I have an interest in archeology. And to be honest, I know nothing about the Maya, but maybe I have a kind of a crazy overconfidence going on where I feel that I wanna learn everything about it. And I, I feel like I've done this in a couple of areas of my life where I'll learn everything about a subject and then kind of become like an expert. And so that's kinda my next side hobby. I have some ideas there about what I'm gonna do.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, that's awesome. So what sparked your interest specifically in that?
Shannon Clark: I think in part it's because I've been to Mexico a number of times. I speak Spanish. And then I have an aunt who's Mayan who was involved in kind of raising me at an early age. So, that definitely sparked my interest. And then I've been honestly, like watching a lot of TV about Ancient Apocalypse and all those shows. I don't know if you've seen them, but I was just like, oh yeah, this is so cool.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love it. Yes. Isn't it great to have something outside of your main, day-to-day job life focus that just kind of brings you this other level of passion and joy-- I'll just put it, put it that way.
Shannon Clark: Yeah. This is certainly, it really stems out of being able to share the burden of running a company with others namely my boss Kelly, and it opens up my time to actually think about other things. And that has been a focus for me since the transaction in August. It's something I'm excited about just to have some extra hours in my week to think about things that aren't related to work.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. That's fantastic. So what is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?
Shannon Clark: I guess being a good mom and that's really all I care about. I have one daughter, her name is Emily, and she is 22 months old. And she's great. So that's definitely my focus to be a great mom. And it'd be cool to be remembered as a good contributor to the industry of human factors, but I think more importantly, I wanna be a good mom.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Aww. Oh my gosh. I love it. What is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?
Shannon Clark: Well, my daughter Emily, obviously, lemme try to come up with a different answer.
Lindsey Dinneen: Ok, it's a great answer though.
Shannon Clark: Yeah, that's gotta be my answer, sorry.
Lindsey Dinneen: No, that's fantastic. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for sharing a little bit about your background, about your company, about the industry, where you think things are going, and your advice. I just really appreciate your time today, and I love hearing the why behind how you got into this and what makes you tick. So, thank you. And plus, it's really fun to hear about your hobbies outside of work too. And Emily, and course Emily. So, we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to the Equal Justice Initiative, which provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, poor prisoners without effective representation, and others who may have been denied a fair trial. So Shannon, thank you so much for picking that organization to support today. Thank you so much for your time. We wish you continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.
Shannon Clark: Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.
Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. And thank you also to our listeners for tuning in and if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I'd love if you'd share this episode with a colleague or two, and we will catch you next time.
 The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.
Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.
Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.
Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.
Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

Duane Mancini | CEO of Project Medtech | From Podcast to Consultancy to Hosting Events, Science, & Family

Duane Mancini is the CEO managing partner and founder of Project Medtech. In this episode, he shares how Project Medtech quickly evolved from one industry podcast to two, then to consulting for medtech startups, and now to hosting events. He also discusses his passion for the industry, his background as a scientist, and how his family, friends, and the startups he helps motivate him and always prompt him to smile. 
Guest links: https://www.projectmedtech.com/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/duanemancini/
Charity supported: Save the Children
Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 
PRODUCTION CREDITSHost: Lindsey DinneenEditor: Tim OliphantProducer: Velentium
 
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Episode 005 - Duane Mancini
Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
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.
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.
Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
 Hello and welcome to the Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host Lindsey, and I am very excited to introduce you to my guest today, Duane Mancini. Duane is the CEO managing partner and founder of Project Medtech. He has extensive experience in go-to market strategy, including regulatory and reimbursement, biocompatibility, preclinical efficacy testing, and clinical trial design and execution. As a result of his unique background, he has developed a comprehensive understanding of what early stage startups need to do in order to be successful. And I am just so thrilled that you are here today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Duane Mancini: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me, Lindsey. This is super exciting. Congratulations on launching the podcast as well. I know the work that is required to do that.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. And in fact, that is where I would love to just dive in because you have such a cool story about the way that Project Medtech has come about and I would just love to hear it, if you don't mind sharing it.
Duane Mancini: Yeah, for sure. So you know, my background as a chemist, I got my start at a company called NAMSA, and NAMSA is just a CRO in the medical device space, but phenomenal company when I was there that invested in their employees and so they allowed me to learn a lot of different aspects what a medtech company needs to do to bring a product to market, which was super nice. I had left there, though, in April of 2020 and went to a company called Covance, which was then acquired by LabCorp, and I think now just recently spun off again. But in between me leaving there, I wanted to continue to give back to startups and learn the way I learned, which was talking to people, experiences, that sort of thing. And I had found podcasts really interesting and there was no one really out there doing a podcast on what it took to run a medtech company. So I said, "well, I'm gonna do this." It'll keep me close to the startup scene where all the innovation is happening. I'm gonna do this podcast. So I worked with one of my buddies from high school to do the design of the Project Medtech logo. And I worked with another friend who was up in Chicago to do the jingle. And that's where I started, April 2020 right in the middle of everything shutting down cuz of the Covid pandemic. Yeah. So, launched the podcast and there was always this greater idea of what I really wanted to do, which was launch a organization around really specific vertical of medtech startups. And the podcast was just the first idea of it. And so yeah that's really where it started.
Lindsey Dinneen: That's a fantastic start. And I do want to hear the details too, because, relatively speaking-- although I'm sure there were times that did not feel like this to you-- but from an outsider's perspective, I look and go, wow, a lot has happened really quickly for your organization. So I would just love to hear more about how it's evolved.
Duane Mancini: Yeah. And I'm happy to share and I'm an oversharer, so I'm gonna share some of the personal details as well and hoping that it inspires other entrepreneurs and people with ideas and whatnot, cuz that's really important as well. So I start the podcast and like I said the pandemic kind of shuts everything down so people stop going to events. And so I stay really consistent on it. That was the whole idea. It was weekly podcast, no matter what, get it out. And so I started doing that. And about six months in, I had some people reach out and say, "Hey, how do I sponsor the podcast?" And I said, "interesting idea. I don't know."
So I took that back, reflected on it and said, "well, it makes sense, right?" We're getting way more listens than a webinar would get, and it's weekly, so it's amplified even more than that. And so I gave it some thought. I worked out an agreement with the first person to come in and sponsor. And then that's when I said, "Hey, you know what? I maybe need to think about the other ideas I had for the rest of the company." And so that's when I approached a co-founder named Aaron TenHuisen, who was a guy I knew from a doubles volleyball league I played in and just someone I had conversations with. So I approached him, told him the ideas, and he joined in November of 2020 to help with some of these ideas and I guess the concepts of what I wanted Project Medtech to be.
So I worked with him to work out some of those kinks, sell him on the idea, and really kinda what we settled on was, "Hey, let's keep going after this media piece of this podcast and continuing to grow this brand." And so in the same year my wife gave birth to our first daughter in December of 2020. And so, it was just crazy with personal life, working a full-time job and then trying to get this podcast that was gonna be the launching pad for our larger company off the ground.
Lindsey Dinneen: So then you're a new dad?
Duane Mancini: Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Lindsey Dinneen: And you've partnered up with Aaron and then and then what?
Duane Mancini: Yeah. So, so that continues to go really well. The podcast continues to expand. That is when I had reached out to another person in my network, Rich Mazzola. I knew his sister back in college. She was friends with my wife, and we had just been in the same area. He was doing fractional CFO support for medtech companies, oddly enough. And so I reached out to him and said, "Hey, this is our idea, we have our media company that we're gonna do this podcast and do some events within, then I have this idea for this consulting advisory group." But I have my background from NAMSA and LabCorp, but I'd love to get how CPA firms run their practices and law firms, right? Maybe there's some mix of how we need to be doing this. And so I of talked to him and sold him on the idea of, "Hey, why don't you come in and just be a co-founder here with us and help us conceptualize the idea?"
And so, he was the next co-founder to, to really come in and be a part of helping me conceptualize how we would eventually launch this consulting advisory service. So, I'll leave that one there, but he comes on in May of 2021. I gotta back up real quick, and this is part of that personal journey. So, in March of 2021, my wife comes off of maternity leave. She's a physical therapist and gets laid off. And so, besides what everyone's probably thinking of, "there's a lot that's probably illegal," was.
So all of 2021, I'm reaching out to Rich, and when I reach out to Rich, I'm having these personal discussions with my wife of, "okay, well, she just got laid off. Does she go back to work full-time? What does that look like?" And oh, by the way, Project Medtech going towards this path of I'm gonna have to make a decision to either step back from my LabCorp position and do this full-time, or Project Medtech stays at just a podcast. And so we're having those personal discussions as well of, "okay, we have the comfort of a nice job at LabCorp, but this is what I really want to do." So all of this is of going on for me personally as well, beyond just the Project Medtech evolution, which is super exciting, but also super scary. So there's this.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh my gosh, yes.
Duane Mancini: Yeah. So, we progress further in that year, and by June, it's almost apparent that starting in 2022, I'm going to have to quit my job at LabCorp and go in to Project Medtech full-time if we really want to make a go at this, based on the positive momentum we're having. But also within June, I reach out to Giovanni Lauricella, who's part of Lifeblood Capital now, and approach him and say, "look, I'm getting a ton of people reaching out about raising and investing capital in medtech. You have this a presence on LinkedIn, as well, about raising and investing capital. Why don't you come do the podcast called Medtech Money for us at Project Medtech and host it. I don't have time to host another episode or another podcast series, but I do have time to produce it. So, would you be interested in that?"
And he's, "oh my gosh, a hundred percent, let's do it." And so, Giovanni comes on board and hosts the Medtech Money podcast series powered by Project Medtech and centers it around investing and raising capital specific to medtech. And so, it's been an absolutely wonderful partnership. He has Lifeblood Capital now, which is a recruiting firm and does this for us, and we both share in the benefit of putting out this podcast and giving back to the community. So that's where Giovanni comes in and is really an awesome partner.
Flash forward to the end of 2021, and in October we do this soft launch of, "Hey, I'm gonna go full-time. Can I fill out some consulting hours?" And it happens like within that month, and so, I put in my six week notice in the middle of November. And then from all of November and December, it was just like this scary moment of having a one-year-old and quitting my full-time, stable position at LabCorp to go full-time into Project Medtech. So yeah, that takes us to Project Medtech and then I can tell you about where we're at today and that kind of thing.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I was going to ask you a little bit more about the consulting side of the business. I would love to hear your take on that.
Duane Mancini: Yeah. Yep. So 2022, I go full-time in January. Aaron comes full-time in September. Rich comes full-time in August. We flash forward to where we're at today in 2023. We have 14 consultants on our team, a handful of which are full-time. The rest do part-time work with us. So what we did for our consulting group we had this theory that what startups really needed were fractional resources across finance, commercial, operations. And that's an overall business strategy and that's the areas we had originally thought in 2022. So we used 2022 to work with clients, continue to bring people in that were willing to give this three month old consulting firm a chance based on what we were telling them and the people we had on our team.
And from there we spent all of 2022 really looking at trends of how we supported companies, were there are different things we were doing, were there similar things we were doing that we can be more efficient on? And so, what we came out of that year with was, there is a huge need for this. And what's appealing about the group is it's all under one roof, right? So if you go to a CPA firm and say, "I need fractional CFO support," they're gonna tell you they should be their next hire, right? And you're gonna go on retainer with them, and you're gonna pay for that person when you don't need them. Same with a commercial person, same with an operations person.
And what our value is, is that it's a peel on, peel off service. If you don't need us, then you don't need us. If you don't need a person, then you sub another person in. And so our idea was we ride with that. We've built a consulting firm for medtech startup companies rather than a consulting firm that's built around generating as much profit as possible and tries to slam startups into how that consulting firm is run. And so we've done the opposite, which has been frustrating at times to try to scale. But in the long run it'll be super valuable and we think we'll have a unique value proposition for these medtech companies.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay. So what I love about what y'all do, and to what you're saying is, it's so highly focused on coming alongside these companies who, they're probably founded by people who are brilliant at what they do, but they might not have the experience of a business background just to supplement that, or, we can't all be all the things as much as we'd like to be. So it sounds to me like the way that you all are able to come alongside and partner with these companies to provide them the support they need at the time they need it, is a brilliant offering to the community.
Duane Mancini: Yeah. That's a big piece of it, right? Startups don't need more advisors. Like they don't need more people to be coaches or tell 'em where to go dig the trench or how to climb the mountain. They need that, but they also need people who are gonna get in there and execute the game plan with them, or go dig the trench, or go help them climb up Mount Everest. Right? Like they need those individuals too. And to our knowledge, there was no organization that did both of that. And so that's what we set out to be for these early stage startup companies.
And I think at first we thought we'd be a great fit for first time entrepreneurs and then we started to look back and go, well, we have a lot of first time entrepreneurs, but we also have a lot of entrepreneurs who are on their second, third, fourth company who are like, "Yes, I need you" because they know the power of the team. And so, what we end up becoming for these people is filling in the gaps. We become their extended team members. And, to take that one step further, what we've eventually found is that our core areas were finance, where we're supporting budgets, proformas, cap table dilution scenarios, but that was spilling into operations where we're doing supply chain logistics and bill of material support and helping to be that internal owner for the startup company as they talk to groups that are contract manufacturers or the suppliers or your quality systems management.
The CEOs of these companies don't have time to be managing that. So we were fractionalizing that role and that spilled over into product fit, product messaging, and go to market strategy, and commercialization, and how to sell to a hospital system, and actually where we can put a fractional sales leader in place for you until you can go out and hire that first time salesperson. And that's spilled into investment strategy where we've built a great investment network, but we understand how to build pitch decks, executive summaries, how to target what investors you wanna raise from and why you wanna raise from those individuals. How do you do that?
We help with warm introductions and then that kind of just spills over an overall business strategy because we have this end-to-end service where we can help you think about, okay, your regulatory consultant's telling you this but that's gonna affect reimbursement, which is going to affect your clinical strategy, which is gonna affect your commercial strategy. And so we are those early consultants who understand all those things, but then we'll go help you execute those things that you can't execute on your own. And our model is incredibly flexible, right? We meet the startup where they're at. And again, that makes it harder to scale, but that's okay because we're laying the groundwork for a company that just will know how to work with startups over time. It'll just take a little more time.
Lindsey Dinneen: Right, exactly. That's awesome.
Duane Mancini: Yeah. And then beyond that, we do events. And so our whole thing with our events group was, we don't want to go be another conference that's already out there. So how can we differ ourselves? So last year we did our Startup Symposium. We're going back to Houston in October of this year, October 25th and 26th, 2023. The whole idea from the Startup Symposium is we want to take companies from back of the napkin through exit with panel discussions on all the major topics that need to happen from ideating the idea all the way through exiting the company. And so that's exactly what we set out to do.
And then we sprinkle in pitches from startup companies all within that timeframe, plenty of networking sessions. And really the whole goal was, okay, let's connect this ecosystem. A lot of times startups get hung up on "well, I need to be in front of 10 investors." No, you don't. You need to be in front of 160 medtech nerds who are going to take what you need and connect you to the rest of the ecosystem. And that's true value.
And so that's what we set out to do and that's what we did last year with our first Startup Symposium in Houston where we had 160 people from Singapore to Australia to all over Europe, to coast America, all in Houston, Texas for a couple of days. And so, that's our one event. And then our second event we're gonna do this year, which is actually before that one is in August. That's a little more of a passion project for me. I'm an Ohio guy. I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, on the east side of the state, went to school on the west side of the state in Toledo for my bachelor's and masters, and then now live in Cleveland, and so love the Midwest.
And so we're going to do a Midwest showcase where the idea is to show off the innovation, connect the different startups, innovators, service providers, companies in the healthtech, medtech ecosystem from western PA, all the way to Iowa, up to Wisconsin and Minnesota, even South and North Dakota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. And just connect those regions where there's some really cool innovation going on. They don't happen to be in Boston or San Francisco where most people think of Medtech hubs. Yeah. That's more of a passion and just wanting to do our part in connecting the regions.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. Well, as a Kansas City gal for 10 and a half years, I fully support this endeavor.
Duane Mancini: Yeah, exactly, right. Yeah. So you get it .
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I do. And it's exciting to see because there are really great companies and there is an ecosystem in the Midwest, but it doesn't have the same visibility always or maybe the same options, cuz trade shows tend to be on the coasts. Yeah. So this is exciting. Very cool. So if we were to rewind and let's say the start, either the end of 2019 or the start of 2020, could you have possibly imagined what this would have become by today?
Duane Mancini: Oh, no, not a chance. I tell all the co-founders and the advisors, that I couldn't imagine being here right now, where we have an office space in downtown Cleveland that we work out of. And it's pretty surreal just because it started as a podcast and I, I think I originally said it was like, "Hey, five year plan, I'm gonna go full-time into this." And then it was, "well, maybe it's three years." And then it was, "well, we'll launch a consulting practice and I'll go full-time, but you guys come full-time in a couple years. Let me build this more." And then nine months later, they're both full-time. And so it's, yeah every step of the way we've far outpaced where we thought we'd be. And every time there's another milestone, I always think it's further off than it is.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. That's pretty cool. And I love to hear that kind of success story. It's nice to hear that, because everyone's story is so unique, but it doesn't always have to be the slow burn. Sometimes it can just be a rocket ship, I guess?
Duane Mancini: Yeah. And well, and like to your point too, like, the slow burn, we always looked at as, we were as risk adverse as possible, right? Like no risks, or at least not as big of risks, each step of the way, right? And we've bootstrapped this, so we're different. We didn't raise any money. And so that's made it a little more challenging as well. But we've also felt like each step of the way, it was as de-risked as it could possibly get before it's " okay, well you either gotta do it or don't do it." And so it's been a wild ride.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. I can only imagine. Yes. Well, so I am curious, is there a moment or maybe a series of moments that stands out to you? It could be with what you're doing now, but it could be in the past. I'm just curious, is there anything that particularly stands out to you as confirming that yes, this is the right industry for me?
Duane Mancini: That's a good question. Yeah, I would say back to the early NAMSA days. My background is theoretically set up for more of a pharmaceutical background, but when I got into NAMSA and then worked with with so many different companies, so you got to see so many cool products. There was one that stood out in 2015, and we had done the biocompatibility for a company that was working on a disease where kids are born and their esophagus doesn't connect to their stomach. And so there was a lot of surgical procedures done, but this company had developed magnets that you essentially do one procedure where you inserted in the stomach, inserted in the throat, and then eventually the esophagus and stomach would fuse together. And we did the biocompatibility for that, which is like a small piece of medtech innovation.
But I remember getting that story where they did it at their first clinical trial and the baby had two procedures and went home in seven weeks, which was like unheard of for this type of condition. And some of those details could be butchered a little bit. So no one hold me to it, but that was the general concept of it. And I just remember feeling like a sense of, "that's pretty cool how that paid off and I had a part to play in that." And from there on out, it was just like an absolute addiction to the industry of, "wow, we can make a lot of big differences in people's lives here."
And, part of it was like, saying it tongue in cheek, but I used to be like, "what better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives, affect people's lives in a positive way." And, it's part tongue in cheek, but it's also serious. Like we all play a really big role in affecting people's lives in a really positive way that we don't get to see all that often cuz most of us aren't on the frontline of treating patients like the clinicians are, but we're giving them the tools to do that. And so, that was the earliest time I can remember where I said, "oh I'm gonna be in this for the long haul."
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Oh my gosh. What a powerful story. Thank you for sharing that. I can see how that would easily cause a healthy addiction to the industry.
Duane Mancini: Yeah. I should say healthy addiction. Right? And cuz there's other things that are probably not so healthy, but that's one of them.
Lindsey Dinneen: Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, throughout your career and of course now being the primary founder or the first founder of your company, you've had opportunities to demonstrate leadership and be a leader within the industry. How would you define leadership? Or what does it mean to you?
Duane Mancini: Yeah. This is something too that I spent a lot of time, especially like stepping into the role of, I founded the company, but then it was discussed that I was gonna be the CEO and take this primary leadership role. And I think that it was something that I took really serious about, okay, well how do I want to be a leader and part of it was, okay, I want to be hands off-ish. I want people to feel like they have their creative freedom to, to take an idea and run with it. And I've tried to instill that from the very beginning of, "Hey, here's my ideas. What are your thoughts on this? Take it back. Take your time. Add to it."
It's a free space to put your idea out there and let people do what they're good at. I think sometimes people fall victim to, "well, I'm the leader, I have all the answers." And you don't. You have to know where you're weak and put stronger people around you to fill those types of gaps you have. So I've made a pretty big effort to try to do that. And I think if you met Aaron and Rich you'd totally understand. We all excel at different things and Project Medtech doesn't happen without all of us. And so, I think, being humble in that sense is pretty important, which I see a lot of people struggle with, where they think they have to have all the answers, they want to do it by themselves, and that's not fun. Doing it as a team, that's fun!
 Yeah, so that was the early thoughts around leadership and then, a lot of it was, just little things here and there that you pick up on, you read about. I, I did a lot of reading around psychology and how people make decision and what motivates humans. And I did a lot of reading from folks who did a lot around decision making and thinking and they did a lot around behavioral economics. And so, I spent a lot of time reading those books and thinking about those. And, it's funny how little things stick, but there's a video that floats around one of the social media platforms, one of the short videos that talks about how the Navy Seals make decisions on who they want on their team.
So this guy draws a graph on the whiteboard and says, on one of the lines, it's "performance." On the other lines, it's "trust." And it says, obviously you want high performance, high trust. Right? That's an ideal person for your team. But then he says, "you would think that performance would be more important." But one of the most organized organizations in the world, the Navy Seals, actually would rather take high trust, medium performance, and even potentially high trust, low performance over a high performer with low trust.
And that was something that, I watched and like anything, I'm a scientist. Every time I see something like that, I question it. And then I thought about it more and I'm like, "wow, that's actually makes a ton of sense." And so that was something that we talked about from the very early days of even adding 1099's of, they could be a high performer, low trust. We just have to identify that really quickly. But we'd rather take those high trust, medium performers cuz they're gonna make great consultants as well because the clients are gonna like them. And so we thought about those types of things really early on too. And that was a video that I just always go back to.
The only difficulty with that is there's metrics out there to measure performance. There is not a ton of metrics out there to measure trust. And so that's been the issue of like right now, trust measurements is kind of on gut, and that's not the best formula. But anyways, that I wanted to share that because we have a whiteboard here I'm looking at in our office and we draw that graph on that whiteboard more than anything else to talk about people we're thinking about adding to the team and whatnot.
Lindsey Dinneen: Amazing. Yeah. And so, if somebody were to be interested in obtaining a leadership role within the industry, potentially even follow a path somewhat similar to yours in terms of founding a company or something like that, what would be your advice for that person?
Duane Mancini: Yeah, so I, I'll give you the advice that-- so Tim Blair is one of our advisors here. He's a consultant for us, but he is also someone that is an advisor for me as well and the company at Project Medtech. His dad, Jeff Blair, was the CEO of NAMSA at one point in time. And Jeff was a guy I talked to while I was at NAMSA and I talked to him a little bit and I got sit down with him for just a 30 minute discussion and I said, "Hey," I said "this is what I wanna do with my career." And he said, "you better go learn how to sell." Cuz I was a technical person who was stepping into technical sales and he said, you have to go learn how to do true sales and business development if you want to be a leader at a company," which is what I really wanted to do.
And so that is my piece of advice for folks who are in the space, that are maybe in a technical role who want to get into leadership. They may have a low opinion of sales because I know I did before I was in it, right? I was that scientist who was like, "what do we need salespeople for?" And then, I get into sales, marketing, business development, and I was like, "oh my gosh, I was such an idiot. I was so wrong." That was advice that I look back and go, "yep, a hundred percent, totally get it." You have to go do that. Because if you don't have those skills or haven't done that, running a company is gonna be really hard because when you're running a company, you're selling internally and externally all the time, and so you better learn how to do that.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Great advice. I can definitely understand, and it is funny, I have talked to people who are quite skeptical of sales and marketing sometimes, and coming from a different background and I try to gently remind them, "well, the thing is if people don't know your product exists, they can't buy it."
Duane Mancini: Yeah, right. A hundred percent. I mean, like even take an example, not related to medtech, but if you look at the Apple iPhone versus like an Android, right? I think most people who are really tech savvy or are engineers who really understand it will be like, "oh gosh, the Android is so much better than the iPhone from a performance standpoint." But the iPhone owns the majority of the market. And it wasn't because someone built a better product. It's because their sales and marketing and their brand development was that much better. And they own the market for that. I brought this up one time and someone brought up the example of, I think it was like an 8 track or cassette or something like this, from like in the past with music. And it was another example of like someone had a superior product, but the branding and marketing of another product that maybe wasn't superior, crushed them. They eliminated them out of the market. And so, that is always the truth is that you have to have those sales and marketing people and you have to be good at what you do there.
Lindsey Dinneen: Right. Yep. Unrelated a little bit, taking a turn, imagine someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want, doesn't have to be in your industry, but it could be. What would you choose to teach and why?
Duane Mancini: Good question. I think I'd probably honestly stay in medtech, stay in the masterclass of everything you need to do to make this medtech company successful. I think I have to stay there. I don't think I know enough about anything else to teach. I think that's my issue there. I'd love to say what worked for me for staying motivated or a lot of the mental things I've read about or like having a really, worry free kind of mindset. But that's just what's worked for me, and there's other experts and it's just been like I've pulled that from so many other people. I'd probably have to stay in Medtech, I think that's where I have to sit.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Well, hey, and you live it, so that's a great one to do a masterclass on.
Duane Mancini: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lindsey Dinneen: What is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?
Duane Mancini: Well, one, I hope that my daughters remember me as a great father, first and foremost. So, we have our second daughter on the way. I will tell you that being a father and even maybe more specifically, like to my two daughters, has just absolutely changed me as an individual: way more sensitive, closer to my emotions being just a dad in general. So hopefully, that's first and foremost, is that they look back and go, "yeah, boy, dad was awesome." That'd be my first thing.
And then after that, Project Medtech has consultants. We're not gonna be remembered for bringing a specific product to market, right? That's gonna be that founder. But just the fact that they made a difference in, in helping innovators bring really good ideas to market. And that's what I want to be remembered for personally is that I helped play a role in allowing people that have really good ideas to see their idea through to as far as they want.
What kills me sometimes is when an innovator has a really good idea and they don't get to see it as far as they wanna see it, right? When they're forcefully said, "Hey, some other CEO needs to take this role, or someone else needs to take the leadership reins" and they wanna do that. I don't want that ever to be the case. I want it to be that they've made that decision cuz they had the resources to do what they wanted to do. And so I just wanna play my role in, in bringing innovative products to market to improve patients' lives. That's the mission of Project Medtech. So, I guess in a way, if you're gonna be the founder and CEO of a company, that mission better be something you personally live by. And that's a hundred percent what I wanna be remembered for.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it's really cool that you get to live that out now, you get to see impact that you're making in various peoples' and various companies' lives because of the role that you do get to play. So that's pretty cool.
Duane Mancini: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lindsey Dinneen: Well, this will be the final question, but I am curious to know how it's gonna tie in. So, what is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?
Duane Mancini: I'll stay on the same track. It's family for me. Family and friends, which I bucket together because anybody who knows me will tell you that like my group of people that maybe aren't blood related, are still family for me. And so that goes all the way down from my wife, to my kids, to my parents, to my in-laws, to all of my friends. That is the one thing that just consistently brings joy to me.
And then in the most cheesy entrepreneur way, it's Project Medtech and the development of Project Medtech, and more so the companies we are supporting and when they have success. I'd love to see the success of Project Medtech, but even more so when a company hits a milestone or raises funding, gets to market, sells into a hospital, benefits a patient-- that's honestly for me, even a bigger moment to smile than the success of just Project Medtech because that's why we're here is to support those companies. And so, that's more than one, but those are those three things that consistently bring me happiness and make me smile.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love it. Great answer. Thank you so much again, so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your stories, your insight, your advice. It's really cool to see Project Medtech's story, and I just thank you again for sharing it with all of us because it's very inspiring and it's so cool what y'all are doing, so I really appreciate it.
Duane Mancini: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for starting your podcast series as well. It's funny, one last comment is, I talk to so many people who think starting another podcast would be competitive. And it's not, right? There's how many billion people in this world? There's a lot of ears for us to reach out to. And so, I always think it's so cool when people are starting podcasts in the industry and especially on more of the human side of things like this, Lindsey. I thought you did a fantastic job on the interview and just making me feel comfortable, which I know is not easy to do as the sitting on the other side of the table. And I think the more of these things that exist where people can actually get to know folks in the medtech space like this is really exciting. It makes the industry a little bit closer. So kudos to you for taking the plunge and starting this podcast. It's a heavy lift.
Lindsey Dinneen: Well, thank you. I really appreciate that and I value that feedback too. Well, we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to Save the Children, which works to end the cycle of poverty by ensuring communities have the resources to provide children with a healthy, educational, and safe environment. So thank you very much for choosing that organization to support. And of course, I just wish you continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.
Duane Mancini: Thank you.
Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. Thank you also 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.
 The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.
Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.
Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.
Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.
Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

Marissa Fayer | CEO of HERhealthEQ | Women’s Healthcare Accessibility, Aerospace Engineering, & Philanthropy

Marissa Fayer is a 20-plus-year medtech executive, innovator, entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. In this episode, Marissa discusses her deep passion for furthering women's healthcare, the trip to Costa Rica that changed the course of her career trajectory, and the fact that before she was recruited into healthcare, she was on track to become an aerospace engineer. 
Guest links: http://www.marissafayer.com/ | https://www.herhealtheq.org/  | https://www.ggventures.co.uk/
Charity supported: Feeding America
Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 
PRODUCTION CREDITSHost: Lindsey DinneenEditor: Tim OliphantProducer: Velentium
 
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Episode 004 - Marissa Fayer
Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
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.
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.
Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
Hello and welcome to the Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host Lindsey, and I am excited to introduce you to my guest today, Marissa Fayer. Marissa is a 20 plus MedTech executive, innovator, entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. She is the CEO and founder of nonprofit, HERhealthEQ, the CEO of DeepLook Medical, VP of Operations at Ultrasound AI, and the US Partner at Goddess Gaia Ventures. Her mission is to move innovation and the health of women forward throughout the world. Okay, obviously an amazing person. Marissa, thank you so much for joining us today.
Marissa Fayer: My pleasure, thanks so much for having me.
Lindsey Dinneen: I literally read your bio and thought, "Oh my goodness. Do you sleep?"
Marissa Fayer: Unfortunately, not very much, but it's not as a result of work probably. My brain never shuts down. There's a lot to do in women's health, so gotta keep going.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. I would love to learn a little bit about your background, how you first got intrigued in this field. Just tell me a little bit of your backstory, if you don't mind.
Marissa Fayer: Yeah, for sure. I wish I can say that it was interesting, but unfortunately it's not. I didn't really have any intentions in going into healthcare. I was luckily recruited into it straight out of university. I originally wanted to go into aerospace, but when I was graduating from BU, from the engineering school, it was a downturn in aerospace, and thankfully a healthcare company offered me an amazing position. So, I went straight into healthcare and as the saying goes, "once you go into healthcare, you never leave."
Thank God, because I realized it was my mission, my passion. And then thankfully I also joined the largest women's health company in the world and really realized that was my mission and my passion. So it was all meant to be, but my career was 15 years in corporate, working for large medical device companies, developing new products, working in operations and manufacturing, and handling a lot of mergers and acquisitions. And after 15 years, just decided to make a change and I think it was probably as a result of some burnout. And for the last nine years, I've been consulting and built a very successful consulting practice helping small to mid-size companies scale and grow and figure out their operations and their manufacturing, but especially their business strategy and what is interesting to them. And I've been very strategically focusing on companies that are affecting women and women's health.
And I've been in the women's health space really before people honestly knew what it was. And so, it was always my passion. I was always really interested in women in STEM and as a woman in STEM, that was super interesting to me. But I also realized after living abroad in Latin America that having schools wasn't the issue. It was ensuring that girls going to school was the issue, and girls weren't going to school because their mothers and their grandmothers and their aunts were not healthy. And that was a problem as an engineer that I could fix. And so, it's been quite the journey. And MedTech and healthcare-- I'm biased, I feel like it's the best industry to be in. You're doing something great, you're giving back to society. And it's also, let's be clear, lucrative, this is not a nonprofit industry. This is a lucrative industry. Lots of innovation happening, lots of exciting news happening. And so I think it's the best place to be, but you know, obviously I'm biased because it's been 23 years.
Lindsey Dinneen: Sure. Well, I think you've earned the bias, right? So you mentioned, having had a passion for women's healthcare for a very long time, and thank goodness for you because we need way more of that. Thank you for being that advocate and being on the forefront of that. I am curious-- you mentioned a couple different things playing into that passion when you were growing up. Was that something that you were aware of maybe even before college as being a need or an interest of yours?
Marissa Fayer: Yeah. I grew up in a fabulous house and a fabulous family and we were always supported in whatever we wanted to do. I went to space camp twice, like I was training to become an astronaut and an aerospace engineer. There was no limit to a girl in our family. There was no limit to anybody. And we were in a position to be lucky, and I'm very cognizant of that to be fortunate, to be able to have those opportunities. But I went to space camp twice as a kid. I studied math and science. That was my pathway even in elementary school and middle school and high school. That was my pathway. I went to engineering school. That was not incredibly common 25 years ago especially from a girl from New York. And so again I'm incredibly lucky and I know that most people don't have all of this opportunity. But I did not grow up in a society or in a family that said you can't do that. So I didn't grow up with those misconceptions. And so when I go somewhere and they're like, well, this girl can't go to school. To me, that's not acceptable because that was never acceptable to me. I mean, what kid literally goes to college still thinking they're gonna be potentially an astronaut. I mean, there's very few. I literally enrolled in aerospace engineering. And graduated with a different engineering degree, But that was the path I was pursuing. And, and it was supported the entire time and, and trust me, I've put my deposits down. I'm hopefully still going, but, but in a different capacity.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. That's amazing. What a story! Do you think that your interest in aerospace engineering and your, education in that field-- has that played a particular role? Has it carried over in any way to the medtech side of things?
Marissa Fayer: Listen, going down a semi nontraditional pathway, so as an engineer you're always curious, I always had that curiosity mind. So, whether you're an engineer or an astronaut or any of those, I was very curious about how things worked or how to make it better and how to make it efficient and things like that. So, that plays into all of it. There was also a societal element. I like to explore. Part of exploration is making things better and bringing things back to make things better here. So my intent with healthcare is to make things better. I think that's most everybody's intent with healthcare, at least the good people. So certainly I think it does play over. I was curious, I wanted to explore and I wanted to make things better. And so I think that played a significant role in staying in healthcare as well. And listen, I always wanted to do something for society. I thought it was gonna be through space exploration. And it turned into, it's actually through improving women's lives and health throughout the world.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And I love that you highlight that because that, I think that's a really important thing that doesn't get talked about enough-- that it is okay to pivot and to change what you originally expected to do. Because sometimes those non-traditional pathways do, like you said, give you a different perspective and different insight than maybe somebody who has always been on that path. So, yeah, there's a lot of value to that.
Marissa Fayer: We're not in a society anymore, that you have to do the same thing for 50 years. And there's so much interconnectivity and there is so much learning that happens cross industry that is so helpful and applicable to help each other industry. So let's just take, cuz we're talking about health and health tech. The tech industry, in so many ways is ahead of the health industry. But to apply some of the tech learnings into the health industry to help accelerate health tech, that's important. So that's just like one singular example of how industries can cross over and how it's gonna benefit us in multiple ways.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. Absolutely. Is there a particular moment that stands out to you because it clearly confirmed that this was the right career for you or any sort of defining catalyst moment where you thought, "Yes, this is it?"
Marissa Fayer: that's a great question. When I think back to it, I think it was when I formed HERhealthEQ and realized that I could help women and women's lives very specifically using the knowledge that I gained through industry and applying it on a global perspective. And the fact that it doesn't even matter how much we scale. And while I have a grand ambition by the end of 2025 for us as an organization to impact the lives of a million women-- and we are on track to do that-- but that almost doesn't matter because it matters to the one person, the one woman that we have impacted and improved her life because it matters to her family, it matters to her. And I sometimes have to think about it.
So when I started the organization, I didn't have those lofty goals. I just wanted to do something good and wanted to help because I saw that there was a gap, and repurposing medical equipment that is completely usable and getting it to regions and doctors and clinics that need it. That is important and that saves lives. And so for me, every time we hear a story or every time, we get our impact numbers back or anytime I think about that one woman being able to go home because potentially a cancer was caught really early as opposed to it being caught at stage four where it's non-treatable, she's able to walk back into her house and do whatever she wants to do because it was caught early and it was able to be treated. Every time it happens, that's when I realize, that is probably the moment. And I guess they just keep on coming, but the first time that hit me --that was, that was the moment.
Lindsey Dinneen: That's really powerful. Thank you for sharing that. And in your role now, I know it is one of leadership, and I am curious how you would personally define leadership or what does leadership mean to you?
Marissa Fayer: I'm more of a "lead by example," and a "walk the walk," "do the do" kind of, leader. I, I trust people who I work with. And I don't think that any leader should work with people they don't trust. And listen, there's always instances where things have to be worked on. And I'm not naive, certainly, and I have plenty of my own instances that have to be worked through, but it's more-- you have to work with people and assume that they're going to do the job, and you have to assume that they want to, and they have to be incentivized to be doing that. So, I lead by example. I work hard. I meet my commitments. I do what I say and people see that. If I wasn't meeting any of my deadlines or I wasn't doing what I was saying, then everyone would understand that's acceptable. And I also have to hold people accountable to their actions as well.
So from my perspective, it's very much a lead by example mentality. And that's far more effective than the" iron rule", the very micromanage, tell me exactly every minute what you're doing. And listen, people have different ways of working as well and different needs and styles of working. And I was always one of those. And so I'm very cognizant that people have different work speeds. Listen, there has to be deadlines that are set and deadlines that are achieved and things like that. But you also have to let people work when it is the best time to get their genius. Not everybody's a morning person. Some people are evening people, some people work better on a weekend. You have to be flexible enough within the timeframe that you have to be able to work within each person's level of genius and zone of genius. Because it differs for everybody and, and also people have life. And life happens. And I think being a human is really helpful. And it's so basic, honestly, but like really just being a normal, nice human is really genuinely helpful. And I think people just need to remember that.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, great advice. And speaking of advice, what is your best piece of advice for someone interested in obtaining a leadership role within the medtech industry? And I'm specifically interested because of your focus on women and women's healthcare. What about a woman who is particularly interested but might feel daunted by that?
Marissa Fayer: Yeah, ask for it. Actually, demand it, but ask for it. Because if you don't ask, you're never gonna get it. So ask. People aren't gonna know that you want it, it's not ESP. They're not gonna read your mind. Ask them, talk to them about it. Tell people that you want a leadership position. Go after it! There is this silly misconception like, "Oh, you're gonna be seen as bossy." No. Good, good. You should be. Go after what you want. And if you are working in an organization where that is not encouraged, that's not the right organization for you. There are plenty of organizations out there that encourage that. I'm not saying do it rudely. I'm saying work with people. And it doesn't necessarily have to be your direct manager, either. Work with people in your organization and tell them what you want. You can ask their opinions, but you can also tell them what you want. You want a management's position? Ask their advice on how to get there and then follow their advice on how to get there. Because then you can go back to them and say, "Thank you for your advice. I have followed it. Now it's time for me to become this position." And there is irrefutable evidence for you to get that position.
So, just do it. Ask for it, demand it, but do the work. I come from a generation where you still have to do the work. It is not automatically given to you because you've been somewhere for two years. Do the work and earn it because, first of all you'll feel better about yourself and second of all, you'll learn more, and you'll go further in the long run, and that's more important. It's not this next tiny milestone, it's the future. So if you have done the work and you've learned, you've set yourself up for the future, but really just ask for it and ask and communicate what you're looking for because nobody is naturally-- or very few people are naturally-- just going to give something to you without you asking.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love that advice. I was smiling and nodding my head the whole time because I hundred percent agree with you. And also it is one of those things where if you don't ask, the answer is always "no". Very few times, are you just gonna be handed something, so. Brilliant. Love it. And how do you prioritize your own continued learning and growing as a leader?
Marissa Fayer: Yeah, it's a lot of listening, you know, a lot of book reading. Thank God for podcasts. I'm a podcast on the go listener, so that's great. I, I listen to a lot of people in a lot of different industries as well, cuz I think that's really important because you can learn from other industries and learn from other different styles. So generally it's listening to feedback from others. I don't necessarily take everybody's advice because advice is a dime a dozen. You have to figure out what to do with it. But I listen, hear what people are saying. I listen to also direct feedback. I listen for trends in the market and understanding what's up and coming as well, and and trying to prioritize those and hopefully trying to be ahead of the curve a little bit. But I think the key to learning regardless of what stage you're in again is just about, listening and absorbing.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned back at the beginning when you were telling us a little bit about your background of spending some time in Latin America and how that helped influence the way that you would eventually start your own business, and your perspective on women's healthcare and whatnot. I'm curious if you would be willing to elaborate a little bit more on that time that you had there and its impact on what you do now.
Marissa Fayer: I mean, besides the fun, the hiking, and the surfing and friends and, all that stuff, I worked very hard. I went to a country where I didn't speak the language and I had to learn it after work. It was a great learning experience. And that's the other part of like continuous learning. Like you always have to do something different. For me, Costa Rica fully shifted who I was. And it created my future. I went there with a large multinational. I was integrating an acquisition. I was integrating other acquisitions into that, company and I was talking to a friend and women were dying of breast cancer at alarming rates because the one mammography machine in that region broke down. And of course I thought that was ridiculous because I just, right before moving to Costa Rica, deployed the 3D mammography systems, and I knew the 2D systems were always coming back and they were lined up against the warehouse wall, and they were just sitting there. And so I knew that there was no reason for women to be dying because they didn't have a mammography machine. I literally had them lined up against a warehouse. Like why wouldn't we just ship one down, you know, as a donation.
So, going through that entire process and creating an entire program to give back to the countries which medical device companies are working in and other industries are working in, it shifted my mindset on how for-profits and nonprofits can work together. And it was the origin story for the beginning of HERhealthEQ. And I didn't start it originally at that time I waited until I left corporate. For years I had to formulate my thought around it. I had to build a successful consulting firm first and all of these things. But that time formed who I am right now. Between teaching you how to work and live in another country and figuring everything out yourself. And also more or less finding your life and your passion all in the same three year timeframe is pretty spectacular. So 10 years later the mammography machine is still working, it's still screening women in Costa Rica. And now that same company, Hologic, has supported a HERhealthEQ program for the screening of cervical cancer in Costa Rica. So it's come full circle 10 years later, which is incredible. That's kind of unheard of. And it's so special and spectacular. So, to say the least, Costa Rica certainly changed my life.
Lindsey Dinneen: That's an amazing story.
Marissa Fayer: You just never know. And that's the point. I didn't go to Costa Rica thinking "I wanna life change and I gotta change everything here." I went to work. I had never thought about leaving corporate. I never thought about starting a nonprofit. I never thought about becoming a consultant. I never thought about these things. These were not in my life plans. And so I think you just generally have to be open to understand and receive what the universe is like literally putting in front of your face. If the aerospace industry was not tanking in 1999, in 2000, I could be at NASA right now. I mean, who knows? But I think that being in Costa Rica, lining up those circumstances, everything that I learned put me in that position to open my eyes, to see that as an engineer in a healthcare company, in a medtech company focused on women's health. That's why it changed my life. Because I saw an opportunity, I saw it, and I acted.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I really appreciate that perspective of being open to things that you really probably would never have expected. Like you said, you didn't go there thinking, "Oh, this will be the impetus for me to have this amazing organization one day." That wasn't the plan, but what you did do is you went with this willingness to explore, and that led you to an incredible opportunity to really help people. So I really like that piece of advice as well.
So imagine someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want. It does not necessarily have to be in your industry. What would you choose to teach and why?
Marissa Fayer: First of all, let's just be clear, I would put the million dollars back into charity and I wouldn't be pocketing that. I think I would love to teach. I would love to be paid a million dollars for it. But I would also like to channel that money actually to do the work, less to hear myself speak. So, putting that big caveat out there. But what I would love to teach would be how can nonprofits and for-profits partner or better partner together to, to better the world? So how can they work together to better life, better the world? And, and obviously very specifically for me, women's health. But just generally the world. Nonprofits seem to be working in this one vertical, for-profits work in this other vertical. There is now a lot of thankfully overlap. There's just not enough. And for-profits have the power to catalyze change. Nonprofits with for-profits are the way oftentimes to do that, and social enterprise-- I'm considering both of those in the mix-- but to really have them work together to change the world and better the world. That is how to mix profit and purpose. That's what I would love to teach on and also take that class.
So, any recommendations on if that class exists? I would love to be learning about that a lot more. . Cause we do it. But it's still a continuous learning journey and I think that it's something that everybody still needs to get better at. There's not any one organization, not even the largest in the world, and not even the largest nonprofits and largest corporations that are good at this. Nobody has it down, and I don't think it should be a formula. I just think it needs to be better communicated. So I would love to teach a class on that once I figure it out. That's the next edition of our podcast, I guess?
Lindsey Dinneen: Right? Okay. So brilliant. So we'll have you back on, once you have this masterclass that you can teach us, that'd be amazing.
Marissa Fayer: Yes. I might be 90, so we'll see. Let's hope not.
Lindsey Dinneen: Well, amazing. And to that point, is there a good way that for-profit organizations can partner with you and what you are doing to create some change and to help each other? Is that something that you are currently actively seeking help with? And how could an interested company do that?
Marissa Fayer: We are a thousand percent actively searching and looking to work with any type of corporation, doesn't necessarily even have to be in the medtech or the healthcare space. I mean, obviously there is a linkage there. Let's just be clear. But, we're looking for like-minded organizations to partner with them, to support our work, but also to increase their CSR, their corporate social responsibility and their ESG and their DEI and all of those things that are important as a corporation and their employee engagement, et cetera, to promote that out in the world, because it is a corporate imperative for them to do that. We wanna be part of that corporate imperative. And so anyone can go to HERhealthEQ.org or email us at info@HERhealthEQ.org or find me at marissafayer.com. But it is the way to move things forward.
So we are actively doing it right now, and we're seeing incredible results. We're screening 50,000 women in Costa Rica right now with a corporate partner. And that's per year. And that's as a result of three corporate partnerships. So it is the power to drastically improve lives with not a lot of money. So, yes, we're actively seeking them related to supporting women, supporting healthcare on a global scale. And, we look to partner with any type of organization. It could be the CSR department. It could be through a grant, it could be through a donation, it could be through an employee retention program. There's so many ways. It could be through even a marketing program that has been created jointly because, listen-- when we are able to do the work, those metrics and impact shared back to the companies and they're able to report and use them for their goodwill as well. And we want that, we want them to be proud of the work that they've sponsored and partnered with us for. That just amplifies us. It amplifies them and it amplifies the focus on improving women's health, which is the end goal for everything that I do and that we do. And that's how everybody can partner with us. Thank you for asking. So, yes, would love to partner with corporations however, large or small, there is no size limit. That's the other thing. Like small corporations are also incredibly applicable.
Lindsey Dinneen: Excellent. Thank you for providing all of those resources too so we can get in touch with you. All right, so what is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?
Marissa Fayer: That women deserve access to quality healthcare regardless of where she lives. That's it. Period. End of sentence. It is a requirement. Healthcare should be equal in access and equitable for everybody and that is currently not even close to being the state of where we are right now. And so, I'd love to be remembered after I leave this world for improving the situation and ensuring that women have better health and better access to healthcare.
Lindsey Dinneen: And then final question, what's one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?
Marissa Fayer: On a personal level, obviously my niece and my nephew. Because that's, thank God, unconditional love, but I also think it's like the little things: a sunny, warm day in New York City in the middle of winter. I think given the crazy lives that we all have, I think taking tiny moments of joy are just so important, and I don't necessarily remember that every minute of every day, but I think it's worth taking just a moment every day to create joy or to appreciate joy. So I don't know what it is, it varies day by day. Some days it's a chai latte. Some days if I'm traveling in Europe, it could be a delicious croissant. Or it could just be a delightful walk. It could be anything. I guess whatever you're in the mood for to make you joyful that day.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love it.
Marissa Fayer: Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's very random, so I don't have a good, clear answer for you. So who knows?
Lindsey Dinneen: You know what, something joyful is a beautiful answer because you're right, it can vary from day to day, and all those little things add up to make you smile. That's wonderful. Well, thank you so very much for joining us, for all of your amazing advice and insights. Really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit, getting to know your organization and of course, your passion behind it and why it is so important. So I really appreciate that, and we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to Feeding America, which works to end hunger in the United States by partnering with food banks, food pantries, and local food programs to bring food to people facing hunger, and it also advocates for policies that create long-term solutions to hunger. So Marissa, thank you again, so very much. We wish you just continued success as you work to change lives for a better world. Thank you for being here.
Marissa Fayer: Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Lindsey Dinneen: Great, and thank you also to our listeners for tuning in and if you are 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.
 The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.
Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.
Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.
Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.
Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

Daniel Powell | CEO of Spark Biomedical | The Sparrow Therapy System, Opioid Addiction, & Compassion

Daniel Powell, a 20-year veteran in the medical device community, is the CEO and co-founder of Spark Biomedical and developer of the Sparrow Therapy System. In this episode, he shares about opioid addiction and how Spark's device helps alleviate withdrawal symptoms for those in recovery, his passion for deep brain stimulation, and how he almost gave up on entrepreneurship after his first small business venture ended. 
Guest links: https://www.sparkbiomedical.com/ 
Charity supported: Threads of Love
Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 
PRODUCTION CREDITSHost: Lindsey DinneenEditor: Tim OliphantProducer: Velentium
 
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Episode 003 - Daniel Powell
Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
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.
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.
Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
Hello and welcome to the Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host Lindsey, and I am excited to introduce you to my guest today, Daniel Powell. Daniel, a 20 year veteran in the medical device community, is the CEO and co-founder of Spark Biomedical, and developer of the Sparrow Therapy System, which is an FDA cleared medical device that delivers non-invasive neurostimulation to alleviate opioid withdrawal. Daniel, thank you so very much for being here today. I am so delighted to have you.
Daniel Powell: Thank you, Lindsey. It's a pleasure to be here, too.
Lindsey Dinneen: Awesome. Well, I was wondering if you don't mind starting with just a little bit about your background. What's your career path been like? How did you get into this space?
Daniel Powell: That's a great question and I, I definitely do not have a typical path here. I took the scenic route, I would say, to MedTech. I graduated from Texas A&M with a business degree, and my first job was an accounts receivable at electronic data systems at Ross Perot's old company in Plano, Texas. I was very interested in technology and I kind of spent the first. 10 years of my career trying to figure out what career I wanted. So I bounced around. I had a great opportunity to be a consultant for KPMG. I did Y2K consulting, so we sat around telling everybody it was gonna be the end of the world and it wasn't. And then I got the crazy idea to start my own internet cafe for gamers because I really wanted to be self-employed and do my own thing. And I always say that was a fantastic way to lose a lot of money. And I swore I'd never be an entrepreneur again. I was like, I'm just gonna go to work, take a paycheck, keep my head down.
And my next job was at St. Jude Medical in the neurostimulation business. And so I got a great opportunity to go into the the engineering side of all things. Even though I had a business background, I was pretty good with soft, actually, I was mediocre with software. But I got an opportunity to do requirements analysis, so, what does the product need to do to meet the user's needs? And I was really good at that and it really started a fantastic career and I really didn't get how excited I would be about the medtech industry cuz I, really was just looking for a job to not be losing money as a self-employed game store owner.
And I remember going into training, they put me in sales training and they sat there and explained how putting electrical stimula on or near the spinal cord would alleviate pain in this world of neurostimulation. And I would say I fell in love with it immediately and could never get enough learning how the mechanism of action works, all the different modalities of this type of therapy. And it's set me now here for a 20 year run, where I'm just as in love with neurostimulation today as I was back then.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh my goodness. Wow. Well, I love your story and I love the fact that you come at this from a very interesting background and, oh my goodness, your swearing off entrepreneurial endeavors and then of course-- "never say never," I guess. Right?
Daniel Powell: Well, when Spark came about, I'd actually gone to work for a startup that failed where I met my co-founders and I hadn't been paid in nine months. But I got along with my co-founder so well, and it was the worst time in the world to start a business. So you can imagine the conversation with my wife was like, "I know I haven't brought home a paycheck in nine months and I'm coming out of a failed startup. But what if we started our own company?" But we've never regretted it. It's just been an amazing four and a half years.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Well, I would love, if you don't mind sharing about what you're up to now and this amazing new venture that you're on, and how has that all come about? I mean, obviously you must have had some highs and lows even there, so I'd love to hear the story of Spark.
Daniel Powell: Yeah. It's been quite a journey. So what was interesting is my two co-founders, Navid and Alejandro, were exploring how to do auricular nerve stim, so stimulating the cranial nerves around the ear. And we had a wide selection of different things we could go after. Navid's PhD work was in vagus nerves stim for stroke recovery, and we know vagus nerves stim works for depression and epilepsy and a wide range of disease states. But what really set us in motion as we saw another product, just by happenstance, a friend of mine was selling trans magnetic stim to a psychiatrist who had used acupuncture needles to alleviate withdrawal-- an an electrified acupuncture needle. So they were kind of creating a way of delivering electrical stim to the nervous system.
And they showed me a video of a young lady going through withdrawal and a time lapse over 30 to 60 minutes and this young lady went from clearly uncomfortable, snot running down her face, squirming in her chair. You can tell when someone's in absolute misery and she was an opioid withdrawal. And then 60 minutes later there's this beautiful young lady sitting in the chair laughing and having a conversation and there's a twinkle in her eye. And I was sold. I was like,, this is what we're gonna go after cuz our product doesn't use needles. I think we could build a better mouse trap. And then also kind of the concept was we know there's an FDA path and we know there's a clinical path and we know the technical path. So the big three pillars of building a medical device company were relatively low risk.
And so we talked about it and then we formed the company and we spent the next three months trying to kill it. " Does this make sense? Do we really want to do this?" And just every time we turn around, another door opened. Another opportunity presented itself. A clinical partner came online, somebody came to us and we just were continually encouraged to keep persevering. And we developed our first generation device, put it in clinical trials in Austin, Texas at Recovery Unplugged. Everything from building the quality management system to building the product-- everything we were doing for the first time. But you know we persevered through that. Everything took twice as much money and twice as long as we expected. All along the way, everything continues to take twice as long and twice as much money, at least.
And then when we finished, we took the product to the FDA. And then that's when the real challenges began. We did a pre-submission. So you go to the FDA ahead of time and you go, "we think this is all the things we should do, and if we do 'em, you'll approve the product." And the FDA then gives you feedback and you take that feedback and then you go execute. And when we showed back up at the FDA, they said no, "we changed our mind." And we're, just like we're outta money we're, betting on this working. We did everything right. We followed the directions. So we started throwing money at consultants and onboarding people, and we onboarded somebody who, as a consultant, had just come out of the neuro division to help us fight, and finally got the product approved six months later than it should have.
But that was an exciting day. Well, it wasn't a day, it was a night. The FDA has a clock and they have to deliver all their documents and their decisions and everything before the timer runs out. And the timer ran out Saturday night at 11 o'clock, January the 2nd. So a holiday weekend, and we got the approval about 30 minutes before the clock ran out, which means on a holiday weekend, in the evening, people at the FDA were having to route this thing around and, and sign off on documents. I was like, "thanks, guys."
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh my word. But what a brilliant way to start the new year?
Daniel Powell: Yes, it was, and that was two years ago. And we spent the first year really trying to test different business models. Well, really spent both the first and second year just figuring out the business model. And all of us, our entire careers we'd sold into doctors and neurologists and neurosurgeons and hospital systems. And selling into addiction rehabilitation is a very different animal. It's funny cuz I would have a neurosurgeon when I was doing deep brain stimulation with St. Jude Medical, " where's all your clinical evidence? I wanna see four or five, six papers" and "where's your proof?" And then we went into addiction, everybody was like, "yeah, I totally believe you, this works." We're like, "okay, well we do have clinical proof also," but they would hit the "I believe" button really quick.
But integrating it into the practice has been a real challenge. And it didn't help that we started selling right in the middle of Covid, so we couldn't get appointments. But importantly, what we saw in rehab was, rehab is a tough business and doesn't pay great. They run on rough margins, and in the middle of Covid, a nurse could work at a rehab facility or get a job at a hospital and make four or five times the hourly rate. So that they had staff turnover. So it's, it was a real tough time to launch a product into the rehabilitation space.
Our journey has brought us to now where we have our second generation product about to be approved by the FDA. Really just took all the lessons on usability, accessibility. Everything we saw with the first gen, and we really did have like kind of an MVP, a minimally viable product. So we took all of our lessons to really make a very much more consumer focused, industrial design on the case and everything, and then get our costs of the goods way down as we get ready to ramp. And we're really focused on bringing this to telehealth and so our journey from here, at the time of recording this with you, is Covid changed everything.
If I had a business model in 2019 that said "I'm going to deliver at-home detox services with telehealth support," it would've been ridiculous. And then two years later, it's "of course that's the way you're gonna do it." It's changed all the laws, changed reimbursement, changed acceptance. It really is a great opportunity to meet people where they want to detox. Nobody really wants to go into a center and be away from their family and the comforts of life and their dog and the pet and the kids for seven days. And for some people that's the best thing for them to do. But for a lot of other people, they want to get well-- and we can dig into the opioid epidemic and the realities of it as opposed to maybe what a lot of people's preconceptions are-- but most people really want to get off their dependence or addiction to opioids. But going through the detox process is the giant barrier. You're gonna go through seven days of absolute hell. And so being able to let people stay at home through that process, we think, is really the way to go for the future here. So we're betting a lot on it.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Well, there's a lot to unpack in that story. That is such a great story. Thank you for sharing that. So one thing that stands out, for sure, is you were saying that there is quite a bit of stigma around addiction and treatment. How do we get past that? How are you and Spark and the different products, how can that help alleviate some of the challenges with getting healthy again and overcoming that addiction?
Daniel Powell: Yeah, we definitely as a company want to actually not just alleviate withdrawal-- that's a minor piece-- but really be a solution for battling the opioid epidemic. So, the first step is to remove the stigma, stigmatization about it. At the RX Summit-- which is a big summit that has a lot of political leaders and industry leaders and pharmaceutical companies and everything that come together every year-- they put doctor's notes of patients with diabetes and then patients who had an assumed opioid overdose incident. And while the notes side by side were factually accurate, the tone of dismissal was just evident, you know, one was a bad patient and one was as patient you could have sympathy for. And it was really shocking to see that bias. I've heard the stories where the paramedics will use an extra large gauge needle to administer IV fluids on an overdose patient just so they hurt in the morning, just so that arm really hurts. And it's just, oh my gosh, you kind of back up and you go, "how inhumane? How inhumane is that?"
And so best I could do is I'll get on a podcasts like this and talk about it openly, but you know, in my own family, my nephew was addicted to heroin, this is my brother's kid. And I have permission to talk about it. In fact, now that he is in recovery, he talks about it all the time. So he said, absolutely I could reference him. And we didn't talk about it and he went to prison and I didn't ask about him and it was shameful, and my brother didn't want to talk about it and his wife didn't want to talk about it, because there's this failing of one of their children. And when I started this company, I actually called my brother one day and I said, how much had treatment cost him. Cause I was trying to get an idea of what to price this product at and would he buy it, and he had spent well over six figures.
And you realize families trying to save their loved ones were spending huge amounts of money and we just started talking and really formed a much closer bond and got really honest about everything. And it has brought us so much closer because there's no judgment. We're just really supportive of each other. And so from what I saw in my family is talking about it, hitting it head on, being honest and not throwing the person away is so important. And an opioid addiction-- we'll just talk about opioids-- opioids hijack the reward system in the brain so powerfully that you are not just being a bad actor, misbehaving, or just getting high. In my nephew's own words were, after six months or so, he never got high from heroin again. He was just running from withdrawal every four to six hours.
And then withdrawal is a complete fight or flight state of mind where you think you literally believe you're gonna die. And if I put you in a state of absolute fear and terror, and you believe your life is imminently gonna end, at the core of your being deep in the neurochemical structure of your brain, what are you gonna do? "I'm gonna have more willpower and I'm not gonna take these opioids." No, you're gonna do whatever it takes to make that go away and we're wired like that. So the more I've started to understand the neurochemical aspect of opioid addiction, and this translates to other addictions, but I specify this cuz this is what we have clearance for with the FDA. You go, "well, how important it is to remove that giant scary fight or flight, deep in the lizard brain part of our body, that primordial fear, to get somebody on a road to recovery." It's huge. It is the most important way to get them out of addiction. And so it's been really cool learning about this and really seeing how important this is to the journey of recovery.
Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. And is there any one story in particular-- I'm sure there are many-- but during these clinical trials, have certain stories emerged that are really particularly compelling to you as to how this device is making a difference in someone's life?
Daniel Powell: Yeah, there's a bunch. We always share stories of patients and all on our company chat. And I think someone always says, "I'm not crying. You're crying." So, I think that should be our company motto. We're adapting this for newborn babies too, so you wanna get everybody choked up, just go down that path. But I have two. One was, just a gentleman who has PTSD-- and we're not on label for PTSD, but PTSD was one of our secondary outcomes-- but PTSD is a constant state of fight or flight, which is what we're neuro modulating in the brain. But, he said, "I slept for the first time last night. I've never felt this peaceful in 10 years."
So that, that was one, but the other one was in our initial clinical trial and a young lady named Eliza had really fought addiction for years, had been in and out of rehab and came in, her dad made her go back in, I think she's 21, 22. And in her words, she was mad. She didn't wanna be there. She was gonna detox and then get the hell out of there and never come back like she was done. She didn't wanna get better. She just wanted to get through detox, which just meant she would've relapsed two days later after getting out. And about two, three days into the process to the five day process of her detoxing, she recognized she was clearheaded, feeling like her old self cuz she wasn't on any meds. She wasn't on meds to taper off the opioid. She was on our system and she made a life altering decision right there to continue therapy, which she vocally swore she wasn't gonna do. They put her in a 30 day program post detox. Then she went on and I've heard back from her and the family. A year later she went into a sober living facility and had reached over a year sober.
And her video and her story's on our website and you can watch it and I dare you not to tear up at the end. So the facility called us during the clinical trial and said, "this girl wants to do a testimonial." And so we piled in the camera equipment and drove from Houston to Austin as fast as possible and found a little room in the rehab facility, got some lighting up and just shot it on the spot. So it's not produced, it's just raw, and you just see the way she's beaming at how happy she was where she was in her life. And that was just on day five or six, that's before she went into long-term recovery. And we get those stories all the time. It's really exciting.
Lindsey Dinneen: That is amazing. The impact that makes on not just the individual who, of course, their life is dramatically changed as a result, but all of the people who love them. Oh my goodness. I am sure that it's extremely hard on the family and loved ones as well because they're watching somebody in a difficult place. And so, oh my gosh, just the ripple effects of what y'all do is really amazing.
Daniel Powell: Well, thank you, it's funny you said that. I was talking to somebody else yesterday and he goes, "have you thought of the legacy you're leaving?" He goes, "you're creating a legacy. They think of the families they're affecting and then the children that's gonna pass onto." And it, it got real humbling, real quick. I'm just fighting the FDA today for a second gen product and making sure our third party logistics is shipping. Stop and pull back and remember that we have a great culture here at Spark. Everybody knows they're part of something really important and come to work with that passion to make a difference in people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know that you've had experience with other companies and then of course with your own, but is there any particular moment that stands out to you because it kind of clearly confirmed that the medtech industry was the right one for you?
Daniel Powell: Yeah, for sure. When I was at St. Jude Medical doing spinal cord stim and I got to go on a field ride and then talk to, I remember this old man had spinal cord stim, and he was in a follow-up visit and I was getting to do a ride along with the sales rep. And the man said, " a year ago, I I couldn't even get out of the chair without assistance and today I climbed a ladder" cuz of the pain relief he had from spinal cord stim. And just hearing those stories and this person telling you "this product made a difference in my life." But it then got really profound for me when I went to deep brain stimulation.
And so I had the privilege of being on the launch team for St. Jude's deep brain stimulation platform in Europe. And with deep brain stimulation, the patient is put under kind of twilight anesthesia, holes drilled in the head, wires put in the brain, but then you wake them back up and have them do motor tests cuz you're taking this little wire and you're pushing it into a 3D space. The brain's like a bowl of jello. So imagine you're pushing a wire into Jello shooting for 3D space that you can't see, the size of a pea. And so to make sure you're on target, you wake the patient up and have them like draw a circle or sign their name. And that whole experience when you're working with the physicians to actively use the product and being a subject matter expert during the surgeries in the early days. It was the most amazing thing to be in the brain surgery,. And then having the patient cry cuz they, their hands have been shaking so much, they haven't been able to sign their name in a decade and here they are able to sign their name while their brain's exposed and their skull's open. It's just, it was just such I, I look around, I'm like, "how did I get here? This is a amazing." So I have a special place in my heart for anything deep brain stimulation. That, that was truly just an amazing part of my career.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh my goodness. So now you've come from a business background and so has that really helped your entrepreneurial journey and is that something that you felt like it did help prepare you for this particular company or is this a lot of learning on the way as well?
Daniel Powell: Yeah, no, that business background didn't do anything for me with the game store. So, clear, clearly, clearly, no. So what happened after the game stores and I went to work for St. Jude and then onto Cyberonics down in Houston, which is now LivaNova that does vagus nerve stim in the neck for epilepsy and depression is, I actually learned the business. We went through a warning letter, so I learned all about quality. We went through FDA submissions that I was part of the meetings and audits. And I spent the next 15 years actually learning a skillset in an industry versus meandering my way so that when the opportunity came to start my own company, I kind of looked around. I was like, "oh, I know what to do."
And what it was is respecting everything besides the business portion. So respecting that a quality system's important and you need a quality manager. And respecting that you need IP and respecting the engineering process has to happen and it's takes longer and it's messy. You're respecting that the legal stuff needs to be made, respecting and appreciating all that goes into running a clinical trial. And I say all that because I've been part of a company where the CEO just yelled at everybody to "get it done," but didn't really know what it took to get it done. And so I think that's what prepared me more was understanding and respecting all the various parts of the business. I don't have to totally understand it, but I have to be aware of its level of difficulty and the talent it takes to execute it properly. And I think that's really served to be successful.
The other opportunity that presented Spark uniquely is my two co-founders with me. Alejandro has his PhD in neuroengineering and he's our CTO and he is an absolute expert in that domain. And so we got the technicals covered by him. We got the business covered by me. And then Navid Khodaparast has his PhD in neurophysiology and is our chief science officer. And so when it comes to the clinical studies and the science and everything, while there's some overlap with him and Alejandro, he comprehensively covers the science. So we got engineering covered and patents, science and grants covered with Navid. And then the business side and sales and marketing covered with me. And it created a wonderful balance where we didn't have three scientists or three engineers, or three business guys stepping on each other, but three very complementary skill sets that we all brought to the table. And if somebody's starting a company, I would say " find partners that fill out other skill sets you're never gonna be able to master."
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. That's great advice. Surround yourself with good people that are complementary in their abilities and their knowledge. How do you personally prioritize your continued growth and learning as a leader?
Daniel Powell: Hmm, that's an interesting question. Ooh, I'll look back to the first time I was a manager and I've come a long ways. I, I think a couple things have affected that is there was a point in time where you realized that supporting your team and enabling their success versus controlling them. And I don't know where I've started seeing that. I remember specifically as a, a director at Cyberonics and we could get in front of the board room and I started reading books more on being a manager. There's something that tripped the realization that I needed to enhance that skillset. There's like a book, like the first 90 days or something like that when you're a new manager and you outline a plan, and so I, I embarked upon that. And I was moving down to Houston, joining this department. And I just really got real serious about not just meandering down and doing it, but really having a very specific plan.
And so I started to educate myself more and more, read books on leadership and think about it. And I made this change from needing to be seen and get the kudos. And it just dawned on me: if the people working for me, if I just said" it was because of them," I got all the credit, but then they got all the credit too. And you had a loyal team and they felt appreciated. So you could see a manager, a director gets into the boardroom and gets to present and shows everybody what he did when reality is his team did it behind him as opposed to a director or VP or that they'd have an opportunity to present to upper management. And when they go, "well, that's really good," you say, "ah, that was John. I couldn't have done it without him. This was all his research." "Oh, that was, Jane. She pulled this together, amazing talent on my team."
And once you flip over and start understanding that managing gets really easy. You start to be able to cultivate loyal teams. I had a manager tell me, he sent me an article. The article was, "Is Your Manager for You, for Themselves, or Against You?" And it said, "you know, managers look at their employees three ways." One is the majority of 'em are for themselves. Look, "I'll throw you under the bus if I have to to move my career forward. But otherwise I have no Ill intent towards you, but you know, this is about me." That's the majority of managers. On a rare occasion you get managers who are for you, they're like, "I want to make you succeed. I'm confident in where I am. If you move in front of me, it won't even hurt my feelings, but I'm invested in you." I had a manager at St. Jude like that, and he was fantastic and really was that example.
On the rare occasion you get somebody who's against you and they want you to fail. I also got that manager at a later point in time. And in the article and the wisdom said, "you run, leave the company. There is no surviving that and it's toxic and I'll tear you down." So I try to really be for my people's success. And then I think moving into the CEO role and starting the company really put the pressure on me. And then life had changed from books to this thing called YouTube. I could watch and so I just gobbled up videos by Simon Sinek and real thought leaders on, on how to lead and all these great voices that are out there. And we really try to adopt those styles of management and those philosophies into Spark. We spent a lot of time talking about culture and how we were gonna build a really good company that, that was great to work at in the early days.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. That's great. And then that's great advice too in general for a leader or an aspiring leader. Appreciate your people, support your people, and it changes everything. As an employee, you feel appreciated and feel valued and feel like your contribution makes a difference, so, that's great advice. I like it. Well, on a lighter note, perhaps, imagine someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want, does not have to be in your industry. What would you choose to teach and why?
Daniel Powell: I like mentoring. I would love to teach, end to end, how do you bring a medical device to market. And, I think what I've done over the last four years, personally, my personal growth everywhere from raising money and the management of all these different processes. I love sharing that. I love being a resource to other, younger entrepreneurs on this journey, on that kind of stuff. So it would still be in this industry, I think, and I think it would reflect what I've learned and experienced and then been successful doing over the last four years.
Lindsey Dinneen: Excellent. Well, we definitely need a masterclass on that. That would be a great topic.
Daniel Powell: But I don't have the discipline to put a curriculum together. I'm telling you now. The question hurt, cuz in my mind I was like, "I don't have energy for that."
Lindsey Dinneen: That is fair, but also you are currently a little busy with your own company. So maybe this could be your retirement gig or something just for fun.
Daniel Powell: I'm a procrastinator and I wing stuff and I wouldn't prepare ahead of time. I would just say, I would just wing it.
Lindsey Dinneen: Ok. Ok.
Daniel Powell: It's horrible to say. I know.
Lindsey Dinneen: Okay. Well, we touched on legacy earlier, but I am curious, what is the one thing that you would wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?
Daniel Powell: I really hope what we're doing here, just two things. I hope the people I work with have good lives and got to go to work and not felt like somebody was against them. You see you're in these companies and the layoffs come and people get treated like numbers and we have had to have a layoff and there were people who were like, "this is not working for the business." But we try to be as humane and caring as possible when we're making tough decisions. So I'd like for the people who work for Spark, I hope this is an enriching part of their life, and that it allowed them to have a better family life. I mean, I just remember the stress of working for a company that's going through layoff after layoff, and you see bad managers treating people poorly and you sometimes get trapped there and you got nowhere to go. So I hope on one note for internally that I've made everybody who's part of this journey, their life better. And then I hope that we've really are gonna put some products into the world that, that had a legacy effect that saved families and brought 'em together. It's cool getting to work in medtech, right? We're not just making a widget, but this widget has real effects on lives. I'm lucky I get to work in this industry. It's really cool.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely agree. Yeah. Well, and my final question is what is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?
Daniel Powell: I think our work in the neonatal space is just the most rewarding thing in the world. So these newborn babies born physically dependent on opioids. And that gets me up early every single day and keeps me motivated. We're not on market with the baby product yet, but we're in our big clinical trial and it's just cool. I always smile when I just even think the serendipity of how this happened. So I was on a flight to San Francisco to go to the Neurotech Reports conference, and I was putting my first investor PowerPoint together. And so I've got internet connection and I'm looking up, " how many people die of opioids and how many Americans are addicted" and putting all the numbers together.
And I come across neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome and I start to read about it and how these babies are born and they just go through a horrible, excruciating first month of life. And, They had this like unnatural scream or cry and they don't feed, and I was like," oh my gosh. We have to do something about this." And so I sent an email to Navid and Alejandro and I'm like, "look at this article. We are gonna do this too, even if we don't make money." And by the time I landed, they both had replied, "we're all in." Like on that day we started the neonatal program and started researching.
The next day I went to the first session and the first panel was New Science Discoveries. And about the second presenter was Dr. Bashar Badran out of MUSC. And he was presenting his auricular vagus nerve stimulation results on newborn babies for stroke recovery for feeding. So in front of me was the only person in the world who had ever stimulated a baby's ear and had brand new breaking results. And I mean, I was " what are the chances 24 hours after we see this?" So he, he finished speech and got off the stage and I ran up like a crazy man and I'm like, "we're gonna work together" and he was like, like, "wow." I was just, it was just I and I--
Lindsey Dinneen: Wow.
Daniel Powell: My, my wife said several times "the universe conspires to make us successful." I think what we're doing is good and is noble. And things like that, I mean, and so it took him over two or three years to get his IRB approval to run his first baby study. We piggybacked on their IRB approval and had approval in 60 days. So I mean like probably shaved two years off getting this product to market. It's really amazing. So that makes all, that makes me smile every time.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh yeah. And that's a fantastic story. Oh my goodness. Thank you for sharing that. Well, thank you, Daniel, so, so very much for joining me today. Thank you for all of your insights and your stories. I'm so inspired by what your company is doing, how it's helping-- just again, the ripple effects. I keep thinking about that and that's just that's really amazing. So, so thank you for what you all are doing to help change lives.
And we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to Threads of Love, which through the effort and support of many participants and chapters across the country, provides clothing, blankets, and other handmade articles for tiny, premature and sick infants.
And I just think, Daniel, that works so well with exactly what you were just talking about and your heart for others. So thank you for choosing that organization to support. Thank you again for your time. I just wish you continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.
Daniel Powell: Thank you so much. I appreciate the chance to tell the story.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you also to our listeners for tuning in and if you are feeling as inspired as I am right now, I would love if you would share this episode with a colleague or two and we will catch you next time.
 The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.
Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.
Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.
Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.
Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

JoJo Platt | Platt & Associates | From Accounting to Neurotech, Leadership, & ”Good-Natured Revenge”

Our very first guest, JoJo Platt, is a longtime consultant serving the neurotech community through the commercialization process. In this episode, JoJo discusses her eclectic background, views on leadership, the future of neurotech, and how good-natured "revenge" is one of her primary motivators. 
Guest links: http://theplattassociates.com/ | https://www.joyventures.com/ | https://neurotechreports.com/ | https://skrapspodcast.com/ 
Charity supported: Polaris Project 
Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 
PRODUCTION CREDITSHost: Lindsey DinneenEditor: Tim OliphantProducer: Velentium
 
SHOW TRANSCRIPTEpisode 002 - JoJo Platt
Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
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.
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.
Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
Hello and welcome to the Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and I'm excited to introduce you to my guest today, Jojo Platt. Jojo is a longtime consultant serving the neurotech community through the commercialization process. She works with academic labs, neurotech startups, and others to advance neuro technologies into the hands of patients. Jojo is the US Partnership's lead for Joy Ventures. She works with Neurotech Reports, co-hosts the Skraps podcast, and serves on many organizing committees of the industry's most influential conferences and meetings. And I am so thrilled that she is joining me today. Welcome to the show, Jojo. Thanks for being here.
JoJo Platt: Thank you for having me on. I'm really excited to be on the other side of the mic this time.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh yes, that's right. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your background to get started, if you don't mind.
JoJo Platt: Sure. I work specifically in the field of neurotechnology that's even more narrow than medical devices.
I prefer to think of it as a different focus than just pure, broad speaking neuromodulation and I've been consulting to academic labs, startups, government offices, universities, kind of everybody in the neurotech space for about 15 years now, and a lot of people find it challenging to really fully understand what I do.
So I keep it broad because I do a lot of different things. I like to think about all of the scientists and technologists who have spent their entire lives honing and perfecting their science and technology skills. And I come in on the other side of that and help them on the business side. So if they're ready to translate, if they're thinking about creating a spin out, if they wanna optimize their research for future licensing and spin out, there are things that can be done even at the academic level that can make a big difference into how technology or therapy commercialized. And I do everything except for accounting and housekeeping.
Lindsey Dinneen: Amazing. So I am curious, do you mind delving a little bit more into how you help bridge the gap between a company or an individual who is looking to develop new technology? And what have you found is the most needed aspect of that sort of bridging the gap process or how do you feel that your consulting and your services are able to help these people? Because I know you're making a difference, but I'm curious as to what things you find are the most common, and where people can use that assistance from a different perspective?
JoJo Platt: The field overall, especially the commercialization side of the equation is still relatively young. I know, spinal cord stimulators coming out Tom Mortimer's lab and all of that in the sixties and some of the cardiac pacemaker technologies, those have been around for a long time. But when you get into some of the neural interfaces, be it in the central or peripheral nervous system, those are on the newer side.
So we still have a lot of technology founders or technical founders, or scientific founders, which is fantastic. There's nobody who knows the technology and the science better than these folks. But like I said before, they're classically trained on the science and technology side of things. So there are tons of resources out there that can help prepare them to be a CEO or a founding CEO. But they still need a lot of support and whether they find that they need help in making their business case as they're pitching for financing to VCs, helping them hone that pitch, whether it's in support of market research, helping them determine what's the best path to market sometimes. I primarily like to focus on FDA cleared or FDA approved devices and I definitely favor implanted devices over wearables, but there are definitely fantastic wearable technologies. That's all to say that direct to consumer is something I can appreciate and admire, but that's not an area of expertise for me. So I'll help them look at the regulatory pathways, reimbursement pathways. I either do that on my own or I also work very heavily with a team at Neurotech Reports, Jim Cavouto and Jeremy Koff, who both have excellent track records in Neurotech as well.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. That is wonderful. And so when you are helping these folks, these scientists-- I think we talked in a previous conversation about how sometimes the business aspect, like you said, you can learn a lot about how to be a CEO and there are certain things that maybe come a little bit easier than others, but in terms of, say the marketing side of things or how to translate the science into a more widely understood-- if you're going to explain it to your grandma kind of thing.
You have a really interesting background that didn't necessarily start in the science field. Do you mind exploring a little bit about how that helps you translate between the two?
JoJo Platt: Sure. I have a very long sort of meandering journey into a lot of different areas. I started out my first, I like to call it my first real job, my first office job was a one person of a two person accounting team at an internet backbone technology company. And that's to say, because this was in the mid to late nineties, it wasn't part of the dot com boom so much as it was, anytime you watch video on the internet, that call and response of the video packets that get delivered to you are still done even now, 25 years later on the internet backbone which is video delivery optimization.
So we were basically solving how to stream video on the internet when the internet was operating at basically a 14 4k speed. So accounting, I thought that's what I wanted to do. That was my degree program at the time, and I was in school and working and being a single mom and all that. And we went through an IPO, which was an amazing learning experience, but it was a lot of work.
I'd go to the office at six in the morning. Work till six at night. Go to class, go home, see my daughter, go back to work until about two o'clock in the morning and they go back at six and it burned me out. We were a startup and the hours were long, so, after the IPO I was processing some expense accounts and I kept seeing all of these marketing expense reports come in. I'm like, "you guys went to dinner where? You spent what? You did?" And I'm just like, "wait, let me get this straight: you're having this much fun and I'm sitting here behind a desk processing your expense reports." So I said, "this is over. I'm going over to marketing." And so I was still in school, so I changed my major and finished that up on the comm side of things.
I don't tend to refer to what I do now as marketing or communications. Because it's only a part of what I do, and also because those words tend to scare a lot of scientists. They don't believe in self-promotion. And they just find the marketing and communication side of things, PR and that sort of thing, quite unsavory. So I don't talk about it in those terms, but that is a little bit about what I do and especially, my own, I guess you'd call it a brand. I don't know that it's brand so much, but it just happened. So yeah, from accounting to marketing, I went through the dot com bubble in the early two thousands with the community site that was the early competitor to MySpace and earlier than Facebook even. So we raised a lot of money. The founders burned through all of it. That crashed. I decided at one point I was gonna kinda have an early retirement 'cause I had done well with my IPO and then got bored.
I've done consumer electronics, was working with a technology company trying to solve the whole Napster problem with copyright protection for music. And we were a finalist in the industry competition that was gonna lead to an industry standard of content protection. And then just a month or so before it was all finalized, iTunes came out with a 99 cents song, which between the lawsuit against Napster and an affordable easy, one click way to get music, that pretty well solved the problem for the most part. So that one went away.
 then from there I ended up, this one's a really strange one. From there I ended up going and working at a nonprofit that had, before my arrival, they had fallen afoul with the IRS and it wasn't-- the nonprofit needed some closer management. For the most part it was doing okay. It was doing what it was supposed to be doing. For, again, for the most part, its problem was that the founder was a person of interest in his other business dealings. So IRS and the Department of Justice figured they were gonna "Capone" this guy. Basically go after him and get him for anything that they could, whether it was directly related to the insurance schemes that he was running or if they could get him some other way. So I jumped in, became the court appointed trustee for the foundation and helped the DOJ and the IRS Criminal Investigations Division actually put this guy in jail. So that was kind of, it was a little scary at times. But it was fun. And at the end of the day, I got to help give away 47 million dollars to a lot of different charities.
And one of the things that we wanted to look at was sepsis research, because one of our board members, his daughter passed away very quickly and very unexpectedly from sepsis. So we wanted to support sepsis research. And found out that Kevin Tracy at the Feinstein Institute in New York was doing a lot of really exciting work in sepsis and I started helping them out on a consulting basis on some of the sepsis activities and then some Parkinson's research initiatives that they were working on. And as they were getting ready to launch the Center for Bioelectronic Medicine, they just kept pulling me on board for project after project and kept consulting on that helped them launch the center with some very good friends of mine. I'm glad to say it's still a very successful research entity and putting out amazing work. And we launched a journal by the same name. And part of my responsibilities there were to really understand and know the players in the field of neurotechnology and find out what they were working on and see if I couldn't help to facilitate collaborations, whether it was research or further down the road into the commercialization spectrum. And that's how I fell into neurotech. It's a very long, very circuitous, bumpy road.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. But it's an amazing backstory and it has led you to a whole new chapter really, and new opportunities that you probably couldn't have imagined when you first were even in school. Thinking ahead, what's my life gonna look like? So that's...
JoJo Platt: I'm still waiting to find out what it is I'm gonna do.
Lindsey Dinneen: That's amazing. Yeah. Well, I'm curious, is there a particular moment that stands out to you because it clearly confirmed that this chapter was the right next step for you? I know you had mentioned the importance of working on the sepsis research and supporting that initiative and things like that. Obviously that was something that was important to you, but I'm curious, as you've continued along this path, is there just something that stands out where you thought, "yes, this is the right next chapter for me" and why?
JoJo Platt: I don't think there was a single moment. I think somebody asked me a similar question at a conference earlier, I guess last fall, and, "Why are you doing this?" And, "What got you involved or what keeps you here?" And I think part of it is still really true. That part of it is revenge. Don't get me wrong, I went to a very excellent high school, but my science teachers saw in me a very, very strong lack of scientific ability. I didn't apply myself in my science classes and they all begged me never to take a science class again-- just get through this one and don't take any more science than is required. So I think the part that keeps me here most is that I'm not a scientist and I'm not a technologist. I've definitely learned a lot from everyone that I've had the good fortune of working with or seeing some of the amazing talks that I've seen over the last 15 years. But I can have an impact and not be a scientist or a technologist. And I think that inspiration keeps me going.
And I'll be on stage with some of the world's most important neurotechnologists, and I always make sure and take a picture and then send it back to my science teachers and say, "See, I did okay".
Lindsey Dinneen: I love it.
JoJo Platt: Yeah. There might be a little spite there, but just, all good fun.
Lindsey Dinneen: Good natured.
JoJo Platt: Yes. Yes.
Lindsey Dinneen: That is seriously amazing. I definitely have a little bit-- I'll put it this way-- I have enough rebel in me where if someone says that I can't do something, then I have to prove them wrong.
JoJo Platt: Right.
Lindsey Dinneen: It's just -- we're gonna figure out how to do this, might not come easily, but we'll figure it out.
JoJo Platt: Yeah. And I don't think I would've gone out of my way to do that had I not stumbled into this field, but the fact that I'm here now, I'll leverage that a little bit.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Well, how would you define leadership? Or what does leadership mean to you?
JoJo Platt: To me leadership is not so much telling people what to do, but making sure that your team is inspired to follow you. And I think that difference is one thing that's really important between a boss and a leader. Also why I don't have employees. I think that bringing on the right team members for the right problems and empowering them to do their jobs is probably, a pretty inspiring leadership principle. And the people who have that gift are people toward whom I gravitate, just sort of in, in my own personal fandom of that capacity. And when I see that I like to highlight that and foster that. But I think I know my own weaknesses, which are anything in the area where HR would have jurisdiction, I'm the worst nightmare. And I love being a collaborator, but being a leader is a gift that I think I'll let others take the helm for that one.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, that is fair. I appreciate that perspective. Well, what is your best piece of advice for someone interested in obtaining either a leadership role within the med tech industry, or since you talked about being in more of a collaboration role or a collaborator role, what is your best piece of advice if someone's looking to do something similar to what you do in helping bridge this gap in helping assist these amazing people bring their ideas to reality?
JoJo Platt: I think one of the greatest parts about the neurotech field is that we're still young enough that there are opportunities everywhere, and I know we're going into a bit of a shrinking right-sizing economic exercise, and that some of that will include some painful moments for a lot of people. But I think from my experience, it's better to correct than to crash. So I'm optimistic about where we are in that, and I think that we are truly at the point in the field where there's a legitimate reason to say, if your dream job in neurotechnology doesn't exist, go and create it. And I think this space is open to so many different areas of expertise. So we need people in finance and business management, administration, operations, systems management. And yes, marketing is actually starting to become a legitimate and respected division of a lot of different companies. So that's good to see. But you can really come from any field and contribute to neurotechnology. And one of the things that I see a lot are people who have a hybrid blend of expertise. So they might be neuroscientists by training who went through an MBA program or an MBA candidate who has strong engineering background.
Those are the kinds of cross talented people that we're really gonna need. And I think we are seeing a lot more interest from the sort of traditional business categories of contributors to the point of we need more qualified CEOs in our field, and we need more people in finance that really understand what the technology implications are.
A lot of my clients really are focused on and need regulatory and reimbursement experts. There's a need for people who have organizing backgrounds. For instance, next week in DC, Paradromics has been instrumental in putting together our BCI days going to talk on Capitol Hill about export controls on brain computer interfaces so that sort of organization and lobby expertise. So I think that if you have a passion in terms of what it is you want to do and you want to apply it to the field of neurotechnology, there are so many opportunities that didn't even exist even 24 months ago. So I think we're growing quickly and it's exciting to bring new people into the field and help accelerate and propel these fascinating and really potentially hugely impactful technologies.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. What do you see as being some of the most exciting trends in this field moving forward?
JoJo Platt: Well, brain computer interface is definitely one. There are some really great players in the field. BlackRock Neurotech has been the leader in the field and out of the, I think we're-- I think we're right around 40 or 40 plus humans who have been implanted with brain computer interfaces. And well over 30 of those people have BlackRock technology implanted. But we're seeing some really great newcomers with novel ideas, novel technologies. Paradromics, who I previously mentioned, is one and Synchron has been getting a lot of attention for their vascular approach to a BCI.
Precision Neuroscience just closed a big round last week. And Motif Neurotech is exciting. That's a new technology out of Rice and it's a minimally invasive brain computer interface. And their first indication is major depressive disorder. Inner Cosmos is going after the same indication with their minimally invasive approach. They're both exciting to watch. And I think BCI obviously gets so much more attention because of Elon Musk's involvement in the field.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Well, I am excited to also continue to learn about the new developments coming up. It is a crazy time. I joke about this a lot, " what a time to be alive." But seriously, it is so exciting to see what's coming up, what's possible these days just is amazing. It's mind blowing. So thank you for sharing some of your insights with that.
JoJo Platt: My pleasure. It's a fine line. You wanna talk about the potential, but you also have to be reasonable in managing expectations, especially with a patient population that needs the therapy. Promising and underdelivering is something that everybody is very focused on maintaining that integrity.
There was a talk couple weeks ago where the CFO of BlackRock Neurotech said, "we like to focus on the "art of the possible" and being sure that we're not over representing what is today possible and what will may eventually become possible." And I like that. That to me, is very responsible communications.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm curious, how do you prioritize your continued learning and growing as a leader, as someone of influence within your industry. How do you prioritize your continued growth?
JoJo Platt: I've just been so lucky to meet and engage with so many really exciting researchers, whether they're on the science or technology side. And I'm at the point where a lot of what comes in front of me, people will send to me directly and they're like, "Hey, Jojo, this just came out." Or, "this is a publication that's coming out next week. Let's see if we can amplify it." So a lot of my sort of choices are spoon fed to me. And then that sends me down a rabbit hole. I mean, there's so much to discover. Anywhere you look it's out there. So I should be more strategic about it. If you have something that you think is really important that you think the community wants to know about, I do invite people to send it to me. And if I have a chance to amplify it and call attention to it in any small way, then I'm grateful for that opportunity. It helps me see different things that I might not otherwise.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Well, and that's a great segue into, I'd love to learn a little bit about your podcast. Is that one of the tools that you use to amplify some of those things? Or is that completely separate?
JoJo Platt: It's a little bit of both, so. Okay. The podcast is scraps with a "K," S-K-R-A-P-S, and that's because a lot of scientific exploration and inspiration comes at the bar talking to your colleagues and you write your idea on the back of a scrap of piece of paper. And the other reason it's called Skraps is cuz it's "spark" spelled backwards. Anyhow, my co-host for that is Arun Sridhar and he's the former head of Discovery at Galvani Bioelectronics. So he brings the scientific rigor to the podcast and I'm the cheeky monkey who gets to be a little sillier. But we've done a little bit of everything. It is a hobby for us and we like to highlight people that have inspired us in different ways. But we also are sure to try and make it fun.
So we've done everything from human composting. Shortly after Covid hit, we had the graphic artist who did the rendering of the Covid molecule, the gray ball with the spikes that is everywhere, which was a fascinating story. She literally got woken up outta bed in the middle of the night in January 2020 and they said, "We've got something, you've gotta come down here and draw this for us." So that's an interesting thing. Okay? So I'm like, "You wanna just put me on speed dial next time you get one of those calls and tell me about it?" But we've done everything. They're incredible leaders in, in science and research.
On the show we did a 10 part series on psychedelics in research. That was about a year and a half ago now. So that was at the vanguard of the psychedelic research revolution. So we did a pretty comprehensive history back to early human use all the way through the obvious fifties, sixties, seventies with MK Ultra and then what's happening in research today and how some of the people who are benefiting from psychedelics and psychedelic therapy.
And then now we're in the middle of a series on the vagus nerve in neurotechnology. So we just do a little bit of everything, whether it's a topic or a person or a personality. We try and keep it fun.
Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. That's awesome. Okay, well, for fun, imagine someone offered you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want-- doesn't have to even be in your industry. What would you choose to teach and why?
JoJo Platt: Oh, that's a good one. I don't know that I would be qualified for that. I've always thought of myself more of a jack of all trades, master of none . I'm a boy scout. I'm prepared for anything, but I'm maybe not the master at any one thing. And I think that's what I love about so many of the people that I encounter, is that they've dedicated their whole educational career, their professional career to one particular thing and they can teach the master classes and I'll sit back and watch and then post about it.
Lindsey Dinneen: What a fun answer. Okay. Well, do you think you could then teach a masterclass on how to be prepared for anything because you never know what will come your way?
JoJo Platt: I do have my shortcuts, like when I really get in over my head with a neuroscientist, I can start talking about engineering, and same thing if I get in over my head in an engineering conversation, I'll switch over to neuroscience or something. And if I get really flustered, I'll just say "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!" and walk away.
Lindsey Dinneen: Brilliant.
JoJo Platt: So yeah, you always wanna have a couple catchphrases that'll get you into or out of any conversation.
Lindsey Dinneen: All right. I like it. Yeah. I need to develop a few more of those, I think. What is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?
JoJo Platt: I hope that when I'm gone that the people that I've known and had the privilege of being associated with, either professionally or personally, oftentimes both-- that they always knew that I was there if they needed help or if there was some way that I could contribute to their success, that would be the greatest highlight of my day. I'm not the one doing the hard stuff, so I'm here to help the people who are, and if that's how I'm remembered, I wouldn't hate that.
Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I love that. Well, final question. What's one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?
JoJo Platt: But one of the things that, I find wonderful, full of wonder, fill me with wonder, are really the pieces of science that you don't realize, or mathematics or engineering that are all around you all the time, and if you know where to look or how to find them, you start to see. I have a fascination with Fibonaccis. So if you start to read and learn about the Fibonacci Sequence and how it's applied and where it's found in nature, where it applies in mathematics, how it affects what we view as aesthetically pleasing-- there's "The Great Wave of Kanagawa," which is a Fibonacci Sequence. It's an old Japanese block print that is perfectly aligned with the Fibonacci spiral. So things like that. Things that blur the line between mathematics and science and beauty. I think that's pretty inspiring. That makes me smile.
Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, I love that. That's beautiful. Well, I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for sharing about your background and all the fascinating things that you have done that have led you to where you are right now. And who knows what you're gonna do in the future, but it is so fun to hear about it. So thank you for being so open sharing all those wonderful things. And we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today. It's going to Polaris Project, which was Jojo's choice, and that is a non-governmental organization that works to combat and prevent sex and labor trafficking in North America. So thank you for that, Jojo. Thank you so much again for your time. We wish you just the most continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.
JoJo Platt: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. And thank you also 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.
 The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.
Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.
Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.
Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.
Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

Introduction to The Leading Difference Podcast

This debut episode introduces The Leading Difference podcast, sharing its mission and purpose, along with logistics for format, frequency, and who you'll be hearing as featured guests.
Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com. 
 
HOST: Lindsey DinneenEDITOR: Tim OliphantPRODUCER: Velentium 
SHOW NOTESEpisode 001 - Introduction to The Leading Difference
Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.
Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.
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.
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.
Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.
Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.
Lindsey Dinneen: Hello and welcome to the very first episode of The Leading Difference. My name is Lindsey Dinneen, and I will be your podcast host, happily interviewing leaders in the MedTech industry who are changing lives for a better world.
I'm excited to be bringing a differently angled podcast to the MedTech space. I'm interviewing extraordinary people to learn about who they are as people. What is their background? How did they get to where they are, and where do they plan to go from here? Most importantly, I want to know what attracted them to the MedTech industry specifically.
I love hearing a wide variety of stories, conventional and unconventional, from an assortment of diverse perspectives. These people are making a profound difference, and I'm excited to learn why and how.
As an outsider who came into the MedTech industry just two years ago, I was vaguely aware of an unjust stigma hovering over the industry: that of the folks who worked in it being primarily financially driven in their motivation to innovate. However, I have found that to be a pretty unfair assumption. I am so grateful to have gotten to meet some of the coolest, smartest, most respectful, curious, humble, and innovative people I've ever met in this industry. And their "why" stories are incredibly compelling. They're in this industry to make a living, of course, but much more importantly, they're here to make a difference. These are the stories I wanna share with the world.
Here are the details of what to expect from The Leading Difference. You'll hear a wide variety of voices. I'm especially passionate about elevating people who don't always get to share their stories. The episodes will generally last about 30 minutes. We'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks on Fridays for a way to end your work week on a positive and inspiring note. You'll hear from CEOs, engineers, scientists, researchers, and more. If you ever wanted to get to know some of your favorite medtech leaders on a more personal level, now's your chance.
I invite you to join me on this journey to discover what makes The Leading Difference.
Lindsey Dinneen: The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.
Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.
Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.
Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.
Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.