Episode Transcript
I’m Kayleen Brown and welcome to DeviceTalks Women in MedTech Podcast. This is the podcast where I try to reverse engineer the making of a MedTech leader. If you’ve missed the first two episodes of season two featuring Medtronic’s Nina Goodheart and Edwards Life Sciences’ Sarah Huoh, give yourself just one more gift for the holiday season and search for Women in MedTech with Kayleen Brown on your favorite podcast player and on YouTube.
Now I have started 2026 off so strong. My guest today is Dr. Rebecca Gottlieb, Vice President of Advanced Sensor Technologies at Biolinq. Now, if you had listened to the final episode of 2025 for DeviceTalks Weekly, you’ll have heard that I named Rebecca as my MedTech Person of the Year. I promise, promise, promise you by of this episode you’ll know exactly why that is. Rebecca has spent her career at the intersection of deep science and real world impact, from her early clinical work with artificial heart patients to leading sensor innovation at Medtronic and now at Biolinq, where her team is rethinking what continuous biosensing can look like beyond traditional glucose monitoring.
But what stood out to me most wasn’t what she was working on, but but how she thinks about innovation. Throughout our conversation, Rebecca kept coming back to the same idea. Breakthroughs don’t happen in isolation. They happen when leaders intentionally design the systems around the work. She talked about creating space for curiosity and why experimentation does not happen by accident, especially in regulated environments.
It’s this way of thinking that makes this episode center around how to build innovation systems, how curiosity becomes a strategy, how leadership shapes the conditions for progress, and how asking what’s possible actually opens up innovation. To further explore this theme, I want to bring in my in studio guest, a leader at TTP PLC and biosensing device expert. Now, TTP is new to DeviceTalks, so as you know, that thrills me because I love to learn. So let’s learn about TTP.
TTP’s biosensing team helps MedTech leaders tackle the toughest sensing challenges, whether on the body or implanted into it. What sets TTP apart isn’t just technical breadth, but how they help teams make confident decisions, retire risks early, and bring biosensors to market with speed and clarity without compromising real world performance. So with that, Chris Dawson, Market Team Lead for the Biosensing team at TTP, welcome to the podcast.
Hi Kayleen, thanks for having me. It’s really great to be here and talk to you about such an exciting area.
Speaking of exciting how exciting was your holiday season?
Holidays are always exciting. I’ve. We had a great time with my two daughters and my wife. Had some nice quiet time at home, went to visit family. Yes. My eldest’s probably at the back end of having the magic around Christmas, so I’m kind of holding onto that as long as I can. And then after that, we had a really, really enjoyable new year. And so it’s great to be into 2026.
It’s kind of perfect that this episode kicks off the 2026 year. And if, if this year goes any way, like my interview with Dr. Rebecca Gottlieb and you, Chris, then it’s going to be the best year so far. I also had a fantastic Christmas and New Year’s. My little one is three years old, so you’re absolutely spot on when you talk about the magic of Christmas and trying to hold on to it. It’s the first year that I actually saw that magic that I didn’t orchestrate myself. He just had that glow the entire time, all Christmas. It was super fun, and I’m sort of addicted to getting that magic out of him. For 2026, I’ll see how can I make Valentine’s Day special and Flag Day? Hmm.
Yeah, I think that might be a bit more of a challenge.
You know, Chris, out of all of the episodes that you could have joined me on, I have to say that this is the perfect fit for you. Because in my interview with Biolinq’s Rebecca Gottlieb, we consistently come back to Rebecca’s drive to ask possible, not what’s certain. And that’s a belief, as I understand it, that’s shared by TTP. Your mission is to Redefine Possible. So let’s start with you, Chris. Give us the dish.
Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into medical technology?
Yeah, of course. So I studied mechanical engineering with aeronautics and then did a PhD in mechanical engineering. So not an obvious kind of route into MedTech from there. And I’ve worked in several different industries across my career, but I think the thing that connects all of those things is I’ve always been motivated by curiosity and wanting to learn new things. So I started out in the white goods industry of all places and learned lots about designing to a cost robustness and reliability.
I then moved into developing custom automation systems for the biosciences industry and learned about bioprocessing and automated manufacturer and then moved into a role as an aerodynamics design engineer for a motorsport Team. So I had an experience of working in like a really fast paced, high pressure, high performance environment where everything you make is a prototype, you know, nothing’s ever made more than once.
And then finally moved to TTP where I’ve had the opportunity to learn about all sorts of really interesting and exciting areas of technology development and then got into MedTech through that about six years ago, I guess.
As I think I had mentioned, TTP is fairly new to us at DeviceTalks. And as I’ve gotten to learn more about it, I realized it’s a flat organization, which can be maybe unusual for industry. There’s a hyper focus on specific markets, not as many titles. So can you tell me more about that, Chris? And why does that matter?
Yeah, sure. So I think we’re really organized around client needs, hopefully. And so that means we’re hyper project oriented. So instead of having a team that works on one thing all the time, each client’s project is different. And so we try to understand what their needs are and then build a project team around those needs to serve the client. And those people can be pulled from across the whole of the business, not just from the team.
And so I guess there’s a mix between wanting to have people that have deep industry knowledge and so, you know, there is some, some market focus, but also having access to a very broad skills base.
Sounds like there has to be a focus and actually steps forward for providing education to the team and within industry to your clients. Does TTP have a focus on education? And if so, how are you showing that focus?
Yeah, so we try to do lots of outreach, both locally, but also kind of more broadly and put out kind of educational material. We’ve got a number of kind of white papers that we’ve turned into ebooks which hopefully provide some of that background and help people to think in the right ways about the sorts of products there they might be developing.
Ooh, is this something that we could provide our audience with? Like, do you have anything you can share?
Yeah, of course. So I think we’ve got three, three that I think are really relevant to this, to this space. So we’ve got one that. And this sounds incredibly dry, but believe me, this is my favorite.
I can’t wait. You’re really selling me.
So we’re talking one that talks about how we, how you can rethink regulatory compliance. So I think a lot of people see developing in a regulatory framework as a burden, but it’s about how you can turn that to your advantage and how you can make it drive better decision making, improve development processes and have more focus on the thing that you’re trying to deliver to a patient. We’ve got one on optimizing Bluetooth comms, which you know is so important for wearable and implantable devices. Everybody wants to be able to gather the data on their, their smartphone of choice.
And so being able to do that in a robust and reliable way is really important, you know, and then one that’s a bit more, a bit more about the development process, which is how you use automated test systems to speed up your development process. So instead of having to individually test large numbers of sensors, how you can kind of automate that, what the benefits of doing that are, the improved data that you gather through that process.
And again, all of these to kind of really help support our clients needs in developing their products.
Ooh. Well, thank you in advance. I will drop the link to those three ebooks here in the show notes. And I have to say Chris, it’s like Christmas all over again, like the gift that keeps on giving. So thank you for keeping the holiday spirit into 2026. I know that you have your finger on the pulse of what may be coming out of this space in 2026. So is there anything from your perspective we should forward to?
So there are a few areas that I think could be super exciting this year across this kind of space. One of those is a bit of a continuation of some of the work that we’ve seen up to now, but I think the continuing advancement of integrated sensing into closed loop approaches I find really, really interesting. And for me this is all about lessening and eventually, hopefully removing patient burden. So there’s a piece of research that I remember reading that says, you know, the diabetes space is an area we work in a lot and that the average diabetic takes 300 additional decisions every day to manage their condition.
And so being able to remove that burden from the, from the patient I think is super exciting and really a laudable goal. So I think we’ll hopefully we’ll see that the furtherance of that goal across the year. And I think that some of the aptima sensing techniques like those that Biolinq are using, using single stranded DNA and RNA are really, really exciting and could open up whole new areas of continuous monitoring, both in diabetes, but in lots of other spaces where we don’t have great analytes to be able to do good detection.
And so currently the only way that we can do that and so you can’t do that continuously. That’s kind of a point of care diagnostic. But so being able to bring some of those point of care diagnostic approaches into real time and onto the patient rather than in the hospital, I think is really, really interesting. And one of the areas that certainly we’ve been thinking about and working in that is in hormone sensing. So, real-time hormone sensing, I think that’s a brand new area and could be transformational.
Oh man, our audience is going to love this episode. It’s so juicy and it really does focus on the future and redefining what’s possible. Before we dig into the interview itself, Chris, I was hoping we could just better understand your role at TTP. Can you help explain that?
Yeah, of course. So I lead the biosensing team here at TTP. We’re a market-focused multidisciplinary team who work with clients to develop and commercialize continuous sensing systems. Because they’re continuous, this kind of means that the sensor is either wearable or implantable so that it can obviously take measurements regularly. And this puts a lot of challenging constraints on things like the form factor, the power budget, biocompatibility, the robustness and reliability of any solution.
So I have a team of experts across electronics, biology, chemistry, optics, comms, all of whom who feed into developing these kind of tightly integrated sensing solutions.
So the theme of this episode is innovation systems. Building engines that make new ideas possible and using curiosity as a strategy. When you think about the interview with Rebecca, which you got a chance to listen to, what comes up for you when you think about the theme?
So I think for me, thinking about curiosity as a strategy, I think trying to deliver complex, challenging projects in highly regulated environments and under time pressure is obviously a difficult, difficult thing. And so one reaction to that could be to try and limit creativity to manage development risk. But this means that you become averse to innovation. Curiosity as a strategy to me means supporting people so that they’re not solving hard problems on their own.
Creating an environment where you kind of trust people to explore and enable great people to develop and create valuable solutions. I think that working in multidisciplinary teams who are all in the same building and all meet on a regular basis helps fuel creativity and reinforces system level, level thinking. And like to me, curiosity isn’t necessarily about having more ideas, it’s about finding out quickly which ones are worth backing.
And the goal isn’t exploration for the sake of exploration, but accelerated learning and doing this in a framework that drives towards identifying the correct approach. So I think it’s just a really powerful way of driving toward the best solutions.
Love that. And I think that is really the core of MedTech. You mentioned a regulatory, strict regulatory environment and that is MedTech. So how do you balance then this curiosity driven problem solving with the need to deliver robust and reliable medical products?
Yeah, sure. It’s a really tricky balance and that balance will be different for every client. And so you need to really work with the client to understand where that sits on the spectrum. You know, is there in the market they’re working in, is there a huge benefit and a huge value to innovation, in which case your bar might be in a different place? So it’s about having a laser focus on what are the must haves, what must this product do.
And lots of those things are safety critical things. So they are non negotiables. And then there’s the nice to haves, wouldn’t it be great if. And lots of those things might be client interaction challenges. And then there are the oh, if, by the way, you could squeeze this in, that would be lovely. And so it’s about having a laser focus on the absolute must haves, the kind of safety critical, the performance critical factors and making sure that you have those nailed and well defined early on and you burn down the risk quickly.
I keep coming back to this concept of building an innovation system and everything that you’re saying that balance, visibility, transparency, what have you seen go wrong when teams get pushed to deliver without that kind of support or those other metrics we need when we’re building that innovation system.
So there’s the really obvious things like the project isn’t successful or goes over budget or goes over time, and those are really obvious things and you can kind of spot those. I think the less obvious things are that people get burnt out. You know, they try to perform without that support and you know, present as everything’s going okay. But in the worst cases I’ve seen people leave businesses because really great people leave businesses because they weren’t well enough supported and really struggled through those challenging times.
And so, you know, the team is super valuable and the last thing that you want is for people to struggle and so ensuring that they’re well supported, that you’re kind of checking in on them regularly, that they feel like they’ve got lots of freedom whilst also feeling well supported. And that’s a really easy thing to say and a really difficult thing to do well. And different people need support in different things. So it’s about personalizing out the support for the team members as you go through these, as you rightly say, projects that can be really challenging.
I think it’s really interesting about this personalized support for each of the team members and how critical that is for a really complex ecosystem like MedTech. So what else came up for you? When we reflected on that interview.
I think two things really resonated with me. Rebecca mentioned that she’d had the opportunity to be exposed to patient experiences and how this is different for different people. You know, there is no singular patient experience. And I know this sounds really obvious, but in previous engineering roles, I’d develop a system to a specification or optimize an aspect of performance, but I would have to think less about the end user, I guess.
And so in MedTech, the patient experience is so critical to the success of any product. You can work to develop the best technology in the world, but if no one wants to use it, does it matter? And so, you know, that really, really resonated with me, that kind of opportunity to really connect with the end user who’s the patient. The second thing she mentioned was taking down barriers to help the amazing people that you work with to do their jobs well.
And this comes back to supporting development teams to be curious and having the freedom to be creative, but providing with them with the right framework to deliver on challenging work.
So funny that you identified both of those. The second one, this quote from Rebecca has been living rent free in my brain. She keeps saying that their job, meaning team, their job is they need to get things done. Her job is to remove as many barriers as possible.
Exactly that.
Chris, enough about you and me thinking about the conversation, chatting through the conversation, even quoting the conversation. Why don’t we let our audience actually hear that conversation? So will you do me the honor of introducing our keynote guest?
Of course. I’m so pleased to be able to introduce everyone to Rebecca Gottlieb. She’s the VP of Advanced Sensor Technologies for Biolinq, and I think they’re a company that’s really innovating in the diabetes space.
Rebecca Gottlieb, Vice President, Advanced Sensor Technologies for Biolinq. Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much. Really glad to be here.
Oh, no one more than me. Rebecca, there’s so many reasons why I wanted to sit down with you today, but one of them is that Biolinq is located in San Diego, which is my old hometown, my old neighborhood. I miss San Diego. So, so, so much. So have you. Did you always live in Southern California or did you move to SoCal for the opportunity?
I definitely moved here for the opportunity. So I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then went to school there, finished my graduate program and then moved across to Los Angeles for my first opportunity outside of grad school. It was pretty fantastic, but a huge change. I moved my family across the country, so it was a big deal.
Wow. Well, if you are going to move across the country, hopefully the weather helped.
Oh, yes, it was much better weather than Pittsburgh, I have to say. Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, but weather isn’t the top thing.
I get that. I was in SoCal for 35 years and now I’ve been the last five years in Portland, Oregon, and I’m still getting used to the weather. I’m. I didn’t realize how much I took advantage of knowing that there was sun every single day in this perfect weather. So in a way, it’s been good to move because it makes me live life when I. When I can, in that moment.
And you really appreciate it when it’s nice.
Yes, exactly. Exactly. So you hinted on a couple of things that I’d love to chat through. So let’s actually start maybe even before your education in Pittsburgh. Let’s go before all of that. So one of the reasons why this podcast is so close to my heart and one of the goals that I have is to really understand or reverse engineer the making of a MedTech leader. And sometimes those first choices really inform the roles and the choices that you make later on.
So if you were to reflect, Rebecca, on what your first job would be, and that doesn’t have to be a paid job, it could be babysitting. I mean, whatever comes to mind. What was that first job and how may have that experience informed your roles after?
Wow, that’s. We’re really rewinding.
Yeah, I like to go: when you were first born, what was day nine like?
So my first jobs, I guess, you know, I think I started in service industry, so doing some serving like a waitress at a restaurant and then I did some. I mowed grass for the borough that I lived in. Yeah, it was. And it was. What was so fun about that experience though? We had an all girl mowing team. Yeah. So we would get dropped off in parks and mow the parks with our lawnmower. Yeah, it was really fun.
Was it intentionally like to be an all women’s. It just happened to be like girl power. Mowing lawns, making landscapes look sweet.
I think it just happened and it was great. It was such a bonding experience.
I love that. That might be one of my all time favorites. Did you have a name, like a crew name?
I don’t think we did but we played a lot of music, we danced around at the parks.
Love that. What about maybe your first sort of paid position? It could be in high school or what did that look like for you?
Yeah, it was probably in college. So I ended up getting a part time job to help pay for school, working with an MD, PhD student who was doing some basic research on what types of things were released from blood vessels. Yeah, it was really fascinating. And that was, to be honest, my first experience working towards the medical field. I really had no experience at all prior to that. And that I guess I started to realize how little we actually know about how the body works. There’s certainly a lot we do know, but there are still some basic things that are to be discovered. And so I found that really fascinating. I assumed at that point doctors knew everything, but they really don’t.
That is a really important reflection. And I think that when you’re in the industry or you’re in the world is when you realize how little you actually know and how little we actually know. It’s important to admit that we’re one step of this really long discovery journey. And it takes attention and money to move that journey forward as well as people like yourself who have curiosity and ask questions.
Yep. And I think that’s definitely where it all came together for me is, you know, driving the curiosity, as you said, like, wow, okay, there’s a lot we don’t know. But boy, wouldn’t that be interesting if we could figure this out. So that definitely started my research journey.
Excellent. So let’s dig into that a little bit more. So as I understand it, at Pittsburgh University you had your, your bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and then you did the PhD program in biomedical engineering. What is intriguing, there’s so many things intriguing about that. So that’s of course your kind of like a dual program here. But what’s really interesting is while you were pursuing your PhD, you were in a major clinical environment.
So you were working with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Yes.
Can you walk us through the type of devices or clinical situations that you were working in and around during those years?
Yeah, that had a really profound impact on me. So at the time I was working with artificial heart patients. So these were artificial heart devices that were actually being used in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, UPMC. And this was generally a bridge to transplant. So these people were on a transplant list, but the lists were so long and the donor organs so infrequent that they had to extend time to be able to make it to that transplant.
So they would be put on artificial heart devices or ventricular assist devices. And so I was part of a team of biomedical engineers that would pretty much, we were the technicians for the equipment that was used. And so we would end up, these were sort of, at the time, washing machine size devices on wheels that we would push down the hallway for the patient to go to exercise or something else. But we were with them all the time, and that was really profound. When they were able to get the actual transplant, we were often going into the operating room with them as that transition happened.
Wow. And I have to say, not everyone made it back out. And that was the really profound impact that you have to live life for the day that it is. And, you know, it was. Yeah, it was really profound.
That’s a really young age to have to be face to face with mortality. And I can tell you say with certainty, Rebecca, that I don’t think I would have had the heart for it at that age. There’s not enough life experience. So how did you, how did you work your way through those emotions and those connections, knowing that it can go any way and none of it is in your control?
Yeah, I mean, I think the patients themselves were so grateful for this extra time that they had, no matter what, of course, they wanted to come out on the other side of the surgery. But I think, you know, with the families, the families were also really grateful, as well as the peers that we had as part of this team, you know, we all went through those same emotions. So it’s just gaining support from the people around you.
But it really did make me realize the impact that medical devices have on people’s lives.
Just want to sit in that for a minute. I mean, you saw that so early on. And one of the things that this podcast in particular tries to bring light to is that to have the best version of this industry is to move forward with empathy, vulnerability, that sort of emotional connection, because this industry so much needs that. Did it inspire you to move forward and continue on this path, or did it have you question that choice?
Yeah, no. Looking back, I mean, absolutely, I wanted to be part of the groups that would make a difference in people’s lives.
So no question there, that’s amazing. So when you saw, I mean, especially in, like, the clinical environment that you were in at such a young time, you saw all the touch points, you saw the surgeons and the prep team and all the support team, and then of course, your own team and yourself, was there a specific group or role that turned your head that you’re like, that seems intriguing. I’d like to learn more.
I mean, I have to say. So at the same time I was doing my PhD research, so it was sort of, you know, I loved, absolutely loved the research side of it. I loved figuring out things that were unknown and then knowing that it could then make a difference in somebody’s life going forward. So that was always my focus. I loved it from the beginning.
Did the practical application inform or change your research in any way?
It really did. So, you know, as I was finishing a PhD program, there’s the big choice you have to make at the end of that program. Are you going to go into academia or industry? That’s the general choice. And for me, I think because of those experiences along the way, it was industry I wanted to be a part of the solution that was out in the world. Whereas academia, you kind of, you can go off on tangents and it’s still important work, no question about it, but you’re just at a much earlier stage. So I really liked that transition into creating something real that was going to exist in the world.
So from your PhD program and really establishing what that pathway could look like and was inspiring to you, did you know what you wanted to do next or did you explore the opportunities at larger OEMs? Like how, how did you determine what next step post-PhD look like?
You know, I thought about maybe doing something on my own. So my, my PhD work was in creating an optical shear stress sensor. And shear stress is this friction between a liquid and a surface. And this was important for artificial heart devices because that would cause destruction of red blood cells. So I thought, all right, do I want to just try and commercialize something like this? What would that be? I looked into some entrepreneurship programs, but then I got, you know, I put my resume out there and got a call from a company that was in Los Angeles. It was a startup company at the time that was doing a long term implantable glucose sensor.
And so I thought, you know what, that would be really interesting. Plus California would be a really great place to be. So I made that jump. And so for me, it was opportunity that came up that, you know, sent me on my way.
So shifting from cardiovascular cardiology into diabetes, how did you, did you find a home there? Like that was an area that brought you inspiration and made you want to continue.
Absolutely. So what was really interesting to me about diabetes. So first of all, it was the sensor world that connected me across. So from creating and characterizing this sensor for the cardiovascular world over into the glucose sensor world and diabetes. But diabetes, I think I didn’t realize at the time how complex it is and how it’s absolutely different for everyone. So not everybody experiences diabetes in the same way, has the same sensitivity to insulin. Like there’s just so many things that make it a different experience for each and every person that I found that challenging but also inspiring to try and find solutions for.
Does something come to mind to you when you reflect on that, of maybe a big difference that we’re just not aware of as industry or patients we should be aware of?
I mean, I think that was definitely my experience at my next job, which was Medtronic. And at Medtronic I was able to be exposed to the patient experience a lot more than maybe in some of the past experiences. So it was a much wider range of people with diabetes that helped in me understanding that this was different for everybody. So we would sit with patients and hear their stories, hear what drives them or inspires them or frustrates them about the devices and experiences they had to that point. So that was really instructive to help understand how devices can either make somebody’s life better, easier, but also can be challenging and find ways to fix that.
It’s really helpful to understand and gives me more empathy for all of those experiences. What was that step from the startup in California that exposed you to Medtronic? Was it a phone call? Did you put your resume out again? What did that look like?
No, it was actually an acquisition. So my startup got acquired by Medtronic and so we just got folded into the family. And that, I have to say, was an incredible experience. Again, being very early in my career, being at a startup, there were probably about 100 people there. And then we were joined with Minimed and at that time there was probably a thousand people at Minimed and we became under the umbrella then of Medtronic that was.
I don’t even know how many people they had at the time. Maybe 20,000, I’m not even sure. But you know, it was this. We used to joke about the small fish being eaten by the medium fish, being by the bigger fish. But it was incredible to experience all three of those in one probably few year period where I got the small company experience, the medium sized company experience that’s now, you know, already commercial and moving forward with that. But then the Medtronic experience was really incredible.
There were just so many resources that as a startup company, we just didn’t have the ability to access. So each, I guess dimension of that was really, really great to see a part of.
Well, when you really go all in, you go all in. I feel like you get this 360 exposure in every environment that you’re in. So I’m curious to know the small fish environment, medium fish environment and big fish environment. Was there something that you learned and when it come in context of leadership that has helped you and is there something that you’ve had to unlearn?
Wow, that’s a tough one. Okay, so learning, I think networking was really big at to integrate into the medium sized environment that I was in every day as well as the Medtronic environment which was much more distributed and spread out in different locations around the world. But that required a different kind of networking to get to know the people that had really interesting ideas or that we could leverage to learn more about some component or technology.
So it’s to me it was, there was a lot of networking that was really important to my experience there. And then unlearning. I guess each of those experiences were very different in terms of the actual interaction of people and how they got things done. So there were some, I guess culturally maybe. So culturally Minimed was a little more upfront, straightforward, you know, here’s what I need and that’s why I need it.
Medtronic was a little more, maybe reading between the lines a little more. Also an important skill to have. And so it was more, I guess, I don’t know what I want to say, maybe corporate. That’s. So it’s a really different environment and you interact in a different way with different levels of people.
At that point it’s almost a crash course I think of like interaction from all different roles, all different levels, all different seniorities. So.
Exactly.
Had to have been helpful in your current position, which we’ll talk to in just a little bit. But can you, Rebecca, walk me through the roles that you held at your time at Medtronic, which I believe was 21 years at Medtronic.
That was a really long time.
So just a brief, brief star of time. Yeah, walk us through those roles. What do they look like?
Yeah. So when I first started with the startup company that was purchased by or acquired by Medtronic, I was just a research engineer that was trying to figure out this long term sensor and how it interacted with the body. So it was similar to a pacing lead and it sat right near the right atrium, superior vena cava position in the blood vessel. So very invasive. And we had patients that were on these as part of clinical studies.
And it was trying to understand the data, looking at clinical data to figure out what’s happening or what’s good or what’s not working. So that was the early research scientist role. I then started leading the mechanical engineering team who was designing the short term sensors as well as the long term sensors. So we looked at both of those aspects and the short term sensor was the legacy product of minimed. And so when we got combined, we also combined sensor teams. So we had a lot going on at the time.
And so I led the mechanical engineering team for that as well as looking at sensor data that grew into some roles with connected systems. So how does the sensor talk to other parts of the system? So we had a new project that was a bedside monitor for parents of children who were on pumps and sensors. So at the time, the only way that they could know if their child was safe was to get up all night long, go check the pumps to make sure that everything was in range. All good.
But this device called mySentry was a bedside system so that they could just glance over and see exactly where their child was at that time. So really important for parents so they could get a little bit more sleep. There was also around that same time, or maybe just a little bit after Medtronic took this really interesting stance, they said, you know what, we know that there’s a lot of smart people out there. There’s a lot of projects at each of the divisions that maybe isn’t covered under the normal business of the division, but might still be important to Medtronic’s future.
So we’re going to create an internal venture program. So they had a venture team that just like an external venture group would review projects and fund them. So I was part of a pitch team for a hospital glucose management system that got funded. So we became this little startup inside of broader Medtronic and inside the diabetes division. It was really fascinating and I love that they were willing to take this chance. It was really amazing.
And so we ended up commercializing this system in Europe. And so that was an amazing experience. And I led R&D for that experience. So everything from electrical design and mechanical design and sensor design. Yeah, all of it. So all the way through that was really interesting. And software as well. So then after that, I’m trying to think. It’s hard to think about this whole career.
Yeah, I did not make it easy on you, that’s for sure. Take your time.
So I guess the, the, I’ll say the final third of my career was focused on future. So at the time, we got a new general manager who wanted to create a research arm, which we didn’t have a pure research arm prior to that. It was all just mostly research and development, so development towards a product. So this research arm was to look at. Okay, what is our five to ten year plan for the diabetes division?
There are a lot of competitors that are doing really novel, interesting things. How do we make sure that we can compete and maybe surpass those potential competitors and help the people with diabetes in a way that maybe they’re not even imagining today? So what would that 5 to 10 year strategy look like? So that’s what I worked on. I had a team of people who helped to look into some of these ideas.
And through that we formed Inventure, which was an innovation program. And this is what I thought was really interesting. Again, Medtronic was amazing for the creative opportunity that they allowed that could change how they viewed things. So in this case, we had a very large helpline at Medtronic Diabetes, and this is where people that are using the devices can call in and ask questions or get help with something that they’re struggling with or even just order new devices.
And with all of the people that, that answered those phone calls every day, there wasn’t a great way to get that information that they listened to patients every day to get that back to the engineering teams. So I created something called Inventure, which was to draw ideas out from anywhere in the company, not just the engineering teams, to form little venture teams, little startups to explore ideas that weren’t being covered by something else. So I took all of that learning that I had in my own experience.
Experience and applied it to this. So we had teams that would come from the helpline, from manufacturing, from quality groups. You know, really these groups of people would bring ideas forward. The entire company would vote on which ones they thought were the best and then we would fund it for them to work for a year.
What? How did I not know about this?
Yep. And so we had about 2,400 people participating across I don’t even know how many countries, but around the world participating in this. Yeah, it was really amazing.
And this was, and I’m going to say your brainchild, but with the asterisks that nobody does anything alone. So I’m saying that again with an asterisk, but. So this came from you and it worked.
Worked. I know, it was amazing.
Have you ever stopped to pat yourself on the back or pour yourself a well deserved glass of wine and cheers yourself.
No, there’s still more work to do. No, I mean, it was inspiring. And the people. The people are what made it incredible, really. I had this idea and I got the support of management to, sure, go ahead and try it. We’ll put this money aside. So I feel like it’s not just the teams. And of course, there were. I had my team that helped me execute this and make it real. So there were just so many people involved to make it a success. As well as the participating teams, they came with amazing ideas. Really inspiring.
Reflecting on your roles at Medtronic, did you feel that any of those roles were leadership forward and out of the roles, which one do you feel like you found yourself in terms of what a leader is? If at all.
You know, I would. I would guess that once I started working on this hospital glucose management product where I was leading R&D at the time, I got to form my team. I got to, you know, at the time also we. What we did for this, I really wanted it to be different, a different experience inside of the division. So we actually got new cubicles that were more like pods, we called them. So it was groups of people working together, low cubicle walls so that we could see each other and see more of an experience together. Since it was a small focus team and I sat out there with them and so we just had a lot of interaction all day. We’d have lunches on Fridays. It was just more bringing a team closer together because we had a short timeline and a lot to get done. So we had to really work tightly together as a team.
Was that something that you went in intentionally, that you wanted to have a tight team that worked and communicated quickly and well together, and you knew that changing the physical environment would help with that?
I didn’t know, but I had an idea that it would help, or at least I hoped it would. There were problems. It wasn’t always easy. So we all had to figure out phone calls. So when somebody was on a phone call, you know, we had to come up with strategies to make sure that, you know, you weren’t disrupting the people around you.
So there’s a lot of we there. And I think that might be. Ultimately the point is to think of it as a collective as opposed to a me or an I. That’s incredibly special. Have you carried that? Not necessarily everybody’s in a cubicle together or a pod together, but have you carried on that to be an effective team and to be a leader, you have to try to eliminate as many barriers to those, the communication as possible. You carried that on.
Absolutely. And I feel like as a leader, that’s what our job is. Take down the barriers to make these amazing people that work for you. They, you know, they need to get things done and that’s in the best interest of everyone. So remove as many barriers as possible. It’s not, not always my job to define what the path is. I have really smart people that work for me. They know a lot. So sometimes it’s just letting them do their job and making it easy for them to do. And then we discover together what the right way is.
All right, I could spend another entire episode just talking about your experiences at Medtronic and before, but one of the reasons that I really wanted to sit down with you was to learn more about Biolinq. So you have this beautiful career at Medtronic, 21 years. There had to have been something so important to you that would turn your head to leave that. So tell me about Biolinq. What about that organization convinced you to take your decades of diabetes and sensory experience and go all in?
Yeah, it’s a big jump. I had been following Biolinq for a number of years, watching them progress. They started out as this micro needle company that was doing some interesting things, but there were a couple of them out there. The others didn’t quite have what Biolinq did. So what made Biolinq really unique in my mind was these individually addressable needles or electrodes that made it much more unique where other microneedle companies were grouping. They had all of the needles were tied together something different, but. But this individual addressability meant that there’s full flexibility to do some really interesting things as a platform. So I always thought that was really interesting.
But at the time, no one really knew if microneedles would work in the skin for, you know, any length of time. So the glucose sensors today are seven to 14 days. Generally. Could microneedles do the same thing? And indeed, when they started showing data that lasted a week, I said, all right, this is really interesting. Then they have something really unique, very minimally invasive. So you can barely see these little micro sensors before you put them in.
And the ability to have this very flexible platform I found fascinating. Then when I found out that they’re also working on a new method of measuring different analytes beyond glucose, I was sold.
So for those who maybe aren’t in the know, can you give us just a very high level, what is the problem that Biolinq is trying to solve and what does that solution look like.
Sure, yeah. So the way that I see it, there’s a. A bit of a gap in the market right now. So there are some pretty amazing sensors, glucose sensors, for people with type 1 diabetes. And what makes that different? People with type 1, their bodies do not produce insulin anymore, and so they are fully dependent on externally injected insulin. And so knowing the exact number of your glucose value, to know how much insulin to inject, very important.
But for people with type 2 diabetes, their bodies are still producing some insulin, it just isn’t enough to support what’s happening in their bodies. So they often on the journey through type 2 diabetes, you’ll go on maybe an oral medication to bring your general glucose level down, maybe you’ll go on two medications, three medications, four medications, and then you’ll shift to insulin after that. But for that entire experience before going on insulin, you’re not injecting something that is related to your glucose value. You’re just managing medications, diet and exercise.
And so the numbers can be a lot for people that can’t really inject something related to it. So if that makes sense so far, the numbers can be a lot for people. So we have this really unique user interface where we’re just giving people a range guidance. So we’re saying you’re in range or you’re not in range. And if you’re not in range, maybe you need to just go take a walk outside to bring your glucose back down, or maybe don’t go have dessert or something. You know, there’s different choices that you can make as a person that you’re in control of what happens after that, but without the numbers that are just overwhelming for a lot of people, there’s so much else going on in people’s lives that the numbers become confusing and just too much information.
Now that really is hugely helpful to understand the need and how Biolinq can help help bridge that gap. One of the things that I had learned fairly recently is that Biolinq had earned an FDA de novo clearance for your first glucose sensor, Biolinq Shine.
We’re so excited about it.
Congratulations. Like, take a second again, pat your back. That is not easy to do.
It’s not. And we are only the sixth company in 25 years to achieve an FDA clearance for a glucose sensor. So it is incredible. We’re very happy about it.
Wow. How do you inspire a team to keep going? Because these processes are not short. You never really know if it’s going to come to fruition. So how do you keep a team motivated? How do you keep yourself motivated?
I mean, I guess in the end it’s all about the patients that are out there that could benefit from this. So I think that keeps the team inspired, telling them stories about, you know, as, as we’re developing devices, we do a lot of clinical studies and just understanding. We don’t get to know a lot of information about the patients themselves because it’s a clinical study. So, you know, it’s all blinded to us.
But you can see in the glucose traces what their lives are like and what’s where they’re struggling. You’ll see some subjects where their glucoses are really high all throughout the day and you know that they probably need this help. But because it’s a clinical study, they don’t get feedback from the device itself. But knowing that one day we’ll be able to turn on that information for them once we would get approval, I think that’s really inspiring to people.
Also we’re all a bunch of engineers and scientists here and we love solving problems. So just the problem solving part of it is really inspiring for the scientists. So there’s that too.
So that is neat, I guess. I don’t really think about the information that you have that you see that is not public information that could be so motivating. And you help one person and you help everybody in their community. That’s the beautiful thing I think about this industry is that no patient is alone.
Right. And what’s interesting about our devices, it gives people a different option. So you know that they’re used to the devices that are out there today. Ours is quite different from that. So now they have more options. So I think that’s, it’s great for patients.
Options are almost more important than anything else. Especially I feel like for a patient where so much is out of their control, options give you some of that control back and that can be better for your emotion and your mental state more than anything else.
Yep, I agree.
So let’s talk about your current role. You are Vice President of Advanced Sensor Technologies and I think you had mentioned that you were intrigued by Biolinq talking about adding analytes, potentially reaching new populations, expanding indications. What does your role entail when it comes to all of this?
Yeah, so this is a completely new way of measuring. We are using single stranded DNA segments as the bioreceptor. So usually glucose sensors use an enzyme that catalyze a reaction that helps you measure glucose. In this case, it’s a DNA segment that you can make specific to anything. That’s what’s the beauty. And to me this is the future of sensing, of biosensing. The sky is the limit, just about. But you can tailor this DNA segment to measure almost any analyte that’s available in for us, the subcutaneous tissue or the dermal tissue.
So that is the future. And I think the sky’s the limit. We could measure women’s hormones, we could measure inflammatory markers, I could just go on and on cardiac markers. There’s just so many things that will be the future of biosensing. So we’re just at the outset, more to come.
Speechless. I’m absolutely speechless. That’s unbelievable.
My role in that though is to be the leader of the group and help them push the science forward, to make this a reality, but also helping maybe manage direction. So you can imagine with a huge white space of the different directions we could go for different biomarkers, we do have to focus and develop something and bring it to the end before starting on something else. So we are trying to bring some focus to that tooth. So that’s part of my role as well as I do a lot of external speaking on this new technology at scientific conferences.
So I have to imagine that if you are so hands-on that you work with, you know, regulatory, clinical, user experience, reimbursement, like all of those are stakeholders that you interact with. How is that part of your role? What does that communication style look like, and how is your leadership style when it comes to interacting with all of those different stakeholders?
Yeah, I mean, I think from my early experience it’s about networking and just talking to people. You might not always have a meeting to go over something. It may just be letting people know along the way. Oh, hey, here’s where we are. Maybe we could talk about doing this next thing in six months. So helping you plan ahead. You know, if we want to talk to the FDA, maybe, you know, we start planning for that. But you know, trying to let people know ahead of time what we might expect, where we are in our process and where we’ll need their help.
But I want to drop all modesty for a second and I want to hear from you and don’t worry about ego, don’t worry about how it comes out. I mean, I think as a woman we downplay our successes and I’m feeling that from you as well. So drop the modesty, drop the ego and just tell me what about you? Do you think if you reflect on your personality type or choices that you made or communication style makes you the leader that you are.
Wow. I mean, I think I care about people. I love science. That is a true passion, for sure. So I love learning new things. The curiosity that we talked about in the beginning has always been there for me and I think being, helping to represent a team or an effort to others and explaining things to them. So communicating to others about the work that, that my team is doing, I think those are some of the things that I love doing.
And it’s not done enough. I think when I think about other leaders, everything that you’re saying is I think, what your team craves. So you have a very instinctual way I think of leadership and it’s working very clearly.
Yeah. One thing that in terms of communication, if I could, that neither of my parents went to college and so having a PhD. and you know, they’ll ask me what I’m working on and they’re not scientists. So being able to explain to people in a really simple way, I think is maybe a superpower of mine if I want to say that, that being able to bring people along on the journeys and, and tell them what I think is important in a way that they can understand and digest for who they are and their experiences. So I think being able to change messages and being able to talk to people and meet them where they are, that’s so important.
That is so important. And you know, I’ve been In the industry 19 years, Rebecca, and that is the one thing we keep circling around. How do you meet the patients where they are? And we need more of you. So I hope everybody who’s listening that you’re, you’re writing this down and you’re thinking through that because that’s so, so, so important. So that’s why you. And I’m going to say this word, I think you’re a badass. So that’s one of the, those are some of the reasons why you’re such a badass.
The other side, being a woman. So we know being a woman in MedTech can be challenging. It can be kind of difficult. But there are so many reasons that just being woman, being, thinking, living life as a woman has made this industry better. So what of your learned experiences do you think has helped make this industry better or make you, your part in this industry more successful?
I mean, I think just bringing that different perspective, I’m a mom, I’m a woman in the world. You know, I maybe been in tough experiences, but great experiences. I mean, I think all of us should be bringing along the things that make us unique and different and bringing empathy for different types of people, bringing that to the table is, to me, incredibly important.
Well, you know, I agree with that. I think it’s the most important thing we can do. And stealing your terminology of superpowers, that is one of our superpowers, innately.
Definitely.
What advice, Rebecca, do you have for our audience or for anybody who wants to step into a technical leadership role, like yourself? Like, what advice do you have for them?
I mean, I feel like throughout my career I have capitalized on opportunities that are there, so I don’t say no. You know, I kind of imagine what things could be like, and that’s what drives me forward. So if there’s an opportunity there, I’m going to take it and see what happens out of that. I’ve learned so much because of not saying no to something, I guess, and taking the chance.
Say yes. Take the chance.
Say yes. Take the chance. It’s going to be my personal chant, I think, throughout the day today. And we need to hear it. We need to hear this constantly because it’s easier to say it than to have action on it.
Yeah. And I think oftentimes women like you sort of mentioned do downplay their experiences, and so they might not say yes to something that could really change the trajectory of their career. So, again, take the chance.
All right, last, and I think probably, arguably the most important point here is we can’t do it alone. So is there anyone in your orbit that the world, the MedTech world, needs to know about? Is there a leader that you want to shout their praises?
There are a lot.
Good, good.
I think I’ll talk about Annette Brüls. So Annette was a general manager of a division within Medtronic that I worked with. And she then went on to, she was at Medtronic for a long time, then became the CEO of Medela. Right. Women’s breast pump company. And now she’s a Corporate VP at Edwards Lifesciences. She is an advocate for women. She’s an advocate for patients that she serves. She’s such a warm person, but she’s also an engineer and just incredibly knowledgeable.
So she’s just somebody who I always thought was able to just get things done on even really challenging goals. She was able to make them happen, but not losing people along the way. She was very warm and brought everyone along with her. So I think she’s an incredible person.
Oh, well, if you don’t mind, I’m going to on the side reach out to you and see if I can get to know her as well. She sounds Incredible. So, Rebecca Gottlieb, Vice President, Advanced Sensor Technologies for Biolinq, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. You are extraordinary.
Thank you, Kayleen. This was a great opportunity. Thank you so much.
And with that, we bring this episode to a close. My conversation with Rebecca Gottlieb was a powerful reminder that innovation doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when leaders intentionally build the systems that allow for curiosity, experimentation, and good ideas to survive. Rebecca shows us that leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about shaping the conditions where teams can ask better questions and then getting out of their way.
So huge thank you to Rebecca for that clarity, honesty, and generosity that she brought to this conversation and for modeling what it looks like to lead innovation as a sustainable system. I also want to thank Chris Dawson, market team lead for the biosensing team at TTP, for joining me in the studio. And I found it really interesting how closely my conversation with Chris echoed my conversation with Rebecca. I mean, it was really that same mindset, this idea of leading by asking what’s possible, not just what’s certain.
And this shows up in practice at TTP. So, as a friendly, helpful reminder, Chris very generously offered three downloadable ebooks to our audience. So please look in the show notes. I’ve dropped the links there. And if you want to learn more about TTP and how they work with MedTech companies, please visit their website at www.TTP.com. now, before we go, I want to know what surfaced for you when you think about innovation inside your own organization.
What systems are helping good ideas move forward and which might be quietly holding them back. I have so thoroughly and completely loved all of the messages I’ve been getting on LinkedIn from episode one and episode two. So please, please, please keep them coming. I think I might be addicted. I want to know what surfaces for you, so please, please, please connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m Kayleen Brown, and while you’re there, connect with our amazing editorial director, Tom Salemi. And of course, DeviceTalks.
I will see you again in just a few weeks with the next episode of the Women in MedTech podcast. But until then, thank you for listening.
