Recor Medical CEO Lara Barghout discusses how medtech leaders can empower and grow their teams while encouraging innovation.
Recor Medical CEO and President Lara Barghout [Photo courtesy of Recor Medical]
Recor Medical has some growing to do after winning the first FDA approval for renal denervation (RDN) to treat hypertension.
Recor President and CEO Lara Barghout said her company already has somewhere between 300 and 500 employees and plans to hire “across the board” including innovation/R&D, clinical and infrastructure roles.
Barghout — who recently spoke with Medical Design & Outsourcing about how her team beat the world’s largest medical device developers to premarket approval and commercialization of RDN — offered lessons in leadership she’s learned over her career in medtech.
At the time of publication, Recor Medical’s jobs webpage listed open roles in manufacturing engineering, production, IP, medical affairs, market access, HR and sales.
Asked what she’s looking for when considering prospective hires at Recor, Barghout listed a few traits.
“Creative, energized, dynamic, agile — these are key words that describe the environment at Recor,” Barghout said. “We are a small company and we wear many hats as individuals. The plan for the future is to continue to grow, but since innovation is in our DNA, it also comes in how people think, who they are as individuals, making decisions fast and trying to continue to drive with energy across the board.”
Asked how she can encourage innovation as Recor’s CEO, Barghout said that will come from continued communication — ranging from casual chats to focused competitions — to drive teams toward goals, as well as keeping lines open with physicians and advisors.
“The culture of continuing to be very close to customers gets rewarded all the time. Customers bring challenges in front of us and we sit down and talk about how can we help their patients to be better and healthier,” Barghout said. “And we’re a very goal-driven organization, so as ideas come to fruition, we hold [each other] accountable for implementation and continuing to drive for the next goal. And that continues that innovation cycle for us.”
Before joining Recor in January 2023 as the device developer prepared for FDA approval and commercialization, Barghour spent four years at Siemens Healthineers, most recently serving as SVP and head of advanced (image-guided) therapies in the North American market. And in her career of nearly 19 years at Terumo, she rose to the position of SVP of global commercial operations for Terumo Cardiovascular.
“I was fortunate to work with fantastic device companies throughout my career,” Barghout said. “I think the success all comes down to leadership. And it’s not just about me. It’s about the leaders that I hire across the organization to continue to drive the goals that the company has, whether it’s on the premarket innovation side or the postmarket innovation side.”
“Smart leaders hire smart people that can deliver on all the goals that we have in front of us,” she continued. “Be very specific about talent that is hired across the organization in different roles. That’s how you build organizations — with creative people and people who are enjoying the fact that they’re delivering something to patients. … As you lead from the top, you need to be empowering people to drive things forward and you need to hire really smart people to drive the momentum in any organization.”
We also asked Barghout to share lessons she’s learned from the best bosses she’s ever had.
“Watching them being humble and watching them handing off the baton to someone to fly with some sort of initiative that can make them shine and can make them grow as individuals within our organization — those are the best examples that I have seen in my career,” she said.
Bad bosses — those who want the spotlight on themselves and can’t give up control — offered the same lesson, she said.
“Leaders who just want to be the ones who shine and they want everything filtered through them — they’re not empowering their teams to grow and deliver,” she said. “Those leaders are the people that I personally don’t like to work with, and I know a lot of individuals don’t want to be working with a leader who wants to be in charge all the time and not empowering, delegating.”
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