A powerful narrative of resilience and transformation—from domestic violence survivor navigating a broken legal system to healthcare executive and thought leader. Three core pillars for ambitious women overcoming systemic barriers and building impactful careers.
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I stopped seeking validation from others and turned my pain into a platform to ensure other survivors are heard, believed, and protected.
Samantha Leigh (Caldwell) King · In Her Own Words
Her Story
About Samantha
Samantha King is a peri-operative needs and medical device professional based in the Washington DC–Baltimore area, specializing in surgical technology, sterile processing standardization, and operating room efficiency. She currently serves in a leadership-focused role with Case Medical, Inc., where she supports healthcare systems in improving surgical instrumentation workflows, regulatory compliance, and cost-effective reprocessing solutions. Her work centers on building relationships across peri-operative teams, including SPD, OR, infection prevention, and supply chain stakeholders, with a strong emphasis on education and standardization.
Her career in the medical device industry spans nearly two decades and includes progressive clinical and leadership roles with organizations such as Stryker and Medtronic, where she supported spine surgery and advanced surgical technologies in high-acuity operating room environments. She has also contributed to healthcare and project operations through earlier work with HITT Contracting Inc.. Samantha’s academic background includes surgical technology training at Miami Jacobs College and project management studies at The George Washington University, equipping her with both clinical and operational expertise that informs her work in healthcare systems.
Beyond her professional achievements, Samantha is known for her resilience, leadership, and commitment to mentorship and advocacy. After overcoming a life-altering brain injury, she returned to the healthcare field with a renewed focus on purpose-driven leadership and supporting others in their growth. She is also passionate about giving back through community engagement and nonprofit involvement, including support for Virginia ACTS. Today, she blends her clinical expertise with a mission to empower healthcare teams and advocate for individuals seeking strength, stability, and opportunity in both their personal and professional lives.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Samantha
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would have to say my mom. She was working all of the time, but her job was only part of it - she was there for her community and persevered through so many challenges in life. My mom cleaned houses to put me and my brother through private grade school and high school because the public school systems in our city were awful. She taught me that education was so important, and she believed in me and never stopped supporting me. Without my mom, my dad, and my daughter, the support and faith they've given me in myself is really what has kept me going.
My daughter was my biggest inspiration to get my life back again after a significant brain injury in 2019. I wanted to show her that even after she saw me almost die a couple of times, I could recover from this injury. The peace and comfort that my child gave me made me want to give her the opportunity to be back in this area and make sure I'm still setting her up for all the successes in life that she deserves.
I'm a huge family person, and helping them find happiness because of the gratitude I have for my family is my biggest push.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received was from a leader at Stryker and a wonderful friend, Zac Alviar. He carried the message to "take care of the people and they'll take care of the business.", as well as the practice of always assuming positive intent.
This advice has been paramount in my leadership journey.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think don't stop with the position that you think that you should have. Go for the role, go for the career, go for the move that you think is going to make you feel happy and fulfilled. I wish somebody would have told me once upon a time to take your time. Take your time interviewing, take your time researching companies and roles. Talk to people, reach out, connect, go to networking events. I think all of those things are essential when it comes to finding yourself, building your brand, and understanding what it is that you offer. You learn so much through other people, so I think connecting and being able to reach across borders is really important.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Reimagining Healthcare Through Environmental Stewardship
As an advocate for our environment, I believe we frequently take this planet’s most vital resources, especially our water, completely for granted. In healthcare, the sheer volume of single use medical waste and intensive processing cycles places a massive strain on these ecosystems. We have a profound opportunity to pioneer a shift toward sustainable practices, such as transitioning to reusable, long-lasting rigid barrier systems. By championing eco-friendly innovation in sterile processing, we aren't just driving down operational costs; we are actively protecting the natural resources that sustain us.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Samantha
Reclaiming my Time
From Survivor to Leader: How I Transformed Trauma Into Professional Excellence
In 2019, my world was violently shattered. I survived a near-fatal domestic violence attack—an event that left me not only fighting for my life but also navigating the invisible, grueling reality of a permanent traumatic brain injury.
When you survive something that severe, the trauma does not end when the sirens stop. For me, the second battle began in the sterile, high-stakes environment of the courtroom. As ill and disabled as I was, I quickly realized that navigating the legal system as a domestic violence survivor is a deeply isolating, unsupported, and counterintuitive process.
Instead of finding a safe harbor, I felt like I was constantly on trial myself, exhausting every ounce of my remaining energy just to prove that the horror I lived through actually happened. The current system places an agonizing burden of proof on survivors, treating human trauma like an abstract legal puzzle rather than a human emergency.
But I refused to let that broken system keep custody of my future. I made a fierce, conscious decision to reclaim my time, my mind, and my narrative. For seven years, I focused on brain rehabilitation, healing mentally and emotionally, and supporting my daughter through my trauma.
Today, I am not just a survivor, but a high-velocity medical device sales executive, a territory leader managing multi-million-dollar healthcare portfolios across the Mid-Atlantic, and an honored recipient of the 2026 Influential Woman of DC Award. The very grit, focus, and strategic resilience required to rebuild my neural pathways and navigate a broken legal system are the exact tools I now use to exceed commercial baselines and transform clinical workflows in some of the nation’s most demanding acute care environments.
For ambitious women looking to push past their own profound barriers, scale the ranks of healthcare leadership, and build impactful careers, I want to share the three core pillars that allowed me to transform systemic adversity into unshakable professional equity:
LEADING THROUGH STRENGTHS, NOT LIMITATIONS
When you build a career in a high-pressure field like healthcare, your greatest asset is your unique cognitive wiring. My path to recovery taught me to ruthlessly analyze human capability. As a leader, I lean heavily into CliftonStrengths methodology, focusing on being an achiever, a learner, and a strategic driver.
True executive leadership is not about molding people into a rigid corporate playbook; it is about helping team members identify, understand, and aggressively capitalize on their innate talents. When you teach someone how to unlock their unique operational strengths, you build an unbreakable culture of professional confidence that no corporate bottleneck or personal crisis can dismantle.
CHANGING THE NARRATIVE FROM “VICTIM” TO “STRATEGIST”
In the eyes of the court, I was labeled a victim. In the corporate boardroom, I am a high-impact strategist. The professional world often tries to tell women that their personal scars make them liabilities or fragile. The truth is the exact opposite.
Navigating high-stakes, ambiguous, and high-pressure crises equips you with a level of real-world problem-solving velocity that cannot be taught in business school. Own your history. The resilience required to survive is the same resilience required to lead large-scale enterprise expansions, negotiate complex C-suite contracts, and drive zero-to-one market adoption.
MOBILIZING INFLUENCE TO REFORM THE PROCESS
True thought leadership cannot exist in a professional vacuum. We cannot sit quietly in our executive offices while women in our communities are broken by an unsupported judicial process. I am actively using my platform to change the public narrative surrounding domestic violence litigation.
We must advocate for a trauma-informed legal evolution—one that protects the dignity of survivors, provides institutional infrastructure, and stops forcing victims to fight a secondary war just to be believed. My passion for supporting military families, veterans, and local women’s crisis networks is fueled by this mission: ensuring that no woman is forced to navigate her darkest hour without a robust, structured ecosystem of support.
To every woman reading this who feels like she is currently fighting an uphill battle against a system, an industry, or personal trauma: stop waiting for the process to become fair. Take the gavel yourself. Take radical responsibility for your trajectory, leverage your uncompromised internal strengths, and step boldly into your power. Your past is not an anchor; it is the fuel for your eventual empire.
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