Erica Rogers, the CEO of hot medtech IPO Silk Road Medical (NSDQ:SILK), learned an important career lesson back in the 1990s.
After more than 10 years at Boston Scientific, Rogers didn’t want to move from the West Coast to Boston to try to rise up through the company even more. As she recently related to Medsider’s Scott Nelson, Rogers instead took the leap to Target Therapeutics to work on market development during the very early stages of aneurysm coiling.
Rogers joined the company just days after it won 510(k) clearance for the first aneurysm coils. The challenge was how to make coiling the go-to therapy for intracranial aneurysm. Rogers had to think of everything from reimbursement to collecting additional data to handling randomized trials.
But within three months of joining Target Therapeutics, Rogers found her old employer Boston Scientific buying the company. Says Nelson:
“She saw this moment as a real lesson. ‘How do you leave companies and exit them with grace so that when those kinds of acquisitions happen, you’re invited to stay?’ With every acquisition, there is a reorganization and people are let go. It’s the nature of duplicity in work roles. Due to Erica’s graceful exit from Boston Scientific to Target Therapeutics, when the latter company was acquired, her former employer preserved and actually elevated Erica’s role. Boston Scientific was happy to have Erica back, and she was able to stay in California while advancing her own career.”
It was but one of a number of important lessons Rogers has learned during a career that now has her leading Silk Road Medical, which cleared $109 million in its IPO in April 2019. The company is developing a neuroprotection and stent system called Enroute as an aid to TCAR procedures.
Listen to Nelson’s two-part interview with Rogers on Medsider.
