Lack of Diversity in Medical Device Industry Executive Ranks Raises Concerns

The medical device industry, like many others, faces underrepresentation of minorities in its top management. None of the largest medical device companies has a person of color as CEO, and the executive ranks of these companies are predominantly white.

This situation has persisted for decades, but in 2021, it regained attention with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for racial justice for Black people.

AdvaMed, the industry group representing the largest U.S. medical device companies, says its member companies want to change the composition of their executive ranks and are taking steps to correct this situation. AdvaMed CEO Scott Whitaker said on a recent podcast that the U.S. reached a "tipping point" last year regarding systemic racism and structural inequality, and that AdvaMed will continue to make inclusion and diversity a top priority.

Everett Cunningham, CEO of GE Healthcare's U.S. and Canada business (worth $7 billion), is Black. He said he is unwilling to deny or underestimate the progress the industry is making. But he also stressed, "It's 2021, and we only have 3% Black leaders in medtech, which shows we still have a long way to go in addressing our diversity challenges."

When asked about the color of faces in the industry's executive ranks, Cunningham said those faces don't look like his.

Whitaker believes that over the past six years, the industry has made significant progress in addressing this issue. AdvaMed data based on a survey of about 120 companies shows that since 2015, the proportion of Black people in leadership has doubled from 1.3% to over 3.2%, while the proportion of Asian people in senior medical device leadership has also doubled from 5.2% to over 11.2%.

Whitaker attributes this progress to Stryker CEO Kevin Lobo. During his tenure as chairman of AdvaMed's board from 2019 to early 2021, Lobo created theAdvaMed Advanceprogram, whose goal is to "develop, adopt, and continuously improve a measurable framework for advancing inclusion and diversity applicable to all medical device companies."

In February of this year, Abiomed CEO Mike Minogue succeeded as chairman of AdvaMed's board for a two-year term. Whitaker said Minogue, like Lobo, has made inclusion and diversity one of his top three priorities.

"We firmly believe that if our industry is to truly meet the needs of all people who enter the healthcare system, not just a few, then our industry must be as diverse as the patients we serve. It's the right thing to do, it's the ethical thing to do. Even if those reasons aren't enough, it makes business sense," Whitaker added.

As one of the most senior Black executives in the medical device industry, Cunningham said companies need to open up a more diverse candidate pool for senior positions. He believes this "talent pool" is crucial to ensuring diversity in recruitment sources. He also noted that having diverse interview panels is equally critical when screening candidates and assisting in hiring decisions.

"Every one of my leaders has a goal they must achieve, which is to hire women and underrepresented minorities in leadership positions. Their compensation will be determined by whether they achieve this goal," Cunningham said. "The medical device industry should align in direction with our customer base, and we haven't done that yet."

Attracting diverse talent and developing these human resources are two distinctly different activities. Mentoring is a pathway to help guide the career development of people of color within medical device companies, fostering their growth and advancement. Cunningham said GE Healthcare has made its mentor-mentee program a mandatory requirement so that diverse mid-level and senior managers can climb the corporate ladder.

"We all bear responsibility for this," Cunningham added. "If it weren't for the programs at Pfizer—the company where I started my career—that exposed me to corporate America, I wouldn't be where I am today. We must do this more consistently."

Driving change in the medical device industry

A relatively new organization is working to increase the representation of racial and ethnic minorities in medical device companies—especially among CEOs who make corporate decisions that affect underserved patient populations.

MedTech ColorThe organization is supported by corporate sponsors AdvaMed as well as medical device companies such as BD, Danaher, J&J, Medtronic, ResMed, and Stryker. The organization says it wants to increase the number of executives of color in medical device companies, because minorities have historically been absent from senior corporate decisions that directly affect underrepresented patient populations.

Although Bangladeshi-American Omar Ishrak served as Medtronic's CEO and board chairman from 2011 to 2020, MedTech Color's ambitious goal is to see 100 Black and Brown CEOs in medical device companies of various sizes by 2030.

"Across all ethnic minority groups, there are gaps at the highest executive levels, with the largest gap among African Americans," said Kwame Ulmer, a founding member of MedTech Color, noting that the lack of diversity is not just a problem for medical device companies but a widespread issue across the entire life sciences field.

MedTech Color was formally established in 2018, with origins traceable to the 2016 AdvaMed conference. At that time, Ulmer and Michelle McMurry-Heath (then vice president of regulatory affairs for medical devices at Johnson & Johnson, later CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization) first discussed the idea of addressing the underrepresentation of leaders of color in the medical device industry.

MedTech Color benefits from industry support. Ulmer specifically noted that Johnson & Johnson doubled its financial commitment this year, while pointing out that different companies have different priorities that change each year.

Investments by some large medical device companies to promote racial equity also vary. Baxter announced in June a$1.2 million scholarship and grant programto support African American students pursuing health and science degrees at three historically Black colleges and universities. In contrast, Edwards Lifesciences earlier this month established a$100 million social impact investment fundaimed at expanding access to capital for Black and underserved communities, advancing racial equity through U.S. economic development.

Olympus Chief Operating Officer Nacho Abia, who also serves on AdvaMed's board, calls inclusion and diversity a global issue. Abia, born in Spain, began his career at Olympus in Barcelona in 2001, later moved to Germany, and recently came to the U.S. to join Olympus Corporation of the Americas, becoming its CEO in 2015, a position he still holds.

"I've lived in places where I was a minority, an immigrant," including the Netherlands, Abia said on a recent AdvaMed podcast. "Wherever you go, there is bias, there are people who don't accept differences." He added that tolerance, respect for differences, and diversity will ultimately "first help create a better workplace, and then a better world."

Like many industries, following protests last summer over the police killings of Black people such as George Floyd, AdvaMed released in June aHealth Equity Principlesdocument aimed at helping address "long-standing" healthcare inequities.

"Differential treatment of patients of color has deep roots, linked to issues such as access to quality care, economic inequality, racism, and conscious and unconscious bias," AdvaMed's document states. The document outlines initial principles intended to guide the industry, including recruiting more diverse patients for clinical trials and medical device development.

One of MedTech Color's goals is to help drive enrollment of patients from underrepresented ethnic groups in clinical trials. This is an initiative supported by the FDA.

Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), said in a statement that the agency is "committed to advancing diverse participation in clinical trials to ensure clinical research better reflects the populations that will ultimately benefit from innovative health solutions."

Liaisons from CDRH and the FDA's Office of Minority Health and Health Equity are participating in MedTech Color'sCollaborative Community, a partnership aimed at developing strategies to address the lack of diversity and inclusion in medical device product development and clinical research.

In addition to increasing clinical trial enrollment to represent diverse patient populations, MedTech Color also hopes to find ways to recruit and retain minority physicians, researchers, and other stakeholders to participate in research and product development.

The medical device industry also "faces the problem of underfunding for early-stage companies managed and controlled by minorities," said Ulmer, who is a partner at venture capital firm Wavemaker Three-Sixty Health. To address this, MedTech Color this year held a pitch competition for early-stage startups competing for $100,000 in funding to help minority entrepreneurs launch and scale their businesses.

"Our goal for next year is to raise that amount to $250,000," Ulmer said, with plans for MedTech Color to invest in 100 minority-owned startups over the next decade, with total investments of up to $10 million.

Cunningham agrees on the importance of funding such early-stage medical device companies. "People who work at startups either end up being acquired by larger companies or take their experience to larger platforms to have a greater impact."

Cunningham believes it's time for those "uncomfortable" conversations in the medical device industry, which will ultimately benefit both business and society as a whole. Medical device companies need to "stop just being aware and talking—we must take action."

Ulmer is hopeful that progress will continue and looks forward to seeing a person of color as CEO at a large medical device company in the near future. "There are already people knocking on the door," he said, referring to BD's Tony Ezell, who is Black and currently serves as the company's president and chief marketing officer for North America. "That will be an important turning point for the industry."