37 Best Thought Leaders Globally on Leadership in Medical Device Industry (2026)
- Jonno White
- Apr 2
- 23 min read
Updated: Apr 3
Introduction
The medical device industry is one of the most demanding leadership environments on earth. Leaders in this sector must simultaneously navigate FDA and regulatory compliance, accelerate product innovation, manage deeply technical cross-functional teams, and keep patient safety at the centre of every decision, all while operating under commercial pressure and global supply chain complexity. Research from the Global Leadership Forecast 2025 found that 77% of CHROs lack confidence in their leadership bench strength for critical roles, and that gap is felt nowhere more acutely than in medtech, where the cost of poor leadership is not just financial but clinical.
Yet despite all of this complexity, the conversation about who is actually shaping leadership thinking in the medical device industry has been surprisingly thin. Most existing lists focus on clinical innovators or product pioneers. Far fewer spotlight the leaders, coaches, authors, podcast hosts, journalists, and academics who are actively thinking about how medtech organisations can be better led, not just what devices they should build next.
This guide changes that. If you have been searching for the best thought leaders globally on leadership in the medical device industry, you have found the right resource. The 37 individuals profiled here span executive leadership, organisational culture, women in medtech, regulatory leadership, talent and team dynamics, global emerging markets, and the journalism and podcast ecosystem that shapes the industry’s self-understanding. Some are household names in the medtech world. Others are rising voices whose insight deserves a far larger audience.
The medical device market is projected to reach approximately $680 billion in 2025 and grow at a compound annual rate of around 6 to 7 percent through 2030 according to multiple industry research firms including Mordor Intelligence. Leading the organisations building that future is both a privilege and an enormous responsibility.
Jonno White, founder of The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders, works with leadership teams across corporate, school, and nonprofit sectors to build alignment, clarity, and high performance. While medtech is a highly specialised domain, the leadership challenges its executives face, around team dynamics, communication, culture building, and navigating rapid change, are precisely the territory Jonno works in daily. Whether virtual or face to face, international travel is often far more affordable than clients expect. To discuss how Jonno might support your medtech leadership team, email jonno@consultclarity.org.
For a broader look at healthcare leadership, see my blog post ‘35 Essential Thought Leaders in Hospital Leadership Globally (2026)’ at:
Why Leadership in the Medical Device Industry Is Uniquely Challenging
Medical device leadership is not simply corporate leadership with a healthcare veneer. It is a genuinely distinct domain shaped by factors that most other industries never confront. The FDA’s rigorous pre-market clearance processes mean that every product decision has regulatory consequences. The clinical nature of the work means that leadership failures can harm or kill patients, not just cost money. The pace of technological change, from robotics and AI-enabled diagnostics to implantables and continuous glucose monitoring, means that leaders must evolve constantly.
According to research from EY’s 2024 Pulse of the MedTech Industry report, the sector is navigating simultaneous pressures on top-line growth and bottom-line efficiency that previous generations of medtech leaders never faced at this scale. Leaders who thrive in this environment are those who have mastered both the clinical dimension and the human dimension of their organisations.
A Gallup study found that managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. In an industry where retaining highly specialised engineers, regulatory affairs professionals, and clinical specialists is critical to commercial success, the quality of medtech leadership has never mattered more. The thought leaders on this list are the people actively helping the industry get better at exactly this challenge.
Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold globally) and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, works with leadership teams navigating the kinds of high-stakes conversations and team dynamics challenges that medtech leaders face every day. To bring Jonno White in to facilitate a leadership workshop or executive offsite for your medtech team, email jonno@consultclarity.org.
1. Geoff Martha
Chairman and CEO, Medtronic
Geoff Martha leads the world’s largest medical device company, with $33.5 billion in revenue for fiscal 2025. What makes Martha a genuine leadership thought leader, not just a capable executive, is his willingness to speak publicly about the structural and cultural changes Medtronic has undergone under his tenure. Martha has led a significant simplification of Medtronic’s portfolio, divesting non-core businesses and sharpening focus on high-growth segments. His communication about why these decisions were made, and how he brought the organisation with him through significant transformation, makes him a valuable voice on large-scale change leadership. In a 2025 interview, Martha was direct about the performance gaps that had accumulated at Medtronic and the urgency of addressing them. Leaders who can be that honest publicly, without sacrificing organisational confidence, are rare in any industry.
2. Mike Mahoney
Chairman and CEO, Boston Scientific
Mike Mahoney has led Boston Scientific to become one of the fastest-growing major medical device companies in the world, with revenues of $16.74 billion in 2024 and a consistent track record of double-digit growth in key segments. What distinguishes Mahoney as a leadership thinker is his approach to building an acquisitive growth culture that maintains organisational identity. Boston Scientific’s strategy of disciplined tuck-in acquisitions requires leaders at every level to integrate new teams, technologies, and cultures repeatedly, and the company’s sustained performance suggests that Mahoney has built something unusually durable. His direct engagement with industry journalists and conference audiences on topics of strategy, culture, and commercial excellence gives him a thought leadership presence beyond the company’s earnings calls.
3. Ashley McEvoy
President and CEO, Insulet Corporation
Ashley McEvoy brings nearly three decades of Johnson and Johnson MedTech experience to her role as Insulet CEO, where she is steering the Omnipod insulin delivery platform through an ambitious global expansion. McEvoy is a genuine thought leader on the question of how to build and lead large, geographically diverse medtech commercial organisations. Her public statements on team building, the importance of surrounding herself with strong operators, and her philosophy of leadership as servant to the mission, make her one of the most substantive executive voices in contemporary medtech. The deliberate pace at which she shaped her new leadership team at Insulet, bringing in trusted collaborators from J&J while also promoting internal talent, reflects a considered approach to culture continuity during leadership transition.
4. Peter Arduini
President and CEO, GE HealthCare
Peter Arduini leads GE HealthCare, which has approximately 54,000 employees and one of the highest CEO approval ratings in the medtech sector at 91 percent on Glassdoor. Arduini separated GE HealthCare from GE in 2023 and has since navigated the complex challenge of building an independent organisational identity for a company that existed for decades inside a much larger conglomerate. His public commentary on creating a purpose-driven culture, accelerating AI integration across the company’s imaging portfolio, and maintaining employee engagement through structural change makes him a relevant voice for any medtech leader managing large-scale organisational transitions.
5. Katie Szyman
CEO, Masimo
Katie Szyman was appointed Masimo CEO in January 2025, effective February, in one of the most closely watched medtech leadership transitions in recent years. She brings more than two decades of Medtronic experience and led the Critical Care business at Edwards Lifesciences before its acquisition by BD. What makes Szyman a thought leader worth following is her track record in the specific medtech leadership discipline of building and commercialising AI-enabled patient monitoring at scale. She led the introduction of the first AI technology cleared by the FDA in the patient monitoring space. Her navigation of Masimo’s complex governance situation, following a contentious proxy battle, adds a further dimension of governance and crisis leadership to her public profile.
6. Gary Guthart
Executive Chair, Intuitive Surgical
Gary Guthart served as CEO of Intuitive Surgical for 15 years, presiding over the company’s emergence as the global leader in robotic-assisted surgery. Under Guthart, Intuitive grew from a niche surgical robotics pioneer to a company whose da Vinci system has been used in nearly 17 million procedures worldwide. Now serving as Executive Chair, Guthart’s long tenure gives him a perspective on sustaining innovation culture across decades that few medtech executives can match. His emphasis on building teams that remain patient-focused under commercial pressure, and on creating a culture where clinical evidence drives product development, has shaped how an entire generation of medtech leaders thinks about the relationship between innovation and discipline.
7. Heather Knight
Chief Operating Officer, Baxter International
Heather Knight’s response to the catastrophic Hurricane Helene flooding of Baxter’s North Cove manufacturing facility in 2024, which caused a critical nationwide shortage of IV products, is one of the most studied crisis leadership cases in recent medtech history. Knight led Baxter’s operational recovery, bringing the facility back online and managing supply restoration under intense public and regulatory scrutiny. Her willingness to speak publicly about what she saw, what the company learned, and how leadership must function when the stakes are highest, makes her one of the most practically useful voices in medtech operations leadership. Crisis leadership in a regulated healthcare manufacturing environment is a distinct and demanding discipline, and Knight has lived it at the most challenging scale.
8. Lisa Earnhardt
Executive Vice President, Medical Devices Group, Abbott
Lisa Earnhardt is one of the most senior women executives in the global medical device industry, overseeing Abbott’s device portfolio including the FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitor. The FreeStyle Libre is a textbook case of patient-centric innovation leadership: the earlier failure of a more complicated product taught Earnhardt’s team that simplicity and accessibility are the cornerstones of impactful healthcare solutions. Earnhardt is outspoken about the need to increase female representation in medtech leadership, arguing that diverse executive teams produce better innovations because they better represent the patients they serve. Her combination of commercial scale and public advocacy makes her one of the industry’s most impactful leadership voices.
9. Danielle Kirsh
Senior Editor; Founder, Women in Medtech Initiative, Medical Design and Outsourcing
Danielle Kirsh created the Women in Medtech special edition and annual analysis, which has become the most comprehensive annual audit of gender equity in medtech senior leadership in the industry. Her journalism does not just document the problem, it names names, tracks progress year by year, and amplifies the voices of women executives who are doing the work. Kirsh’s analysis of Glassdoor data, CEO approval ratings, and the cultural conditions inside the largest medtech employers gives her a research-based perspective on medtech leadership culture that most commentators lack. She is one of the most consistently influential people shaping the industry’s conversation about what good leadership looks like at scale.
10. Kayleen Brown
Managing Editor, DeviceTalks; Host, Women in MedTech Podcast
Kayleen Brown hosts the Women in MedTech podcast and serves as managing editor at DeviceTalks, where she produces a steady stream of interviews and analysis on what great leadership looks like inside regulated device environments. Her conversations with executives from across the medtech ecosystem, on topics ranging from building innovation cultures inside compliance-heavy organisations to the dynamics of trust-based leadership, give her an unusually broad perspective. Brown’s 2025 feature on fearless leadership, exploring how medtech leaders band together under political and economic pressure threatening the industry, is one of the best pieces of leadership journalism published in the sector in recent years.
11. Marissa Fayer
CEO and Founder, HERhealthEQ and DeepLook Medical
Marissa Fayer occupies a distinctive position in medtech leadership thought leadership as both a commercial medtech executive and the founder of HERhealthEQ, a nonprofit working to improve women’s health in developing countries. She has improved the health of 41,000 women in nine countries through her nonprofit work, while simultaneously commercialising FDA-cleared diagnostic technology at DeepLook Medical. Her perspective on leading mission-driven teams inside a regulated commercial environment, and on the specific leadership challenges of building medtech for underserved populations, is one of the most genuinely differentiated voices in the sector.
12. Carolina Aguilar
CEO and Co-Founder, INBRAIN Neuroelectronics
Carolina Aguilar co-founded INBRAIN Neuroelectronics, a Barcelona-based company pioneering graphene-based brain-computer interfaces that received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation. Her transition from leading large global teams inside one of medtech’s biggest companies to founding a deep-tech startup gives her a rare dual perspective on medtech leadership at both institutional and entrepreneurial scale. Aguilar is an active speaker at global medtech conferences and a visible voice on leadership in European medtech innovation.
For a closer look at leadership development for healthcare teams, see my blog post ‘50 Top Leadership Consultants for Healthcare (2026)’ at:
13. Amanda Pedersen
Senior Editor and Columnist, MD+DI (Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry)
Amanda Pedersen has covered the medical device industry for 18 years and is the author of Pedersen’s POV, an award-winning weekly column that won the Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Commentary in both 2023 and 2025. What makes Pedersen a genuine leadership thought leader, not just a journalist, is her willingness to hold medtech executives publicly accountable for their behaviour and decisions. In an industry where over half of the top 100 companies report more than $1 billion in revenue, Pedersen’s column performs a function that very few others are willing to: naming problems clearly and tracing them back to leadership. Her work shapes what the industry considers acceptable leadership behaviour.
14. Omar Ford
Editor-in-Chief, MD+DI
Omar Ford leads the editorial direction of MD+DI, one of the medtech industry’s most widely read publications, commissioning journalism on everything from AI integration and surgical robotics to executive leadership transitions and culture. His stewardship of the Let’s Talk MedTech podcast series has expanded the publication’s reach into audio, giving device leaders a weekly forum for discussing the strategic and cultural questions shaping their organisations. Ford’s choices about which stories to cover and which leadership questions to foreground have a material influence on how the medtech industry’s leadership conversation develops.
15. Tom Salemi
Host, DeviceTalks Weekly Podcast
Tom Salemi has built DeviceTalks into one of the most trusted news and discussion platforms in the medical device sector, and his weekly podcast is required listening for anyone wanting to understand how medtech executives think about strategy, culture, and commercial leadership. Salemi’s interview style extracts genuine insight from guests who often speak more candidly with him than they do in formal press settings. His conversations with medtech CEOs and division presidents, recorded live at industry conferences and in studio, constitute one of the most valuable oral archives of contemporary medtech leadership thinking available anywhere.
16. Scott Nelson
Founder, Medsider; Founder, Joovv
Scott Nelson founded Medsider to give ambitious medtech professionals access to the strategies, tactics, and lessons from the most successful founders and CEOs in the sector. As the host of the Medsider podcast and a former medtech commercial leader himself at Medtronic, Covidien, and Boston Scientific, Nelson interviews early-stage founders and established executives with an equal emphasis on leadership as on product. His own journey of building Joovv from scratch gives his commentary on medtech entrepreneurship an authenticity that purely journalistic voices cannot replicate.
17. Etienne Nichols
Host, Global Medical Device Podcast, Greenlight Guru
Etienne Nichols hosts the Global Medical Device Podcast, which has become one of the most consistently substantive audio resources for medtech professionals. His episodes on regulatory leadership, team culture inside quality management systems, and the human dimensions of building medtech companies give him a distinct niche at the intersection of compliance and people leadership. Nichols’s perspective that regulatory change is not just a challenge but an opportunity for innovation, and that diversity in teams unlocks unique perspectives that drive medtech product development, makes his podcast unusually focused on leadership as a discipline.
18. Michelle Tarver
Director, FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH)
Dr Michelle Tarver is the Director of the FDA’s CDRH, the regulatory body responsible for overseeing the safety and effectiveness of medical devices used by millions of patients globally. A board-certified ophthalmologist with a doctorate in epidemiology, Tarver has spent more than 15 years as a medical device regulator. What makes her a crucial thought leader for medtech executives is her explicit focus on driving organisational culture change inside a large, complex regulatory institution, a challenge that mirrors what device company leaders face in their own organisations. Her work on patient science and engagement makes her one of the most consequential and forward-thinking leaders in the global medtech ecosystem.
19. Paul Grand
Founder and CEO, MedTech Innovator
Paul Grand founded MedTech Innovator, the world’s largest medical device accelerator, in 2013. Under his leadership, the organisation has guided 838 companies, contributed to more than 500 FDA market authorisations, and helped portfolio companies raise over $11.4 billion in follow-on funding. Grand’s perspective on what separates medtech startups that succeed from those that fail is grounded in having observed hundreds of founding teams up close. His commentary on the leadership behaviours and team dynamics that enable early-stage device companies to navigate regulatory, commercial, and clinical complexity simultaneously, is one of the most practically useful bodies of insight in the sector.
20. Andrew Cleeland
CEO, Fogarty Innovation; Host, MedTech Trailblazers Podcast
Andrew Cleeland leads the Fogarty Innovation Institute, established by catheter pioneer Dr Thomas Fogarty to train the next generation of medtech entrepreneurs. Cleeland hosts the MedTech Trailblazers podcast, where he interviews medical technology founders and innovators about the leadership dimensions of building device companies. His background includes starting his career at the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, giving him a regulatory foundation that informs how he discusses the intersection of innovation leadership and compliance. His perspective on what it takes to build teams through the long, uncertain years between concept and commercialisation is one of the most grounded available in the sector.
21. Rosaleen Burke
Global VP, Quality and Regulatory, Boston Scientific
Rosaleen Burke leads all aspects of quality and regulatory strategy for Boston Scientific, a company with a portfolio spanning cardiovascular, endoscopy, urology, and neuromodulation. With over 25 years at Boston Scientific, Burke has led quality and regulatory teams across multiple regions and business units, giving her one of the deepest longitudinal perspectives in the industry on how to build compliant, patient-focused organisations that also innovate rapidly. Her leadership of global quality systems during periods of rapid portfolio expansion through acquisition makes her a valuable voice on the specific challenge of maintaining quality culture during organisational growth. Quality leadership in medtech is genuine leadership, not just technical management.
22. Elena Kyria
Founder and CEO, Elemed
Elena Kyria founded Elemed, a specialist talent and leadership consulting firm serving the medical device industry, and has become one of the most sought-after voices on the evolving talent landscape in medtech. Her 2024 and 2025 analyses of the post-pandemic medtech talent market, tracking the shift from a war for talent to a candidate-flooded market and its implications for leadership pipelines, have been widely cited across the sector. Kyria’s specific insight that transverse skills, communication, negotiation, leadership, and AI literacy, are now as important as technical competence for medtech professionals represents a genuinely important contribution to how the industry thinks about developing its next generation of leaders.
23. Rachel Ellingson
Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer, Solventum
Rachel Ellingson joined Solventum, which was spun off from 3M’s healthcare business in 2024, as chief strategy and corporate development officer. Her perspective on leading medtech organisations through major structural transitions is grounded in the realities of large-scale organisational change. Ellingson’s public discussions of how to maintain leadership coherence and strategic clarity during corporate separation have resonated with executives across the medtech ecosystem navigating their own portfolio transformations. Her work provides a practical model for how medtech leaders can sustain team alignment when the ground is shifting beneath them.
24. Jessica Mathieson
President, Medical Business, Stryker
Jessica Mathieson began her career at Stryker as an account manager in 2008 and was promoted to President of the Medical Business in 2024, one of the most striking examples of career-long talent development in the contemporary medtech industry. Her journey from frontline commercial roles to divisional president gives her a first-hand understanding of what it takes to build leadership pipelines and develop talent through progressive responsibility. Stryker’s long-standing reputation for strong culture and high employee engagement is in part a product of the leadership philosophy that Mathieson both embodies and now shapes.
25. Mojdeh Poul
President and CEO, Integra LifeSciences
Mojdeh Poul took over as CEO of Integra LifeSciences in early 2025, bringing experience from her previous role as President of 3M Health Care. Her transition into the CEO role with a specific mandate to restore operational discipline and strategic clarity after a period of complexity makes her one of the most useful voices on the leadership challenges facing medtech executives who inherit organisations in need of reset. Poul’s public commentary on what she is changing, and why, is a masterclass in transparent change leadership inside a highly regulated, publicly traded company.
26. Maulik Nanavaty
Senior Vice President, Neuromodulation, Boston Scientific
Maulik Nanavaty is one of the most visible medtech executives on LinkedIn, where he regularly shares insights on patient-centred leadership, team culture, and the commercial excellence practices that allow large medtech divisions to grow consistently. As SVP of Neuromodulation at Boston Scientific, he leads one of the most complex and technically demanding business units in the industry. His PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences grounds his leadership commentary in genuine domain expertise. Nanavaty’s perspective on how large medtech organisations can maintain entrepreneurial energy and patient focus even as they scale is one of the most practically relevant contributions to the medtech leadership conversation on social media.
27. Alicia Chong Rodriguez
Founder and CEO, Bloomer Tech
Alicia Chong Rodriguez founded Bloomer Tech to address sex differences in cardiovascular care, developing technology-augmented garments that provide personalised heart health monitoring for women. Her leadership of a mission-driven femtech startup, navigating both commercial medtech realities and health equity imperatives simultaneously, represents a growing and important dimension of global medtech leadership. Rodriguez is an active conference speaker and one of the most vocal voices on the intersection of women’s health, health equity, and medtech innovation leadership.
28. Leo Mavely
Founder and CEO, Axio Biosolutions
Leo Mavely founded Axio Biosolutions during the final year of his undergraduate bioengineering degree, growing the company into a significant player in biomaterials-based medical devices for wound management. Based in India, Mavely represents the emerging generation of medtech founders in Asia-Pacific who are building globally competitive device companies outside the traditional US-Europe innovation corridor. His leadership of a rapidly growing medtech company in a resource-constrained environment makes his perspective on medtech entrepreneurship particularly valuable for leaders thinking about the future of global device development.
29. Karandeep Singh Badwal
Quality and Regulatory Consultant; Host, The MedTech Podcast
Karandeep Singh Badwal hosts The MedTech Podcast, a growing platform that shares the journeys of leaders and innovators shaping the medical device industry’s future. As a Quality and Regulatory Consultant specialising in medtech, his perspective on leadership sits specifically at the intersection of compliance culture and organisational effectiveness. His podcast has reached listeners across the globe and features candid conversations with founders and executives about the human dimensions of building compliant medtech organisations.
30. Victoria Geffre
Founder, MedTech Color
Victoria Geffre founded MedTech Color to build the world’s largest network of medtech leaders of colour, addressing one of the most persistent gaps in the industry’s leadership pipeline. Her annual networking breakfast at The MedTech Conference has become one of the most impactful diversity leadership events in the sector, creating mentorship networks and sponsorship connections that have materially changed career trajectories across the industry. Geffre’s work on inclusive medtech leadership is not just advocacy but practical community building.
31. Dr Geraldine McGinty
Professor of Clinical Radiology, Weill Cornell Medicine
Dr Geraldine McGinty is an internationally recognised expert in health care strategy, medical imaging economics, and healthcare leadership. As the first female president of the American College of Radiology, and as a member of the Cornell Business School faculty’s Healthcare Leadership programme, McGinty brings both clinical authority and academic rigour to the conversation about what excellent medtech leadership looks like. Her participation in MedExecWomen events, focusing on cultural transformation, emotional intelligence, and inclusive leadership in medtech, makes her one of the most substantive academic contributors to the sector’s leadership development conversation.
32. Mike Mussallem
Retired CEO, Edwards Lifesciences; Author and Leadership Educator
Mike Mussallem served as CEO of Edwards Lifesciences from 2000 to 2024, building the company into one of the world’s leaders in structural heart disease and critical care monitoring. His January 2025 interview in Medical Design and Outsourcing’s Leadership in MedTech issue, sharing what he learned about culture and innovation leadership across 24 years at the top of a publicly traded medtech company, is required reading for any serious student of device leadership. Mussallem’s emphasis on patient-centricity as both a moral and commercial imperative, and his candid discussion of how culture must be actively built and maintained rather than assumed, gives him a post-retirement thought leadership platform that few former medtech CEOs have chosen to develop.
33. Dave Cassak
Editor-in-Chief, MedTech Strategist
Dave Cassak has spent decades as one of the most analytically rigorous voices in medtech business journalism, and as the editor of MedTech Strategist he conducts the intimate leadership interviews that have become legendary in the sector. His annual conversation series explores how the industry’s most successful executives approach strategy, culture, and the long game. His event platform, including the Phoenix Conference and the MedTech Strategist Innovation Summit, has given him direct access to the thinking of medtech’s most influential leaders over four decades.
34. Stacy Enxing Seng
Independent Director and Venture Partner
Stacy Enxing Seng has built one of the most distinguished careers in medtech as a founding CEO, board director, and venture partner, with a specific focus on mentoring the next generation of medtech founders and executives. Her discussion of how venture investors evaluate medtech leadership, what she looks for in founders, and how early team culture decisions compound over years, gives her a perspective on medtech leadership formation that operating executives rarely have. Her emphasis on networking and relationship-building as foundational leadership disciplines is practically useful for medtech leaders at every stage.
35. Rebecca Gottlieb
VP, Advanced Sensor Technologies, Biolinq
Dr Rebecca Gottlieb spent more than two decades at Medtronic before joining Biolinq to lead the development of biosensing platforms for continuous glucose monitoring. Her public discussions of how to build innovation cultures inside regulated medtech environments, on the specific leadership behaviours that allow multidisciplinary teams to experiment and retire risk early without compromising regulatory rigour, represent some of the most practically useful thinking in the sector’s podcast ecosystem. Her core argument, that curiosity is not just a mindset but a leadership strategy, is a genuinely useful reframe for medtech leaders operating under intense compliance pressure.
36. Swaril Mathur
VP Business Development, Axonics; Co-Host, Medtech Talk
Swaril Mathur co-hosts the Medtech Talk podcast and brings a commercial leadership perspective to conversations about strategy, culture, and the human dimensions of building medtech companies. Her discussions of how Axonics handled early-stage commercial launch during the pandemic, of the leadership decisions that felt right and those that were harder to navigate, and of how company culture evolves as organisations grow, give her a practitioner authenticity that many leadership commentators lack.
37. Chris DuPont
Co-Founder, Galen Data (acquired by Matrix One)
Chris DuPont’s story of building Galen Data from a cloud connectivity startup to an FDA-compliant medical device infrastructure platform acquired by Matrix One in 2024 is one of the most instructive leadership journeys in recent medtech entrepreneurship. His willingness to share the details of navigating the SVB banking collapse, of managing regulatory challenges from his days at Cyberonics, and of the leadership lessons that formal incubators do not teach, makes him one of the most candid and useful voices in the medtech podcast ecosystem.
Common Mistakes Medtech Leaders Make
Leadership in the medical device industry is not just about technical competence or regulatory knowledge. The following are among the most common leadership mistakes that derail otherwise capable medtech executives.
The first is confusing compliance culture with safety culture. Compliance is about following rules. Safety culture is about every team member feeling responsible for catching problems, speaking up about risks, and escalating concerns without fear of reprisal. Many medtech organisations have the former without the latter, and the gap produces catastrophic failures. A landmark Health Foundation study found that hospitals with stronger leadership cultures reported up to 15 percent fewer patient safety incidents. The same principle applies in device manufacturing and development.
The second is treating the regulatory pathway as someone else’s problem. Medtech leaders who treat regulatory affairs as a specialised function rather than as a shared leadership responsibility consistently underestimate timelines, misallocate resources, and create cultural silos that slow commercialisation. The most effective medtech CEOs are those who have invested time understanding the regulatory landscape well enough to make informed strategic decisions.
The third is building teams for technical skill alone. Medtech roles are highly specialised, and the temptation to hire almost exclusively for technical credentials is understandable. But the evidence from Gallup, McKinsey, and decades of medtech leadership case studies is consistent: interpersonal and leadership skills are as important to commercial success as technical expertise. Elena Kyria’s research on the changing medtech talent landscape confirms this, identifying transverse skills as increasingly determinative of career and organisational success.
The fourth is neglecting middle management. In large medtech companies, the most important leadership work often happens in the middle, where clinical affairs managers, regional sales directors, regulatory leads, and project managers translate executive strategy into daily team behaviour. Gallup research consistently shows that the quality of middle management accounts for more of the variance in employee engagement than any other single factor.
The fifth is underestimating the leadership demands of acquisition integration. Medtech’s growth model relies heavily on acquisition, and the failure of acquisitions in any industry is overwhelmingly a leadership failure, not a technology failure. The cultural integration of acquired companies, the retention of key talent, and the alignment of strategic priorities across combined entities require deliberate, sustained leadership attention that many acquirers do not invest in adequately.
Implementation Guide: Building Your Medtech Leadership Development Practice
For individual medtech leaders wanting to develop their leadership capabilities, the most effective starting point is an honest assessment of where the gaps are. Working Genius, DISC, and CliftonStrengths are among the most widely used frameworks for building that self-awareness, each illuminating different dimensions of how you work and lead.
Reading remains one of the highest-return leadership development activities available. Mike Mussallem’s public reflections on Edwards Lifesciences, Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety, and Daniel Coyle’s research in The Culture Code are among the most directly applicable to medtech leadership challenges. Jonno White’s Step Up or Step Out addresses the difficult conversations and accountability dynamics that medtech leaders frequently identify as their most challenging leadership terrain. Available at:
Podcasts have become one of the most efficient learning formats for busy medtech executives. The DeviceTalks Weekly Podcast, the Global Medical Device Podcast, Medsider, Women in MedTech, and Medtech Talk collectively represent hundreds of hours of practical, industry-specific leadership insight.
For teams, the single most impactful step most medtech organisations can take is investing in better team dynamics assessment and facilitation. Working Genius helps teams understand who energises the group at each stage of the innovation process, from early-stage ideation through regulatory submission and commercial launch, and why some team members consistently frustrate each other. Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator, delivers team workshops for medtech and corporate organisations globally. To discuss a Working Genius session or executive offsite for your medtech leadership team, email jonno@consultclarity.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes a great thought leader in medical device industry leadership?
The best medtech leadership thought leaders combine domain-specific credibility with a genuine contribution to how the industry thinks about people, teams, and organisations. They are not just technically brilliant or commercially successful. They share what they learn, publicly, in ways that help others lead better. That combination of experience, insight, and generosity of sharing is what distinguishes a genuine thought leader from a successful executive who happens to have a large following.
How is leadership in the medical device industry different from other sectors?
Three factors make medtech leadership genuinely distinct. First, the stakes: leadership failures in the medical device industry can harm or kill patients. Second, the regulatory dimension: every major decision has an FDA or regulatory compliance dimension that shapes timelines, resource allocation, and team organisation. Third, the cross-disciplinary nature of the work: medtech teams routinely include engineers, clinicians, regulatory specialists, commercial leaders, and data scientists whose professional cultures, vocabularies, and priorities are genuinely different.
Can I hire a leadership facilitator who doesn’t specialise in medtech specifically?
Yes, and often the most effective team sessions in medtech organisations are those facilitated by someone who brings a fresh external perspective on team dynamics, conflict, and communication. The key is choosing a facilitator with deep expertise in the leadership processes you need to develop. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect, and Jonno White works with organisations across Australia, UK, USA, Singapore, Canada, India, and more. Email jonno@consultclarity.org for a conversation.
What are the most important leadership books for medtech executives?
The most relevant titles include The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson, which is directly applicable to the psychological safety challenges of compliance-heavy environments; The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, which provides the most practical framework for understanding how high-performing team cultures are built; and Step Up or Step Out by Jonno White, which addresses the difficult accountability conversations that medtech leaders consistently identify as their hardest leadership challenge. Medical Design and Outsourcing’s annual Leadership in MedTech special edition is also required reading.
Final Thoughts
The 37 thought leaders profiled in this guide represent a fraction of the talent, insight, and experience shaping how the medical device industry thinks about its own leadership. From the executives running the world’s largest device companies to the podcast hosts, journalists, academics, and emerging founders who are pushing the conversation forward, each person on this list is contributing something genuinely valuable to the collective project of building better-led medtech organisations.
If there is one theme that runs through the work of every thought leader profiled here, it is the conviction that excellent leadership in the medical device industry is not a luxury or a nice-to-have. It is the foundation on which everything else that matters, patient safety, commercial success, innovation, and team wellbeing, ultimately rests.
The medtech industry will produce extraordinary technology over the coming decade. The AI-enabled devices, the brain-computer interfaces, the precision diagnostics, and the surgical robotics that are already emerging from the sector’s innovation pipeline will be among the most significant healthcare advances of a generation. Whether those technologies reach their potential depends entirely on the quality of the leadership behind them.
For organisations wanting to build stronger leadership capability in their teams, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, delivers keynotes, workshops, and executive offsites for leadership teams across industries including healthcare and medical technology. Whether your team needs a focused session on communication and conflict, a strategic offsite, or a Working Genius workshop that reframes how you understand your team’s dynamics, Jonno works globally and travels regularly for engagements. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to explore how Jonno can support your organisation.
For more on leadership across the healthcare sector, explore my blog post ‘35 Essential Thought Leaders on Leadership in Nursing Globally (2026)’ at:
About the Author
Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who works with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.
To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.
Next Read
Hospital leadership is arguably the most complex leadership challenge on the planet. Few other settings demand that leaders simultaneously manage clinical safety, workforce wellbeing, financial sustainability, technological transformation, regulatory compliance, and community health outcomes, all while operating around the clock with life and death consequences for every decision. If you have been searching for the best thought leaders globally in hospital leadership, you have probably noticed that most existing lists are heavily dominated by US-based voices and focus almost exclusively on executives at the largest health systems.
Keep reading: