Jennifer Fried is the co-founder of Explorer Surgical [Photo courtesy of Explorer Surgical]
Explorer Surgical co-founder Jennifer Fried has resigned from the company after selling it to Global Healthcare Exchange in October.
Fried announced her departure last week on LinkedIn, saying she’s preparing for her next professional chapter.
“It’s bittersweet — I’m so proud of everything our team has built and accomplished,” Fried wrote. “The time has flown by since my first day in the OR almost nine years ago! I am sad to leave our incredible team and customers, but I know that our company is in good hands for its next phase of growth.”
Fried’s last day as Chicago-based Explorer Surgical’s GM was June 30. Ryan Padilla is the new business line leader, Fried said in an interview with Medical Design & Outsourcing.
“He has been a part of GHX a long time. … It’s a good fit because Explorer is part of GHX, but there are so many other offerings that are adjacent to and complimentary to what Explorer offers,” she said. “I’m really excited to see it continue to grow and continue to flourish under GHX.”
“Ryan is probably one of the best operations brains I’ve ever met,” she continued. “The way that he organizes OKRs (objectives and key results) and the way that he does strategic planning for businesses and weaves it across functions and tracks people and uses internal systems, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Fried said her resignation was “a personal decision about wanting to follow my own journey.”
“For me, it’s about wanting to dedicate my professional self to the right entrepreneurial endeavor,” she said. “And I felt that with Explorer, it was time to pass on the reins.”
Fried’s not exactly sure what’s next for her professionally, but she wants to continue her support of the healthcare industry as an investor and an operator. Fried was previously a full-time healthcare investor and continued investing even as she ran Explorer Surgical.
“I’m spending a lot more time investing now. I’m really excited about women’s health and what’s happening in that segment of the healthcare industry, and I’m spending a lot of time investing in that space. I love investing and looking at new healthcare businesses and couldn’t even stop doing that while I was an operator, but I also love operating a company. Whatever you see me do next will have a mixture of working with different healthcare companies and trying to support a number of different healthcare companies get off the ground, whether that’s as an investor and operator. But you’ll also see me in hands-on operational capacity in whatever I do because I can’t resist. I just love it so much.”
For the next two months, she said, she’ll mostly be found on the shores of Lake Michigan with her two young children.
We’ll share more from our interview at Medical Design & Outsourcing in the coming weeks. Be among the first to read it by signing up for our free email newsletters.