Geoffrey Martha became CEO of Medtronic during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. Mr. Martha joined the company in 2011 and has grown the company since.
Eight things to know:
1. One of the first big tasks Mr. Martha took on was handling increased demand for ventilators in 2020. He told the Star Tribune about that endeavor and bringing Medtronic's ventilator production to 1,000 units per week.
"What I learned is that when you focus on something like that, it's amazing what you can accomplish," he told the newspaper. "Big companies like us, we are in every country, we're in so many different therapies and products, you can become unfocused. When you're trying to do too much, at the end you don't do enough. What we did on ventilators was quite amazing."
2. Mr. Martha is working to accelerate Medtronic's strategic acquisitions. Recently, the company lined up the acquisition of Intersect ENT for $1.1 billion.
3. Part of Mr. Martha's strategy at Medtronic is to divide Medtronic's work into 20 operating units, he told Twin Cities Business in a June 27 report. He said he expected business to recover quickly as people get COVID-19 vaccines.
"We are very optimistic, bullish that in the U.S., in particular, we’re going to see a pretty rapid snapback of elective procedures," he told the publication. "We’re going to get back to a normal, pre-pandemic level of procedures we anticipate here in the next several months."
4. On a Jan. 11 call, part of the 39th annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Mr. Martha predicted that artificial intelligence and machine learning would be "the new frontier for medtech." AI and machine learning applications are being implemented in the spine business for preoperative planning with implants.
5. Mr. Martha succeeded Omar Ishrak as CEO. The move was announced in August 2019.
6. Mr. Martha previously held roles at Medtronic as senior vice president of business development, executive president and vice president of restorative therapies and president. He was named as chair of the board in December 2020.
7. Before joining Medtronic, Mr. Martha spent 14 years at GE Capital and four years at GE Healthcare, according to his LinkedIn profile.
8. Mr. Martha studied finance at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. There, he was captain of the men's hockey team and was inducted into the university's hockey hall of fame.