The Leading Difference

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MedTech Leaders Changing Lives for a Better World

  1. APR 3

    Omar Ford | Editor in Chief, MD+DI | Navigating Medtech Journalism, Storytelling in Healthcare, & Personal Growth

    Omar Ford, Editor in Chief of MD+DI, shares his journey from small-town print journalism to covering medtech, and the steep learning curve that taught him how to find the real story behind press releases, FDA pathways, and industry trends. Omar explains how thinking like a “contemporary medtech historian” helps connect past events to present innovations, and why curiosity—and an unusually open, helpful industry—accelerated his growth. He reflects on defining leadership moments, imposter syndrome, and the mentors who shaped his style, plus memorable conversations from his Let’s Talk Medtech podcast.   Guest links: omar.ford@informa.com | https://www.mddionline.com/  Charity supported: March of Dimes Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 078 - Omar Ford [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I'm delighted to welcome as my guest Omar Ford. Omar is an experienced Editor in Chief, currently at MD+DI, with a demonstrated history of working in the medical device industry. Skilled in medical devices, technical writing, marketing, strategic planning, and marketing strategy, he also has a strong media and communication professional background with a bachelor's degree focused in journalism from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Well, hello, welcome. I'm so excited to have you here today. Thank you for being here, Omar. [00:01:28] Omar Ford: Lindsey, I'm excited to be here as well. You know, I have been prepping for this all week, and then all the little notes and all the things I took down, I said, "You know what? I wanna give her the original experience," so I'm gonna chuck 'em to the side and we're just gonna do this off the top of my head. How's that? [00:01:43] Lindsey Dinneen: That's perfect. My favorite. [00:01:46] Omar Ford: Awesome. Awesome. [00:01:48] Lindsey Dinneen: That's how conversations work in real life. I feel like this shouldn't be any different, so, great. [00:01:53] Omar Ford: Agree. Agreed. [00:01:54] Lindsey Dinneen: Love it. All right, so would you mind starting off by telling us just a little bit about yourself, your background, and what led you to medtech specifically? [00:02:02] Omar Ford: Oh wow. So that is an interesting story what led me to medtech. But a little bit about myself first. So, I graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2001 as a print journalism major. And, my goal was to go into newspapers, you know, I wanted to go into-- I wanted to be that next print journalist 'cause I had a face for radio, right? I had a face for print, you know, wasn't the, the, the broadcast type. And so I, I did small newspapers for a few years and then this magical thing called marriage happened. And, I was looking at the salary that I made as a print journalist, and it just, it, it just wasn't enough to sustain a family. So, was looking at branching into something else. And back then, we had the, the, the classified ads in the newspaper where they would actually advertise jobs, and I and my wife pointed this one out to me and it was a, a job about it was a job for a company called AHC Media and they had a publication called Medical Device Daily, and that was around, I wanna say 2007. And she said, "Why don't you try it? You know it the pay--" 'cause they advertised the pay there too back, back then-- she said, "The pay is much more than, you know, being, you know, a newspaper reporter. You can, you can leave that, that's something that you could do to, to support the family." And I said, "Yeah, yeah, why don't I try it?" And a lot, there were a lot of adjacencies, so I jumped on it and, you know, got hired and left the newspaper behind. And that was in 2007 and I've been with medtech ever since, so it's been an incredible journey. It's been one that you kinda, you know, once you jump in, there's like a, a steep learning curve, but if you manage to stay in for a few years, you can, you can really learn a lot about the industry. [00:03:53] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Lots of questions. I'll start with that learning curve because I was just thinking about this. [00:04:00] Omar Ford: Yes. Yes. Go ahead. [00:04:01] Lindsey Dinneen: So, okay. So you go from, I might imagine a more generalist approach to all sorts of different topics, to... [00:04:09] Omar Ford: mm-hmm. [00:04:10] Lindsey Dinneen: ...a really crazy niche industry where somebody can say a full sentence and. If you're not from the industry, you're like, "Mm-hmm." [00:04:18] Omar Ford: Yes. [00:04:19] Lindsey Dinneen: So what was that like for you and how did you, how did you navigate that, that steep learning curve and your own personal growth so that you could, you know, really speak to the industry? [00:04:32] Omar Ford: So going back to the head nod, "Um, mm-hmm," a lot of my interviews were like that at the very beginning. But I remember the Editor in Chief of, of Medical Device Daily. He's now deceased-- Don Long-- he pulled me to the side one day and he said, "Omar, each of these companies has a story. You want to be able to tell that story." You know, you look at it from a business sense, and then you drill down into the innovations. You know, when you get a press release from a company such as a Boston Scientific or an Abbott Laboratories, or a Medtronic, you wanna drill down in the press release and look at what the news is. But you also wanna look at the story that they've been telling up until now about that product or about that sector that they're in. You know, if they're looking to get approval for a device, you know, was it easy for them to go through clinical trials? Was this something that bombed a couple times or that was rejected by FDA? Each company has a story about their innovation, right? And you look at the company as your sources, like your, like they're your county commissioners or they're your --I'm going back to my newspaper days-- or they're your board of education members. You know, each company has a personality like that. And you try to hone in on that and you look for those adjacencies and then you kinda fill things in as you go along. The other thing that helps is traveling to some of the trade shows and talking to the people and meeting them face to face, because back when I started, we had this wonderful thing called a landline, a telephone, and we could call people and get messages, right? There were no teams calls or no Skype or anything like that, or, or Zoom. And in fact, I don't think they're Skype anymore. But you know, you didn't have that, so you just heard a person's voice, but when you met them face to face, when you talked about some of these innovations, when you saw how passionate they were or when you could read some of their body language or when you could say, "Hey, can you kind of take the time and talk to me about this," and make that personal connection, it helps you understand the science a little bit more. It helps you understand what they're trying to communicate a whole lot more. And that kind of rounded out that steep learning curve. But I like to tell people all the time, when I first started, I didn't know a 510K from a PMA. You know, I struggled to explain that one time to our, our sales manager back when I was with AHC Media and Medical Device Daily. But if you can stay in this industry long enough and if you can you know, just focus long enough on the content material and have an understanding of the companies that you're, you're talking to and see them each having an individual story, you know, and, and also finding the conflict that the companies might have too, that helps round that, that, that steep learning curve down out a a whole lot. A whole lot. [00:07:44] Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. That's, that's great advice. And also something I was thinking about is the more that you get into the industry too, you know, curiosity solves so much, right? [00:07:59] Omar Ford: Yes. [00:07:59] Lindsey Dinneen: The more that you can just be curious and ask questions. And I've found-- and I'd be curious about your own experience with this-- but I found that this industry is extremely helpful. Like if you go with a genuine desire to learn and grow, people are like, "Great, how can I help you?" [00:08:17] Omar Ford: Now, that is one thing that I will testify to and I will say was different from reporting, doing beat reporting because when I was working with the small newspapers, it was all about holding back information. It was all about, "I don't wanna talk to you about this." But this industry, when you talk to people, when you show a level of interest and the ability to understand, they will talk to you for days and they are very, very helpful. So that is ano--, I'm, I'm glad you brought that up because that is a, a another level that really, really helps to understand this industry a lot.

    35 min

  2. MAR 20

    Lisa Jacobs | President, eCential Robotics & Founder, STRIPES | Creating Mission-Driven Success in MedTech

    Lisa Jacobs is the President of US eCential Robotics and the Founder of STRIPES Women in MedTech. Lisa shares how her path evolved from registered dietitian, ballerina, gymnast, and NFL cheerleader into a two-decade MedTech commercialization career focused on bringing surgical technology—robotics and navigation—from concept to clinical adoption. She explains her consulting-based approach to sales centered on solving surgeons’ real problems, and her leadership philosophy of creating clarity, trust, accountability, and momentum without being a “know-it-all.” Lisa also unpacks why she founded STRIPES, a global nonprofit with 3,000 members offering mentorship, networking, and education to support women navigating growth, career transitions, and negotiation.  Guest links: https://www.stripes.network/  Charity supported: Safe Horizon Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 076 - Lisa Jacobs [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I'm delighted to welcome my guest, Lisa Jacobs. Lisa is the president of US eCential Robotics, as well as the CEO of STRIPES, which is a networking organization for women in MedTech. With expertise in medical device sales, she's a high performing executive sales leader, known for formulating and executing scalable strategies to accelerate business expansion, revenue generation, and team development in startup turnaround and rapid growth environments across domestic and global markets. All right, Lisa, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. [00:01:30] Lisa Jacobs: Thank you so much for having me. [00:01:32] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. I'd love if you would start off by sharing a little bit about yourself, your background, and what led you to medtech. [00:01:40] Lisa Jacobs: Of course. Yeah. So I've been a medtech executive and commercialization leader for more than two decades. My experience has been in bringing surgical technology from concept to widespread clinical adoption. Also, my career is really focused on startups with high growth and complex environments. Everything from early stage robotics to scaling global platforms across the US market. Today I serve as president of North America for eCential Robotics, where I oversee commercialization, surgeon adoptions, partnerships with implant partners, market strategy, and open platform surgical navigation ecosystem. In parallel, I'm the founder of STRIPES Women in Medtech, which is a global non-profit, created a support, connect and elevate women across the industry. I spent my career sitting at the intersection of innovation, people, and execution, and I care deeply about building businesses that are both high performing and human centered. [00:02:47] Lindsey Dinneen: Very nice. Okay, so going back to, let's say growing up, did you always think that you might an interest in or a future career in healthcare, health techs, things like that? Or did this sort of evolve over time? [00:03:03] Lisa Jacobs: It evolved over time, actually. My degree, I'm a registered dietician by trade. And I was a ballerina, so I always thought I was gonna open a dance studio. So it's been, it was a complete pivot from what I went to college for and what I thought I was gonna do growing up. [00:03:21] Lindsey Dinneen: Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, we have to dive into the ballerina aspect, obviously, since I am too. So, so did you dance all the way through high school, college, beyond? [00:03:32] Lisa Jacobs: Yes, I danced through high school and college. I was also a gymnast. And then I became an NFL cheerleader in my, when I was 18 years old for the Patriots. So that's kind of where it took me. So then, you know, when I, after college, I decided I was gonna be a starving ballerina, but it's always been my passion and love. So I'm still very into fitness and wellness and definitely do Pilates and yoga and try to keep that part of my life alive. But I always miss dancing and wonder what would've happened if I went down that path, yeah. [00:04:08] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, of course. Well, the good thing is you can always still do some kind of dancing or support it or however you, so it's it's not gone. [00:04:19] Lisa Jacobs: Yep. It's around my house. Yeah. Yeah, [00:04:22] Lindsey Dinneen: Exactly. Okay. And so nutrition. Okay, so did that evolve because you were a dancer and interested in that kind of wellness aspect or? [00:04:32] Lisa Jacobs: It was, you know, I'm Portuguese, so there is obesity in my family and I had to work really hard to stay thin for dance, gymnastics and, you know, cheerleading. So, you know, at cheerleading I used to get weighed in, so I was always exercising and trying to find what was right to eat and I didn't wanna hop on the diet fat. So I studied nutrition because of that. And throughout my dance career, I found a lot of girls who were either anorexic or bulimic or a combination of both. And it really, and one of my friends did die from anorexia, so I dove in deep into the study of that and how to help people. [00:05:22] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And you're still helping people all the time. You're in medtech and you're doing amazing work. So do you mind sharing a little bit about, yeah, your current role and maybe sort of the leadership journey that took you there? [00:05:36] Lisa Jacobs: Sure. My current role is with an open platform, which was based out of France. And I'm bringing, I just opened an office in Franklin, Tennessee. It's just been a year to this month. So, our technology is differentiating in robotics and navigation. And I remember earlier in my career when I stood in the operating room watching a surgeon place a complex implant using a navigation system I helped bring to market, I realized my work was directly impacting patient outcomes, but also easing the mental load of the surgeon with navigation. And still today you hear that surgeons want navigation to decrease their mental load and robotics to decrease their physical load. So that moment crystallized something for me. I didn't wanna just sell products. I wanted to build platforms that changed possibility in medtech to give a rare opportunity to blend science, engineering, technology, and give experience to surgeons that would help them directly to help patients. So it's hard to imagine doing anything else now that has such an impact. [00:06:54] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I I can, I understand how-- it's really cool to be a part of mission-driven organizations, which is something that I actually wanted to talk with you about because I know that you are very mission-centric and you care a lot about making a difference and and being helpful and and so I was just wondering where did that come from, was this a core belief of yours sort of throughout your whole life, or how did that evolve too? [00:07:22] Lisa Jacobs: I think it was embedded with me, with my parents. Both of my parents were incredibly helpful to neighbors, community, family. I come from a big family and my father would always go out and help anyone who needed it. And my mother was the same, you know, all of my friends wanted to come to my house to hang out with my mother 'cause she would take care of everyone, drive them to any games or anything they had. So, it was just, I think a core belief with the way I was raised. [00:07:54] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And then it's something that, I think, is so helpful 'cause it continues to drive and motivate as you go along throughout your career and you've had such a wide variety of experiences. So tell us a little bit more about your approach to selling. I was, I was reading a little bit on your LinkedIn profile and it mentioned that you prefer to have kind of a consulting approach, I think to, to selling. And I was curious if you could expound on that a bit? [00:08:24] Lisa Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of salespeople are taught to sell on features and benefits, right? You go in, you have a widget. You're talking about your widget. You're trying to get them to use whatever you're trying to sell, but they don't listen to the surgeon's need and ask doctor, surgeon-- whoever you're selling to-- your client's needs about what are their problems they currently have? How do you solve for their problems? What are you bringing to the table to help them either in the operating room or in their clinic. And I think it has to be more natural and more conversational instead of selling on features and benefits. You need to know who you're talking to and do your homework before you enter the room or even try to sell to that person. But what problem are you trying to solve for? And I think too many times people go to sales training and you learn your surgical technique. You learn your features and benefits and you learn your pitch, but it's not conversational

    26 min

  3. MAR 6

    Logan McKnight | Founder, GoodKnight Consulting | Leadership Evolution, MedTech Innovation, & Impactful Coaching

    Logan McKnight is the founder of GoodKnight Consulting and a strategic advisor to MedTech executives navigating growth, leadership challenges, and operational complexity. Logan shares her nearly 20-year journey from pre-med to neuromonitoring technologist to CEO, and explains why she now focuses on helping leaders build teams that scale without sacrificing culture or burning out. She discusses lessons learned managing remote surgical service teams, why “simple scales,” and how mission, vision, and values enable better decisions and hiring beyond gut instinct.  Guest links: https://www.goodknightconsulting.net/ Charity supported: ASPCA Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 075 - Logan McKnight [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I am delighted to welcome Logan McKnight. Logan is the founder of GoodKnight Consulting and a strategic advisor to MedTech executives navigating growth, leadership challenges and operational complexity. With nearly 20 years in neuromonitoring and surgical services, including experience as a CEO, VP of Operations and business development leader, Logan brings an experienced perspective to executive leadership. She works with directors, VPs, and C-suite leaders to build teams that can scale without sacrificing culture or burning out. Well, welcome to the show, Logan. I'm so glad to speak with you today, and thank you so much for being here. [00:01:34] Logan McKnight: Yeah, it's great to be here. I appreciate you inviting me. [00:01:36] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. I'd love if you wouldn't mind starting off by sharing just a little bit about yourself, your background, and what led you to MedTech. [00:01:45] Logan McKnight: Of course. Yeah. So my name is Logan McKnight and I have been in medtech for almost the last 20 years. And I think my journey, I, a lot of people have a very similar like origin story of haphazardly finding their way into medtech. I was pre-med in college. I wanted to go into veterinary school and I think I panicked honestly last minute, not really wanting to go. I interned under vet who basically dissuaded me from doing all the work of vet school and said go to med school. And feeling a little lost, I found my way to medtech, particularly neural monitoring, which was a field, pretty niche, but basically I got trained by a company to go in and run equipment and monitor patient's nervous systems during surgery. And to me, just having my bachelor's degree and having that level of impact and being able to jump right into patient care without having to go to more, you know, years and years of schooling was right up my alley and it's been such a wild ride. You know, I was a technologist and then I became a manager and then VP of development of business development, and head of contracting. And then I went over to a small company where I was the vice president of the whole company, and then eventually CEO, and now I'm consulting for medtech companies. So it's been a really fun journey that I didn't plan at all. [00:03:06] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay. Well, excellent. And that brings up so many questions, but to start, so you were thinking originally you might wanna be a vet. Do you have you know, like, did you grow up with animals? Did you just have an amazing love for them? Where did that come from? [00:03:23] Logan McKnight: You know, honestly, I think I would've had way more animals, but my parents were a lot more reasonable than I was. So we just had the regular pets, but I grew up like horseback riding and in the Midwest, in Ohio. So I was around a lot of farm animals and things like that and I was part of like FFA and horticulture. So future Farmers of America. And I actually was really interested in large animals because I didn't wanna deal with people, I didn't wanna deal with people or their pets. So, and you know, and so that was what panicked me about med school was like the whole plan was veterinary school was to avoid the people part. And then I found through medtech you know, neuromonitoring and surgery where my patients are asleep. And so I still got to do all the things that I love, like providing impact, but then, you know, not having to worry about, I guess all for me I just had my head like all the challenges and complications that deal dealing with patients that I thought would make my job and life really difficult. So it's been really fun to kind of focus on just like the care and how to move things forward and explore this big, wide open space of how to impact people's lives in surgery. [00:04:31] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And you know what's interesting about that too is, though, I think it sounds like throughout your, though, as you've, you know, gone from technologist and then you've had all of these amazing career changes and growth basically. It sounds like, you know, you have developed though your own kind of leadership style, so even though maybe originally you weren't sure about dealing with people, so to speak, you've actually excelled at it. So I'm curious how that has evolved for you in creating and managing teams. [00:05:03] Logan McKnight: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think like initially I was trying to control all these variables before I got into leadership in people, and then realized like you can't do that once you get to actually working with people. And once you almost like acknowledge and recognize, you can't control that but there's some beauty in that of you just allow for what you allow and then you know, you have to give people the ability to function like at their level. And you create the parameters. But other than that, like some magic happens when you don't try to control every single thing. And I see so many, especially new managers, you know, being like, "I need to control everything." And they're wondering why they're exhausted or their team's not respecting them. And it's like, gotta let go, gotta let go of the wheel a little bit. So, you know, I think those are some lessons and sometimes they just come with time and experience. [00:05:55] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, when you started, well, let's go back to the beg, maybe it's kind of at the beginning of your career. What are some things that you learned as a technologist and as you were growing within the hospital systems themselves, that contributed to basically where you would become now to become an entrepreneur and all of that. [00:06:21] Logan McKnight: Yeah, I mean, I will be very honest, and this is not meant to be a dig at anybody who I'd worked with or any boss. But I just, I went to work for a private company and we went and we were almost like hired mercenaries. So we would go to like, you know, every day I was in a different hospital. I didn't know my schedule till the night before. I rarely saw my manager and, you know, rarely saw other members of my team and it really felt like I was very isolated and alone. And it added to my burnout and also feeling like I didn't have anyone watch, like looking out for me and my back as a younger employee. And I realized there was so much room for improvement there in how you manage a team remotely. And so I think I, I just like mentally I was a psychology major before I switched to pre-med, and so I think like the, like human brain, because I was, you know, neuroscience, but like psychology, I think is so fascinating to me and the way people tick and what makes them tick. And I, I'm a big believer if you can figure out the way people tick, you can unlock so many things in the world and like you can, you know, you can be the most brilliant person, but if you can't communicate effectively, if you can't manage a team, you're really not gonna take things to the next level because you're not gonna activate those people around you to perform and get something done. So I feel like it was a case study for me to kind of watch like these managers and struggle and I'm like, "Ah, that's what I'm not going to do." [00:07:47] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. Yeah. Sometimes learning from examples that maybe you wish you didn't have to learn from though can be the best teachers and actually serve your, you know, your own leadership style and your people that you end up getting to influence. It actually does help in the long term, but so. [00:08:06] Logan McKnight: Totally. [00:08:07] Lindsey Dinneen: So when you started GoodKnight Consulting, what was the impetus for that? I mean, you'd had this you've had this amazing career so far. You're ready kind of just for the next step or what sparked that? [00:08:19] Logan McKnight: You know, it's interesting, I stepped down from my CEO position 'cause I was feeling, I was running a neuromonitoring service company in the Pacific Northwest. We also had a professional services arm with neurologists. And then I had a medical billing c

    36 min

  4. FEB 20

    Stuart Grant | Founder, Archetype Medtech | Engineering Innovations, Medtech Advancements, & Global Impact

    Dr. Stuart Grant, founder of Archetype Medtech, shares his journey designing and delivering breakthrough orthopedic and surgical innovations across the UK, US, and China. Stuart recounts how an early internship led him into medtech, what kept him there, and how building the ASPAC Innovation Center in China helped accelerate a total knee instrument system that dramatically reduced time to market. He explains the leap from corporate leader to entrepreneur: planning for years, earning a PhD in Medtech Product Innovation, and building a consultancy that helps startups and scale-ups turn early clinical unmet needs into market-ready, regulator-approved devices through a network of experts and an “expertise for equity” model.    Guest links: https://archetype-medtech.com/  Charity supported: Sleep in Heavenly Peace Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 074 - Stuart Grant [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host Lindsey, and today I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Stuart Grant. Dr. Grant is a chartered engineer and the founder of Archetype Medtech, a consultancy and innovation studio helping medical device startups and scale ups transform early clinical, unmet needs into market ready products. With nearly 25 years of experience, Stuart has led global teams across the UK, US, China, and emerging markets delivering breakthrough innovations in hip, knee, shoulder, and trauma surgery. A highlight of his career was establishing the ASPAC Innovation Center in China, where he built R&D capability from the ground up and launched a pioneering total knee instrument system that dramatically reduced time to market. Passionate about advancing medical technology and mentoring future engineers, he bridges creativity, engineering, and regulation to accelerate safer, smarter medtech innovation worldwide. All right. Welcome to the show. It's so great to have you here today. Thanks for joining me. [00:01:57] Stuart Grant: It's lovely to be here, Lindsey. [00:01:58] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Excellent. Well, I was wondering if you could start by sharing a little bit about yourself, your background, and what led you to medtech. [00:02:08] Stuart Grant: Yeah. So, I was actually, I'm obviously, as you can tell from my accent, I'm British, but I was born in Germany because my, my dad was in the military in the 1970s when I was born. So I was born actually in Berlin, which is quite interesting to be a place to be, grew up in. So I traveled around a lot here in the UK, in Germany with my dad getting posted everywhere. My mom's a nurse. So I was in medtech, not really knowing I was in medtech as a kid, but I, my family was, so yeah. And then obviously went to school, all the places I was at university. I went to university to do product design, and my goal was to be a product designer, a cool product designer, designing fancy products like Johnny Ive. And when I was looking for a job as a co-op, or an intern as you call them in the US, I was just really unsuccessful finding a job. I was doing a lot of interviews, getting turned down, sending my CV out a lot, and j happened just to advertise on the Board of University, and it said Johnson Orthopedics and no one really knew what that was in. And none of my fellow students at applied because they thought it would be designing baby bottles for putting talcum powder in and shampoo in and stuff like that. So they're like, "I'm not doing that job." So I desperately applied for it and luckily found out about all this medtech, and I've been here doing medtech for 25 years. So they gave me a job. I had to work hard to keep the job and get reemployed over and over again. But yeah, joining originally Johnson Orthopedics a long time ago is how I found out about medtech. I never knew when I was 18 that really it was a thing that existed. [00:03:47] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. So, okay. So you thought product design, and then when you got into medtech, what were some of the things that attracted you and that actually compelled you to stay and make a career out of it? [00:04:00] Stuart Grant: Ha. So I was a young guy with the student debts. What compelled me, I was getting paid to stay, but not to be too flippant about it, but, you know, when I was doing this engineering and design work in my early days in the CAD system, it was just so interesting. I was designing these products that were going into people or the instrumentation to make help the surgeon and going to these ORs and watching the surgeon do their job and trying to figure out how how I can make it better from their input was really interesting. I could apply it straight away, basically. In the early two thousands, there wasn't all these regulations and standards that slowed you down. So you could go and design an instrument, get it machined in the machine shop, get it clean, take it to the surgeon, he can use it, you know, probably be frowned upon 25 years later. But that's what we used to do and really adapt. And probably more interesting than going into product design and fast moving consumer goods where you're designing a, a kettle or a toaster or something, a plastic casing. It was actually much more interesting to do that. And I stayed because I spent four years here in Leeds, in the UK, was getting a bit bored and wanted to find something else to do, and then an opportunity came up in the US. So I moved over to Warsaw, Indiana, the orthopedics capital of the world, as you might know it. Worked there for, stayed there for seven years. Really enjoyed it.. People sort of bemoan Warsaw for being in the sticks in just a bunch of cornfields around it. But I enjoyed it. It's got, we had a good bunch of young friends there. I was in late twenties, early thirties at the time. There was Noah and Spikes. You'd go for a drink and some nice food. It was all right. I enjoyed my time and after that I was, after seven years, I was like, "Okay, what do I do next?" And I was looking around for jobs in medtech. Then another opportunity came up in and we were looking for people to go over and help set it up, train the staff on what MedTech product development was. And so I jumped to the chance and spent five years living in China, in Shanghai. After five years is your limit, so I had to come home. I couldn't stay. I wanted to stay, but they wouldn't allow me to. So, so I came back to the UK. And then started MDR for five years as leading the Joints MDR program, which was lots of fun, as you could probably tell, wasn't really R&D, was a lot of leadership and project management and dealing with a lot of people and a lot of problems on a day-to-day basis. And so, yeah, after that I I left J&J about three years ago and started my own product development agency. And we can talk about a little bit about that later. So that's where I am and where I got to. [00:06:50] Lindsey Dinneen: Excellent. Yeah, I definitely wanna talk about that as well. But going back a little bit-- and perhaps this is actually something that's occurred since you started your own company as well-- but are there any moments that really stand out to you along your journey of affirming that, "Hey, yeah, I actually am in the right place, in the right industry?" [00:07:12] Stuart Grant: That's a really hard one is sort of the, is the grass always greener somewhere else, type of question. Right? I guess compare, you shouldn't compare, but comparing to my friends at my university, my product design and what they've done and what I've done they've moved into the car industry a lot. Went to the car development and car industries always had its ups and downs and its problems. And you know, they've had some really cracking jobs working for McLaren and Ferrari and you know, but I think just the interesting things that medtech do that nobody really knows about is really what keeps me moving along and having conversations with people when they, you tell them like, "I used to design hips and knees and shoulders and things like that," and they're like, "Oh, my mother's got a hip and knee" and blah, blah, and you really talk about it. Actually, my mother does have a hip now and she's going in a couple months time to get the other hip done. I do know what brand she's got, so. [00:08:10] Lindsey Dinneen: See, that's really cool. Yeah. Okay. So, so, on your LinkedIn I noticed that you describe yourself as a fixer, a challenger, and a change maker, which I love. But I'd love to hear from you exactly what you mean by all those things as you have developed in your career, and now as you're doing, of course, your own consulting. [00:08:34] Stuart Grant: Yeah, so in Johnson and my colleagues are probably, I agree with this, I had a bit of a reputation of getting the more difficult projects. The, that's probably why I got MDR in the end 'cause I would always get the projects that had problems and I e

    36 min

  5. FEB 6

    Rachel Knutton | Founder & CEO, Alluvia Studio | MedTech Storytelling, Brand Consistency, & Joy-Driven Leadership

    Rachel Knutton, founder and CEO of Alluvia Studio, shares how a 30-year healthcare journey—from hospital marketing and public relations (PR) at HCA Healthcare to medical device commercialization, product launches, and sales—shaped her belief that everything in MedTech ultimately comes down to storytelling. Rachel explains how her “been there” experience in hospitals, cases, and value analysis environments helps her create messaging that’s compelling, compliant, and built to endure. She also opens up about becoming an “accidental entrepreneur,” discovering unexpected fulfillment in leading people, and building an agency culture grounded in authenticity, humor, and joy.    Guest links: www.alluviastudio.com | www.linkedin.com/rachelknutton | www.linkedin.com/alluviastudio  Charity supported: Sleep in Heavenly Peace Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 073 - Rachel Knutton [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I'm delighted to welcome Rachel Knutton. Rachel is founder and CEO of Alluvia Studio, a strategic medtech marketing agency based in Tennessee that supports some of the largest medtech brands in the world. Her experience in healthcare spans 30 years, including hospital marketing and PR for HCA Healthcare, as well as various roles in medical device commercialization, sales and marketing. Right. Well, welcome to the show, Rachel. It's so nice to you for having me. Of course. I would love if you would start off by just, uh, telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and what led you to medtech. [00:01:36] Rachel Knutton: Yeah, so I actually have a pretty interesting background and I bet I'll cover a little bit more of it as we go through the discussion, but currently I have an MedTech marketing agency. We have 16 employees. been in business technically since 2011, so 14 years. And just really focused on this industry. My path to getting into MedTech actually came through HCA Healthcare. I started working in hospital world back in 1996. And actually it was accidental. I, you know, I was pretty new outta school, a couple years outta school and I'd answered an ad and I dove right into a really exciting world. It's, you know, of course headquartered here in Nashville. Learned all about hospitals. I supported I think eight different hospitals at that time that were in region, the Nashville region, doing marketing and public relations, walked into my first open heart surgery case, helped feed employees at midnight, handled all kinds of interesting PR events because we're hearing Nashville, a lot of country music stars might get hospitalized. And I did that for about 10 years. And then I ended up moving into devices a recruiter, and it's when Kimberly Clark Healthcare had gone into the medical devices arena through the purchase of Ballard. so honestly I really didn't know much about it. But I had, you know, I did have my MBA, I had been working in healthcare, which sort of met the qualifications at that time. And I got a early start in marcom. Learned so much, got back into the hospital through that role from the other side of the coin and I had the chance to do product management, launch a product, and then I moved into sales and sold the product a whole bag and then got back into the hospital, you know, working through the whole value EIS ecosystem and working with physicians and being in cases. So it's been a very interesting path for sure. [00:03:37] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And so I'm curious about a lot of things, but I'll start with this. So what do you find are some of the differences and similarities between marketing and PR for the hospital side of things versus the device side of things? [00:03:55] Rachel Knutton: I mean, certainly I think PR piece is a much bigger aspect, the community aspect. Um. Every hospital is such an important part of the community. So there's a heavy weight there on that. And then of course, the regional aspect of it. So whereas in the device world, you know, all targeting like very large geographies, maybe either the US or outside of the US. And so in the hospital world, that tends to be more regionalized. I would say. That's like one of the big differences for sure. And then honestly, hospital world, it's more business to consumer. is a lot of physician related marketing as you're trying to drive preference to, you know, using your hospital for surgeries or trying to recruit physicians, but it's a lot more B2C in the, medtech world. world. [00:04:44] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so you mentioned know, you responded to an an ad and that led you to was sort of like, well, a say, um, synergy, whatever you wanna say. that was was marketing and communications something that you always had a passion for or what led you to kind of pursue that? [00:05:05] Rachel Knutton: Yeah. Well actually I was a little bit more of a writer. would say telling stories is origin story. So I wanted to work in magazines. This is back when we still did print and newspapers and things like that. And always wanted to work in the magazine um, industry and I, and it started out writing for a business magazine. Started working for an agency for Ford, doing writing for a sales focused magazine. And so it just sort of morphed into that. I would say in the marketing and PR world, we were telling stories about patient stories, pitching those to newspapers. We were telling stories about physicians doing new types of procedures employees, you know, trying to promote them within the hospital world. That's also important to that ecosystem. And so I think that's kind of where that transition happened. And I would say that's still what I do today. So it's taken a lot of different forms and product management and working in Excel files and figuring out demand forecast isn't really about telling stories what it is, right? Everything is about telling a story in the end. [00:06:06] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like you have the strategist side, the analytical side, and the creative side, which doesn't always, you know, align. And so tell us a little bit about your approach maybe to, say, there's a client of yours that is interested in bringing a product to market, and story tell to help them achieve their goals, and within compliance, because obviously that's a component. [00:06:35] Rachel Knutton: yeah, I mean, that's certainly in our industry, you know, figuring out are the guardrails. course in marketing, I always think, you know, we, know the rules. But we're also going to make sure that we're not self-limiting within those rules. So I let the regulatory people and the legal people push back. But I know what not to risk, right? So I think one of the things that's very helpful is having sold devices, having launched devices myself, having worked in the hospital system, I spent a lot of time on the floors watching how devices are used. I spent time in ICU collecting data. I think really having been part of that environment helps feed the story building process. It's almost like a natural part of what goes into building that story. So because of that experience, because I've walked those halls, I've been in those shoes, I kind of know what some of those limitations are and that just automatically configures into the storytelling process. I know what the product managers are up against when they're trying to launch a product. And theoretically, I should know the right questions to ask and how they got to the product that they have today and how they've, you know, customer feedback has fed into that. And then how do we take that and make sure that the messaging meets the same requirements? Like you have a, you know, you have design requirements, well, your messaging should have the same requirements and achieve a goal. So I think that's the analytical side is making sure, does the message achieve the goal? Are we being very committed to what's the business objective? How is the marketing objective supporting that? And then is the, how is the messaging fitting into that? I think that's a very important part of the discipline. We also are very familiar with, you know, claims matrices and the importance of having, you know, data and research to support claims. And so kind of knowing that framework, I think is helpful when you're building messaging because helps you think through like, okay, here's how the client is going to need to organize the messaging. Here's how they're gonna have to reuse the messaging. You know, how can we be very consistent in how we roll that out so they're not having to go back through and through their approval process every time. It's really important part of the discipline in the medtech world that we have to deal with that industries as well, of course, but it's certain

    34 min

  6. JAN 23

    Shaun Bagai | CEO, RenovoRx | Revolutionary Cancer Treatment, Startup Success, & Medtech Mentorship

    Shaun Bagai is the CEO and Director of RenovoRx, and a seasoned MedTech leader whose path began with a Silicon Valley startup internship that ultimately pulled him away from medical school and into building life-changing technologies. Shaun shares how early experiences in clinical research, physician training, and commercialization—from Medtronic to multiple high-growth startups—shaped his leadership philosophy around mentorship, hiring for “fit,” and balancing empowerment with accountability. Shaun reflects on legacy, values-driven leadership, and why networking rooted in genuine curiosity can become one of the most powerful tools in a MedTech career. Guest links: https://renovorx.com/contact-us/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaun-r-bagai/   Charity supported: ASPCA Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 072 - Shaun Bagai [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I am delighted to introduce you to my guest, Sean Bagai. Sean has served as Chief Executive Officer and Director since 2014 of RenovoRx. Prior to joining, he led global market development for HeartFlow, Inc from 2011 to 2014, which included directing Japanese market research, regulatory payer collaboration, and key opinion leader development to create value, resulting in a company investment to form HeartFlow Japan. During his tenure at HeartFlow, he successfully orchestrated their largest clinical trial to date and contracted HeartFlow's first global customers. In addition, Sean has launched innovative technologies into regional and global marketplaces in both large corporations and growth phase novel technology companies. Sean is a graduate from the University of California Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Science in Biology / Pre-med. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here, Sean. I'm so delighted to speak with you today. [00:01:54] Shaun Bagai: Thanks for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. [00:01:55] Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. Well, I'd love, if you wouldn't mind starting off by just telling us a little bit about who you are, what your background has been like, and what led you to MedTech? [00:02:07] Shaun Bagai: I really appreciate the question 'cause it's really my background and kinda the early part of my journey that landed me where I am today. I actually did an internship at a medical device startup company in Silicon Valley between what would've been college and med school. And while I was applying to med school, my goal was to get some experience in the industry, in a medical technology space, and then go out to med school. And the founder of my company and CEO really advised me not to go to med school once I got in to become, someday an entrepreneur like his own self. And I ended up following his footsteps with the goal of, just like he, did build companies that really make a major impact on medicine. [00:02:44] Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. [00:02:45] Shaun Bagai: So from, yeah, so from that early kind of intro to medical technology and learning what an entrepreneur could do in building new therapies and technologies, I ended up running clinical research at that company once I declined med school. We exited to Medtronic where I learned the sales side of things. So, this physician founder CEO along with my mentor, said, look, if you want to build and run companies, you have to really understand what the market's like and how you get a product into the hands of physicians to treat patients and what it takes to really sell the product. So I spent a couple years flying around the country training physicians on the technology that I learned as a proctor-- which I've done in every company that I've worked with and for-- then went on to sales for about five years and launched Medtronic's first drug coated coronary stent as a sales representative. And then transitioned out of Medtronic after several years, cutting my teeth on the big company dynamics and the sales revenue aspect of it to a startup company called Ardian, which developed a new way to treat high blood pressure using a device. There I led physician training, transitioned them from clinical research into commercial in Europe. We exited to Medtronic for about a billion dollars and went on to another startup company to help develop their market. And really that was a disruptive technology in how to assess coronary artery disease in leading international market development. They hired me about 15 years prematurely to commercialize them, so I helped them with physician training, market development in Japan, clinical research and left to join RenovoRx where I took over 11 and a half years ago. That company actually went public for about 2.5 billion this last year. So, and all three of these technologies have really already made a major impact on patients, and I feel that RenovoRx, this has probably my biggest one yet in terms of major impact. [00:04:26] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay. So I can't wait to dive into that, but there's a lot before that too to talk about. So, when you were growing up, was medicine and science always a huge interest to you or did that develop later on? [00:04:41] Shaun Bagai: You know, it's funny you asked 'cause I've done a lot of interviews and that question has never come up. So I've gotta, I've gotta pause for a second. It's interesting. My, my background was really business oriented growing up. I loved business. I loved the idea of how you get something marketable. As a very young child, I had very embarrassing stories of trying to sell things as a kid that I used to bring back from India, for example, like bouncy balls or crocheted place mats or whatnot. But then sustaining a football injury in high school, I found that physicians couldn't treat me. And I learned that there's gotta be a different way to treat patients. And I arrogantly thought, "Well, I could be a better doctor than you guys and someday treat young athletes like myself." So, my passion went immediately and complete a hundred percent into become a physician to help patients. So that kind of transitioned me to being med school bound from the age of about 15, and didn't look back until I got into med school and got pushed back to business. And now I get the best of both worlds. [00:05:37] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, no, absolutely. So you have so many diverse experiences with a bunch of different companies and you know, everything from it sounds like a quite the small team to obviously these huge enterprise type companies. What are some of the key lessons you learned along the way that help you in your current role? [00:05:58] Shaun Bagai: I think the biggest aspect I've learned along the way, and what I'd definitely tell the younger entrepreneurs, is to be very open and receptive to different ideas. Also look for mentorship and leadership examples. And I've been lucky throughout my career, I've been able to identify leaders who are not perfect because no one is, but I found skill sets and activities and thought processes that I wanted to emulate, and I feel like I've been successful because I've been able to take the best of those and also look for mistakes and weaknesses and to see how I could either surround myself with people to fulfill my lack of strengths in areas and or improve on myself to help be a better leader by emulating them. [00:06:37] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And speaking of leadership, as you kind of grew into all of these, you know, more and more responsibility laden roles, were there any moments along the way where you kind of just had these learning curves of, you know, either witnessing something that you were like, "Oof, I don't wanna do that." Or the opposite of it sounds like you had maybe some really great mentors in your life that showed you perhaps a better way of doing things. But in terms of your overall leadership strategy, how did the various good, bad, and ugly shape how you show up as a leader? [00:07:16] Shaun Bagai: You know, that's a four hour discussion probably, but, but to, to tackle some of the high notes that I learned, it's --and I continue to always learn-- the biggest challenge we face as leaders is trying to find out what makes people work in the right fit for your organization. And as, as you mentioned aptly, I've worked for very large and small teams, big companies, small companies, and not everyone's fit for those positions. You have very talented, enthusiastic, passionate people that could really flourish in a big company structured environment and would die in a startup company. And vice versa. You have very structured people that cannot understand the idea of progress ahead of process in small companies as well, and finding that balance of trying to get the best out of what someone likes to do and what their fit is. And further really identifying if you can align their passions and their

    27 min

  7. JAN 9

    Hyedi Nelson | Director of Health Strategy, Bellmont Partners | Navigating MedTech PR, Strategic Communication, and Industry Innovation

    Hyedi Nelson, the Director of Health Strategy at Bellmont Partners and an award-winning strategic health communications leader, shares her journey from studying mass communication to becoming an expert in medtech communications. She discusses the importance of storytelling, building trust, and collaborating with various stakeholders, including engineers and regulatory bodies. Hyedi also touches on the evolution of social media in the medtech space and offers insights on fostering creativity while staying compliant.    Guest links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hyedinelson/ | https://bellmontpartners.com/health-and-medical-public-relations/  Charity supported: Equal Justice Initiative  Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 071 - Hyedi Nelson Lindsey Dinneen: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Lindsey, 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 back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I'm delighted to introduce you to my guest, Hyedi Nelson. Hyedi is an [00:01:00] award-winning strategic health communications leader with deep experience partnering with MedTech companies of all sizes and stages, with a special affinity for working with entrepreneurial startup companies. She has dedicated her career to leveraging her strategic communication skills and expertise to help improve health outcomes. Hyedi is the Director of Health Strategy at Bellmont Partners, a full service PR and communications agency where she helps medtech organizations navigate and communicate around complex crisis situations and mergers and acquisitions, launch breakthrough technologies, raise capital, drive clinical study patient enrollment, and ultimately position themselves effectively with key partners and interested parties, including investors, healthcare providers, current and prospective employees, media, and patients and caregivers. All right, Hyedi, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here today. Hyedi Nelson: Thank you for having me. Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. I would love, if you wouldn't mind starting off by sharing just a little bit about yourself, your background, and what led you to medtech.[00:02:00] Hyedi Nelson: Sure. Absolutely. So my name is Hyedi Nelson. I'm currently the Director of Health Strategy at Bellmont Partners. We're a full service communications and PR agency located in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, which I'm sure you're well aware, that's considered Medical Alley. My whole background, my whole career has been spent in health and medtech communications. So, I kind of gotten to that area and just really fell in love with it. I guess the backstory on that, I was graduating undergrad from the University of Minnesota in mass communication and still kind of didn't really know what I wanted to do and timing-- I'll date myself here-- but that was around 2008 and so if you recall, it's kind of a tough time, you know, in the economy and a lot of my friends who were graduating were having a hard time finding a job. And around the same time I ended up just kind of looking for a class to take to fill some re remaining requirements for graduation. And I took a health [00:03:00] theory class and I just like became obsessed with health and I started to think, well, maybe there's something there. And the professor of that class actually shared with me that they had a two year master's MA program that was like a joint program between the School of Journalism and the School of Public Health. And so you've got this really nice combination of you know, communication theory and how to create, you know, more communication strategies and influence public health, but you also got a really good overview of the healthcare field as well as some basic knowledge in like epidemiology and biostats to like really give you the tools you need to do a good job as a healthcare communicator. So I ended up applying for that and finishing out that program and kind of positioning myself in a better place a couple years later to graduate and look for employment. So during that time, I was asked to participate on a Social Media for Healthcare panel. [00:04:00] So at the time it was like social media was super new to healthcare. They were really far behind, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And I met someone who was PR professional and I was not super familiar with the world of prPR but we started talking and she shared that they were really looking to expand their health and MedTech practice within the, within their agency. And kind of one thing led to another and I applied and started working there, and the rest is history there. That's kind of what I've been doing ever since. Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. So first of all, thank you for sharing a little bit about that. There's so much I kind of wanna dive into. But I'm curious, was journalism and marketing and those kinds of interests were, did you have those, you know, growing up? Or was this something that developed in college, or how did that all come about? Hyedi Nelson: I think for me, just the love of writing, first and foremost, was what really did it for me. I read a lot, so I was always just [00:05:00] like really amazed that people could, like, use words to, you know, make you transport yourself into this other place, or get you to take some sort of action. It seemed like kind of a magical thing. And then you know, just going through school and everything, I realized that like my skillset definitely wasn't like math or that side of things and was really drawn more to the the writing piece of it all. So, I thought about, "Do I wanna be an English major?" Do I, I actually went into college wanting to go into the music industry and did an internship for a record label-- I suppose that's another story for another day-- but ended up deciding an English major, wasn't sure I what I wanted to do with that. And so, trial and error kind of decided that communications more broadly, you know, whether it's journalism or strategic communications felt like it would be a really good fit for kind of where my interests lied. Lindsey Dinneen: Nice. Yeah. And so-- okay, well what's funny is I actually did wanna dive a little bit. So we're gonna, if we can take a [00:06:00] very quick detour into the music aspect, because I did notice on your LinkedIn that's something you still do, is you actually help musicians-- is that correct-- with some of their PR and marketing? Hyedi Nelson: Yeah. I, a couple years ago started my own consulting side hustle thing where I really use, you know, my skills that I do like in my full-time job and a communication strategy and promotion and publicity and project management to help independent artists, just because I have a lot of friends and my partners a musician. And I see kind of the struggles that they go through with how the industry is, is really like how it exists and how the payment structures aren't there and it's really hard for them to make a living as well as the fact that they're expected to like not only be a super creative person who's putting like this music out into the world, but also like a business person and a marketer and, you know, all those things. [00:07:00] So, kind of doing that to like merge all of my passions together and do something kind of fun and different than what I do, you know, during the day. Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. No, I love that. I love that. Especially because I don't know if we've talked about this before-- it's, I know we've had a few different conversations before this-- but yeah, i'm also a professional ballerina and so I understand. Stand having the two sides of, you know, the art, the artist and the medtech enthusiast and sort of the both worlds. So I just I love that you do both too. Hyedi Nelson: There's gotta be some sort of like where that helps us in our job somehow, like having that too. I don't know, but I think so, yeah. Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I think part of it is, you know, creative problem solving and, you know, sort of the skill sets that are learned. Are you a music musician yourself? Hyedi Nelson: I mean, I am not very good at it, Okay. I do play, yes. Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And so I think a lot of the, of it comes from the [00:08:00] discipline of having, you know, grown up learning some kind of an artistic endeavor because it's, there's so much discipline that goes into it. There's so much you have all of these skill sets that you're learning. And anyway, I don't wanna get too far off on the tangent, but that is one thing that I do think it helps honestly. But yeah. So, okay. So back to your career. So now you are working with Bellmont Partners, and can you just share a little bit about what your day-to-day kind of looks like helping these medtech, health, tech life science companies succeed? Hyedi Nelson: Sure. Yeah. I mean, every day can be wildly different than the last. But in my role, I really, I've been with the agency now for about 12 years and we've really grown tremendously our busines

    37 min

  8. 12/12/2025

    Katie Bochnowski | SVP Customer Success & Services, NowSecure | Navigating Mobile Security in MedTech

    Katie Bochnowski is the Senior Vice President of Customer Success & Services at NowSecure. Katie shares her journey from studying cyber forensics at Purdue University to becoming an expert in mobile app security and forensics. She discusses the impactful work her team does in securing mobile apps, especially in the medtech industry. Katie also offers valuable advice on building relationships within organizations, the importance of security best practices, and staying curious as a professional.  Guest links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestrzempka/ | https://www.nowsecure.com/ Charity supported: Save the Children Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at theleadingdifference@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 070 - Katie Bochnowski [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I am absolutely delighted to introduce you to my guest, Katie Bochnowski. Katie is Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Services at NowSecure co-author of the book, "iPhone and iOS Forensics," and a recognized expert in mobile forensics and app security testing. Katie holds a master's in Cyber Forensics and Bachelor's of Science and Computer Technology from Purdue University. In her current role, Katie oversees customer support, onboarding and success departments, as well as the mobile AppSec Professional Services Organization that is responsible for pen testing, training, and consulting. All right. Well, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so delighted to speak with you today. [00:01:37] Katie Bochnowski: Awesome. I'm really happy to be here. [00:01:39] Lindsey Dinneen: Excellent. Well, I would love, if you wouldn't mind just starting off by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and what led you to medtech. [00:01:48] Katie Bochnowski: Awesome. Sure. So, I'm Katie Bochnowski. I work for a company called NowSecure. My background, dating back many years to school is in computer technology and more specifically cyber forensics. Where I am now is mobile app security. How I got into that industry is, is really from that forensic background. Our company used to do data recovery and forensic investigations on mobile devices, and we kind of quickly realized that mobile apps are storing a lot of data. So we shifted into proactively working with organizations to secure those apps that reside on devices. And in terms of medtech, obviously you can probably make that connection, but we began working closely with first, companies that really care about the data that's being stored, and transmitted on those apps, which absolutely includes medtech industry. [00:02:43] Lindsey Dinneen: Awesome. Okay, so going back a little bit. So when you were first deciding on college paths and career paths and all those lovely things, what drew you to where you ended up? [00:02:55] Katie Bochnowski: You know, I don't have a great, like "aha" moment for this question. It was just one of those things. I grew up, I had a computer in my house. I did Typing Tutor when I was really young on MS Dos, and I just always en enjoyed that. I had a friend in high school and we both got interested in making our own website with HTML. So, it was just enjoying being around computers and also tinkering to figure out what was wrong with something from a technology perspective. Purdue is where I attended. Purdue had a more generic computer technology degree that I didn't have to know exactly what I wanted to do. You could try different paths, so that's kind of what got me into it. It's not like I knew I wanted to do that my whole life, but I never really went back or questioned it. I always just kind of enjoyed it along the way. [00:03:45] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Excellent. Okay, so the phrase cyber forensics is just exciting. So, can you dive a little bit more into exactly what that means and entails and what it looks like? [00:03:57] Katie Bochnowski: Yeah, absolutely. So, it is exciting- -so much so, in fact, that my senior year of college, the very first time they offered this class, it was called Cyber Forensics, it was an elective and it sounded amazing. And, it was amazing. It was really cool. We went through from start to finish, how you collect evidence from a computer and technology perspective, how you keep it pristine, how you collect the data off of it. We even got to work with local law enforcement as part of an internship to do all that, so I was very lucky in that my very last semester of my four years, they offered this and I just really, really liked it. It always was there in the back of my mind. So yeah, cyber forensics is really the collective of all things digital, which is everything, now. I don't do, necessarily, that work anymore, but I can't even imagine all of the data collection off of Alexas and, and all of those devices. But yeah, that's, that's kind of how I got into that. [00:04:56] Lindsey Dinneen: Wow, that's really cool. Yeah. So, okay, so talking about this data collection and all of these things, I'm curious, what are maybe one or two things that just really surprised you when you started getting into the industry and doing the work? [00:05:11] Katie Bochnowski: I know people always said this, and it shouldn't have been a surprise, but when I first started working for NowSecure-- which was actually called Via Forensics back in the day when I first started-- we worked on a lot of individual cases, so people saying, " Can you recover my deleted text messages, and pictures..." and things like that, and the amount of data that really does reside on those devices still after you delete them, going back months, years. So, I don't know if that's still the case now. I don't know if they do a better job of that, but that was surprising to us. What was also surprising was how much apps are storing and transmitting data on those devices when you don't think about it. So a lot of these cases that we would work on, they would focus so much on voicemails, emails, photos, and text messages, but nobody ever said, "Hey, can you go check the Facebook app or the Messenger app you're using?" That was something we realized pretty quickly, and were shocked to see-- this was 15 years ago-- how many apps were storing incredibly sensitive information on those devices. [00:06:20] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And so now that there's more awareness of this and people are maybe, hopefully taking a little bit more ownership of even their own awareness and education with all of it, what do you see are the changes and shifts towards better protection? [00:06:38] Katie Bochnowski: Yeah. Great question. So there's a couple things: One, people are more aware, so they are leveraging the best practices really for these things. So there's places you should and shouldn't store data on devices, and you should use encryption for sensitive information and encryption that can't easily be broken into. The platforms themselves, too--Android, iOS-- have also made improvements in protecting those sandboxes. But, it's not everything, so you absolutely still have to be mindful of that. A lot of organizations like medtech companies and financial organizations do add a lot of those extra protections. But a lot of people don't, still. They're not either, don't think about it as much or aren't aware of it. And then the other thing that we see is everyone could have, you know, a hundred percent perfect intentions in storing and protecting that data, but you make a mistake, or you accidentally leave a debug flag on or something like that, where this information still can be accessed even though developers and security organizations are following the best practices there. [00:07:51] Lindsey Dinneen: Hmm. Yeah. So as you look toward the future of device security in general and cybersecurity, what are you looking forward to in terms of improvements, and hope for the future? Because I know there's a lot of things to worry about, just in life. But, what are some of the things that you're hopeful about? [00:08:11] Katie Bochnowski: Yeah. I'm hopeful for the--I'm going to call it the camaraderie--we're seeing between security and development groups. Not that there was argument or debate between them before-- there probably was a little bit-- but we are seeing a lot more organizations have what they refer to as a Security Champions Program, which brings those groups together. Security used to be seen, and probably in a lot of cases still, is seen as that blocker. Developers are being rushed and pushed to release features quickly. They have deadlines, timelines, and then if security finds an issue, it has to go back to the drawing board to remediate. But, with these programs, we're seeing either a development group that has a security champion there, or just teams kind of melding together a little bit more to build that testing earlier on. That's a trend we're seeing increase more and more. And

    29 min
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About

MedTech Leaders Changing Lives for a Better World

Information

  • Creator
    Velentium
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    77
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2024 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    The Leading Difference