48. Bridget Ross: CEO and board member for the first time, at the same time

In this episode, Bridget Ross talks about her career in life sciences and her most recent roles: CEO of a medical device startup, and independent board member of a medical device company; the difference between her private and public company board experience; and the challenge of growing into two new roles during the pandemic.

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Quotes

Separating serving as CEO from Board chair - ChroniSense Medical

I felt that the separation of the CEO and Board Chair role would diversify responsibility. It's a good check and balance for the CEO to have a separate board chair to oversee, to challenge, to support, to help ignite things that are important and help move us forward, break down barriers and support me on those things, or to help put the brakes on if they think I'm going too fast on something.

Big Ideas/Thoughts

Independent Board member as Board Chair of startup company

 

The intention originally was to find the right independent board member, who would be a good fit for our board, help us build our company culture, and who would have a strong background to support me during this early stage of company growth.

We found a really strong individual who we believed would be a terrific addition to our board. Then I proposed to my two current investors/board directors - We've got a really unique person with terrific experience who's an MD, holds an MBA and MPH, has raised capital as an entrepreneur, sits on other boards, is local, with impeccable education, and is a terrific person!  She also happens to be female.  I think she’d make an excellent board chair for us and that we should seriously consider naming her so.

We were looking for a great independent director and found an amazing board chair!

ChroniSense Medical  

“ChroniSense is a company I joined at the beginning of the pandemic. I signed on and started in February 2020, flew to Israel, met with the group and I was… really impressed with the investors I'd be working with and the leadership team … . Just great people [and] great talent; smart, creative, great problem solvers, and meaningful technology…”

 

…”the opportunity for ChroniSense … how to support transition from the acute care settings into the community-type care, remote care, and how can we help with chronic care support /  the variety of conditions that need to have ongoing management…”

“… this is not a consumer device, it's not a health and wellness device, it's a medical-grade monitoring device that we will put through the FDA offering medical-grade, on-demand, in-the-moment detailed information.”

LeMaitre

 

“I met the LeMaitre team right around the time I joined ChroniSense Medical as CEO in the late winter of 2020, and when this opportunity came about, I wanted to make sure that I could tackle both my first board role and my first CEO role which were happening at the same time.  Luckily, my main investors appreciated the value of their CEO having other responsibilities like this, building other networks, so they very much supported the opportunity for me to join the LeMaitre board.”

 

Fuqua School of Business

I was at Fuqua recently; I'd been asked to guest lecture the second-year students of the life science sector at Duke. The last question I was asked was: What were you most surprised about when you took on these two roles, as CEO of ChroniSense and joined the board at LeMaitre?

 

And I said, "…I was…surprised at how much fun it is to learn these two different things I'd never done before, how much I'm enjoying it, how much I'm looking at it as… another chapter, and how you can have so much joy in every chapter of your professional life - whether it's being a second year student as an MBA here at Fuqua School of Business at Duke, or whether it's… carrying a bag for the first time, managing people for the first time, moving to a bigger country or a bigger role or global role, leaving a company, going to another company. I guess what I found so amazing is how much I've learned and how much I've enjoyed the different opportunities I have been afforded."