It’s 2007 and I’m lost in a sea of shoulder-to-shoulder blue and black suits, nearly lifting out of my seat to try and see the stage over row after row of people, all easily a foot taller than me. It was my sixth medical device conference that year, and I was there to learn from the most experienced, most successful, and most influential members of the medical device community.
But I couldn’t see.
It wasn’t just that I couldn’t see the stage. It was what I should have seen but didn’t: me.
Nearly 30 panel sessions into my new career, and I never once saw myself on that stage. Not until Amy Belt Raimundo (then a VP at Advanced Technology Ventures) took center stage — or, more accurately, owned center stage.
Until that moment, I never realized the true weight of the saying, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
It’s been my personal mission since then to create oppo…