WSSFN 2021

Short Biography: Krissy Wright is the Vice President and General Manager of the Brain Modulation business within Neuromodulation. She was previously Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Finance for both Neuromodulation and Pelvic Health business units within the Neuroscience Portfolio and was also Chief of Staff for the President of Neuromodulation. As a member of the Neuromodulation Leadership Team, Krissy is responsible for developing and executing the Brain Modulation strategic and operating plan and associated imperatives to drive growth in this fast-growing Business Unit (BU).
Krissy joined Medtronic in 2010. Before joining the Neuroscience Portfolio in 2015 as Vice President of Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), and later as CFO of the Brain Therapies business, the Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT) business and the Transformative Solutions (MTS) business, Krissy was a Senior Director in Corporate Development and Corporate Finance Director. Prior to joining Medtronic, spent eleven years at PricewaterhouseCoopers in both audit and transaction advisory services where she worked with a number of healthcare clients and private equity firms leading financial due diligence projects.
Krissy graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BS in Accounting and has an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
Outside of work, Krissy enjoys yoga, cooking and adventure travel.

Short Biography: Milad Girgis is the vice president and general manager for the global brain franchise, where he leverages his more than 25 years of experience in medical device product development, engineering, operations and marketing to oversee all commercial sales and marketing strategies for deep brain stimulation (DBS) and the company’s associated therapy partnerships. Milad has led our DBS business since its commercial start nearly 10 years ago in Europe. During his tenure with the company, he’s held notable positions such as leading manufacturing operations and commercial responsibilities for International Sales for Neuromodulation, where he led the expansion of Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) and the launch of DBS therapy in Europe, Japan, Latin America, Australia and Canada. Prior to BSC, Milad held manufacturing engineering roles with Medtronic within the diabetes business, as well as an R&D role at an in-vitro diagnostic company. Milad earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in engineering management from California State University, Northridge. He is also an alumnus of the Stanford Executive Education program, and holds four patents, two of which are directly related to the company’s SCS and DBS products.

Short Biography: Dr. Binith Cheeran is the Medical and Clinical Affairs Senior Director at Abbott Labs, a Clinical Neurologist and Ph.D. Neuroscientist. After training in Internal Medicine, he specialized in Neurology with sub-specialty expertise in Movement Disorders and Deep Brain Stimulation. In academic research, at University College London and Oxford University, Dr. Cheeran’s interests including basic science and applied clinical neuromodulation research for pain, movement disorders and psychiatric applications. At Abbott, his focus has been Digital Health and indication expansion. He is the executive sponsor for product development of Neurosphere Virtual Clinic, a first-in-class CE-marked, FDA approved, integrated telemedicine solution for neurostimulator programming, which was recently recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best inventions of 2021.

Short Biography: Fred Haer graduated from Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania in 1965 with a B.S. in Chemistry. In the following two years, he did graduate work in physical chemistry at the University of Michigan. From 1967 to 1969, he worked for two Ann Arbor companies in technical sales and marketing. In 1970, Jill and Fred Haer founded Frederick Haer and Company in Michigan; they moved the company to Brunswick, Maine in 1977 and Frederick Haer and Company was reincorporated as FHC, Inc. Currently 100 FHCers are employed at its corporate and manufacturing facilities in Bowdoin, Maine and field technical support offices in Greenville, PA; Bucharest, Romania; and Medellin, Colombia. FHC formation exactly parallels the growth of the Society for Neuroscience. Our products for clinical functional neurosurgery began 25 years later. FHC designs, manufactures, and internationally markets products for neuroscience, the study of the brain and nervous system, and neurosurgery. Its neuroscience customers are research scientists at universities, medical schools, research hospitals, and government research institutions around the world. Functional neurosurgeons use FHC’s medical devices for intraoperative microelectrode recording and stimulation in movement disorders and more recently epilepsy. Fulfilling a company BHAG created in 1991, FHC established the Greenville Neuromodulation Center (GNC) in July, 2013. The Center offers training for medical personnel and includes facilities for clinical and neuroscience research. FHC collaborative relationships with users and medical device partners has been responsible for all our products and company growth. The company has established Neural microTargeting™ Worldwide as its trademark and is committed to remain an independent Maine manufacturing company serving the communities in which it operates.

Short Biography: TBA

Short Biography: Ning, Yihua, Chairman and General manager, SceneRay Corporation Limited Yihua Ning, who has more than 30 years of experience in medical device engineering, sales, marketing and operations management, used to worked in GE HealthCare, Becton and Dickinson, Medtronic, Siemens and Densply China. Mr. Ning founded SceneRay in 2011. Mr. Ning was educated with Bachelor degree on Biomedical Engineering and Master Degree in Shanghai Fudan University, and Executive Master Degree on Business Administration in Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing.

Short Biography: Dr. Jörn Rickert Chief Strategic & Scientific Officer Jörn Rickert studied biology in Hamburg and Freiburg. His dissertation on the representation of movement in the motor cortex made an important contribution to basic neurobiological research. When writing his dissertation, he also had the idea to use scientific research as a bridge for implementation and to start a business focusing thereon. After completing his PhD in 2004, he became project manager at the Brain Machine Interfacing Initiative (BMII) in Freiburg, undertaking the task of transferring the research results of this group of scientists into a marketable product. He founded CorTec in September 2010.