Her Story
About Kristen
I started my career in marketing and graphic design after college, but I've always been an athlete, so that competitive itch didn't really suit me well in marketing because there's no ranking, there's no who's number one. My husband and sister-in-law, who were both in medical sales, pushed me to get into the space, and I really found my niche. I did a year in pharma but realized I just wanted to do better for the community and actually make an impact. That led me to Veran Medical, where we used GPS-like technology for lungs to navigate and find lung nodules to biopsy. I stayed through the Olympus acquisition, got promoted to my own territory, and hit President's Club my first year while also having my first baby. After managing a lung cancer portfolio at Olympus for 2-3 years, the startup itch was real, so I joined MOLLI, a Canadian startup doing breast cancer localization with innovative technology that replaced traumatic wire procedures. After Stryker acquired MOLLI and laid most people off, they retained me to help train their new breast care reps. I then moved to Stryker's endoscopy division selling large-scale capital equipment. Now I'm at Optelum, back at my core of helping impact the lung cancer space but from a software perspective. I manage 10 states in the Southeast, selling AI technology that finds incidental lung nodules in patients who come to hospitals for unrelated reasons. This helps catch cancer early when it can be resected with no chemo or radiation. My main driver is that if I can leave an industry better than when I started, that's what I want to do.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kristen
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't be afraid of a no, and don't let anyone squabble or make you think you're less than. Keep your ambitions, keep going for the role, keep advocating for yourself, and speak up for yourself in every room. You have a seat at the table every time. It's hard in male-dominated companies with medical sales, and even physicians, especially in this field, it's predominantly men. So being able to stand your ground and be like, no, you are gonna talk to me just the way you talk to everyone else. I've been lucky to have had a great female manager before who was so instrumental in so many aspects, and having good managers who don't treat you like that is also a big thing.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Startup life is gonna be hard in general because you may be building the bridge as you're going across it. They're still figuring things out, and I'm bringing a lot of things back to product about what I'm seeing in the market. The challenge is getting and advocating for something that's new. We're not these big, massive companies that have trillions of dollars and millions of dollars in marketing. It's little old me in Jupiter trying to advocate for something that really is impactful in 10 different states. Finding people who actually want to talk about this, see the impact, and are ready to put the work in is challenging, because it's not an easy 'okay, I bought this, we're good.' It's like herding cats to water. You need so many different people on board, helping them figure out what's the workflow going to look like when you find these patients, what happens if this, and really putting the work in to create a successful program. And obviously, being a startup and having very minimal people, you're doing the most you can with what you got.
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