Medtech leaders with varying degrees of experience have offered a range of advice in terms of leadership at the helm of a large company.
Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha, Masimo CEO Katie Szyman and Dexcom interim CEO (and soon-to-be permanent CEO) Jake Leach delivered their insights on a panel titled “Pulse of the Medtech Industry: Five Vectors That Are Impacting Medtech in 2025 and Beyond” at AdvaMed’s The MedTech Conference in San Diego today.
Martha became Medtronic’s CEO in April 2020, while Szyman only took over as Masimo’s CEO in January. Leach has been interim CEO at Dexcom for less than a month amid a temporary leave of absence by standing CEO Kevin Sayer, but he’ll take over the corner office in January as part of a planned succession. Each has their own perspective on leadership in the current medtech world.
EY Global MedTech Leader John Babitt moderated, with Nvidia Sr. Director of Business Development, Healthcare/Medical, David Niewolny, providing his own view on medtech leadership from the tech giant partnering with many of medtech’s biggest players.
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Here are the main takeaways from the medtech leaders.
Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha
Martha called his five-plus years at the helm of Medtronic “a tumultuous time,” both geopolitically and industrially, but also for the company.
“There’s a lot I can say, but I’ll pull it down to a couple of things,” he said. “You learn clarity of thought. How do you look at everything you’re facing every day and get it down to the two or three things that are most important? You learn through repetition. There’s a certain level of intelligence you need. A lot of smart people are clear thinkers, but through repetition, you can learn how to think clearly and how to boil it down to two or three things. I always kind of line up people that I know, ‘They’re good at that,’ to really try to keep close to them and see how they do it all.”
Additionally, Martha points to finding a sense of purpose.
“You’ve got to care because there’s a lot of challenges,” he explained. “Good news travels, bad news travels fast. You get all the bad news and people keep good news in the back pocket. How do you keep a level of optimism and energy? You’ve got to care.”
Finally, referring to collaboration and partnerships across the industry, Martha said humility remains paramount.
“You have to make yourself vulnerable,” he said. “To be able to partner, you’ve got to have a sense of humility. You’v egot to care and you’ve got to be humble. Humble people tend to listen more versus wanting to talk. There’s a big difference and you’re always learning.”
Masimo CEO Katie Szyman
Szyman took over at Masimo amid a whirlwind, with Founder and CEO Joe Kiani resigning after a shareholder vote that ousted him from the position of board chair following a lengthy proxy battle between Masimo and Politan Capital Management.
She immediately centered the company’s focus back on health monitoring, selling the company’s consumer audio business last month.
“Being a new CEO, you can’t underestimate how the intensity and how much is coming at you,” she said. “People always say ‘the buck stops here,’ so you are the one responsible, and it really is true.”
She also echoed Martha’s point on humility. For Szyman, it’s been a learning curve, but she continues to build her vision for Masimo moving forward.
“Know yourself,” Szyman said. “You have to be centered on who you are, and then have your passion around the patient, around making difference in the world. If you continue to come back to that, that’s where you need to draw that energy from. … You have to be willing to take feedback. You’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to want to take feedback and try to get better. The other thing is just surrounding yourself with amazing people, and then have those folks give you that feedback so you can stay humble as you’re all going through that together as a team.
“I’m just really happy to have a great team around me. I think that’s made a difference as we go through all of it together. As we put all of it together, you find that vision of what you want to become and stay positive.”
Dexcom interim CEO Jake Leach
Leach joked that he’s not officially CEO yet, but agreed with Szyman and Martha on their points for leadership.
“I couldn’t agree more with what both Geoff and Katie said,” Leach said. “The piece I’d add is, never stop developing as a leader. Be curious. I’ve been in the glucose-sensing space for almost 30 years, and been at Dexcom for over 20 years, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t learn something about our business that I didn’t know the day before. It comes from asking the team questions and just learning about how things continue to evolve. Always be curious.”
Nvidia Sr. Director of Business Development, Healthcare/Medical David Niewolny
Niewolny said watching the medtech space from Nvidia, he sees things that the company tries to impart on its own healthcare business.
“Speed in business is more important than you could ever imagine,” Niewolny said. “It’s one of our goals to help accelerate innovation in the entire space because the pace at which innovation is now coming for this industry, is what we’ve seen in many, many other industries, and we’re going to do our best to really give the entire ecosystem the tools they need to do that safely and effectively.”
