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Navigating Successful Growth: Building an Engaged Board of Directors
Recording
Event Description
When your company proves its technology works and has paying customers, the game changes. Your core team and advisors got you to the threshold of commercial success. An engaged board of directors is essential for the new game.
Following on our October 2023 program on the importance of your core founding team and core advisors for a successful startup, this program looks at the essential role of an engaged board of directors for driving growth after startup. Once you have established that you have a product customers will buy and you can make or deliver the product while making a profit, you require a smart growth strategy, a realistic business model, new investment, governance, and leadership of a more complex organization in a larger world.
To be successful growing the company to scale or exit, you need different core advisors and team members than when you were a startup. Your board of directors are an essential element of the success team. The board represents the interests of your shareholders, will make or help you make important decisions, will set expectations and review progress, and will be a core advisor, resource, and coach.
Join other entrepreneurs, healthcare technology leaders, investors, and board members for this important discussion of why a board of directors can be a value accelerator for your company, how the board does its work, and who should be on your board. Our panel includes experienced board directors, a CEO who has worked with an engaged board, and an investor who attaches high value to the company’s board.
Time: 5:30 – 8:00pm
Location
Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds
55 Old Bedford Road, Lincoln, MA 01773
(Easy access, only three miles from 128/95 with plenty of free parking)
Tickets (includes a light meal)
- MDG Boston Members, $30, (Onsite walk-in $40)
- Non-Members, $40, (Onsite walk-in $50)
- Students, $20
- Panelists, MDG Boston Sponsors, & Event Volunteers – No Charge
Panelists
Rich Wilmot
Partner, GIlde Healthcare
Rich Wilmot joined Gilde in 2023 as a Partner in the Boston office. Prior to joining, Rich was the Global Head of Ventures at Philips, where he was responsible for creating, launching and running the venture program from 2016 through 2023.
At Philips, Rich oversaw both a fund-to-fund strategy as well as a direct investment portfolio consisting of early to growth stage startups across the medtech and digital health spaces globally.
Rich served on the board of many of the companies across the Philips European and North American concentrated portfolio, spanning digital health, medical device, and services based businesses.
Nancy Briefs, MBA
Co-Founder, President & CEO, AltrixBio
Nancy is an Independent Board Member, serial CEO, advisor, and venture partner at StageNext. She is a strategic business leader with extensive experience creating value, driving strategy, and launching products and drugs in digital health, MedTech, and pharma.
With her deep general management and fundraising expertise, Nancy has a remarkable ability to turn innovation into commercial reality. Her companies, having raised more than $500M in equity, including an IPO, are a living testament to her entrepreneurial spirit.
She currently serves on the boards of AltrixBio, BiomeBank, and EchoPoint Medical, and she previously served on six corporate boards with multiple successful exits.
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Steve Gullans
Co-Founder & CEO,
Thynk, Inc
Steve is an experienced entrepreneur, scientist, investor, advisor and author who focuses on transformational technologies that can improve people’s lives everywhere.
His background ranges from academic scientist at Harvard Medical School to founder of startups, board director for many life science enterprises, and CEO of a public biotech company.
Steve co-authored “Evolving Ourselves” which describes the role of life science technologies in our future. He has spoken broadly including at TED and TEDx and, for the past half-dozen years, he has focused on brain monitoring/training technologies which led to his co-founding THYNK.
Martha Shadan, MBA
Medtech CEO and Board Member
Martha currently serves on multiple boards, including CVRx, LeMaitre Vascular, Medartis AG and is the chair of the board of Brilliant Strings Therapeutics.
In addition to her company board roles, she is a board member of AdvaMed and MedExecWomen. Martha was the president and CEO at Miach Orthopaedics. Previously, she was the president and CEO of Rotation Medical, acquired by Smith & Nephew. Before joining Rotation Medical, she led businesses at Zimmer Biomet and Covidien.
She holds an MBA from Northeastern University, MS in biology from Michigan State University, and BS in biology from the University of New Hampshire.
FORUM ORGANIZER & MODERATOR
Rick Williams
BOD Member and Board Chair, Rick Williams Leadership
Rick Williams is an experienced technology company board of directors’ member and board chair. He has chaired the board of a medical device company and a bank/VC firm. Williams is a company founder and CEO and was a management consultant advising clients in a wide variety of industries. He is an internationally published thought leader on board of directors as a value accelerator for the company. His new book, Create the Future, is a leadership guidebook for being more creative and making better decisions for your company and yourself when you must get it right.
Rick is past President of the Harvard Business School Association of Boston. He was a management consultant with the global consulting firm Arthur D. Little, Inc. He is a physics graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
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