Doing More, Faster: Rebuilding Our Culture From the Inside Out

In 1985, Alfred E. Mann set out to solve one of the biggest challenges in med tech: the gap between a promising idea and a product that actually reaches patients. He called it the valley of death. The organization he founded — formerly the Alfred E. Mann Foundation, now huMannity Medtec — has spent over four decades building the engineering, regulatory, and clinical expertise to close that gap, producing more than 600 patents and spinouts that include Axonics, MiniMed, and Advanced Bionics along the way.

That history is a point of pride, but it isn’t what’s occupying us most right now. Instead, we are focused on how we work — and how we’re changing the way we work, together.

“The key word is transformation,” says Shawn Lewis, Vice President of Human Relations. “We’re transforming the organization so that we’re more aligned, moving faster, and doing more. Doing more, faster — that’s essentially the tagline. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Transparency as a Design Principle

For an organization built around scientists, engineers, regulatory specialists, and business developers, alignment doesn’t happen by accident. It has to be engineered, the same way we’d engineer anything else we care about.

Over the past year and a half, we’ve rebuilt our internal communication systems from the ground up. Our SharePoint intranet has become a living hub; company news, patent disclosures, employee spotlights, goal tracking, all in one place instead of scattered across inboxes. Town halls, once occasional, are now monthly, with our CEO Dr. Bob Greenberg present and our progress against company goals made visible to everyone in the building, not just leadership.

That shift shows up in small moments that end up meaning a lot. When we began discussing an upcoming office move, we talked about it at a town hall months before any final decision was made.

“One employee was shocked that we talked about our plans to move into a new building, way before we had made the final decisions. At her last company, they found out a few hours before they were loading the trucks.” — Shawn Lewis

That kind of openness isn’t a nicety. It’s the mechanism by which a diverse group of specialists comes to understand not just what the organization is doing, but why; and where they fit into it. As Lewis puts it, alignment is the work.

Infrastructure That Serves People

None of that transparency would mean much without the systems to back it up. So alongside the cultural changes, we’ve made a sustained, 18-month investment in our foundational infrastructure — IT, ERP, the unglamorous plumbing that determines whether an organization can actually move at the pace it aspires to.

In a regulated industry, where documentation and traceability aren’t optional, outdated systems don’t just slow people down, they quietly work against the culture you’re trying to build. Upgrading that infrastructure has been a precondition for everything else we’re doing, from faster decision-making to the kind of real-time transparency our employees now depend on.

“We still have a long way to go,” Lewis says of the effort. “But I’m happy with what I’m seeing, because now we’re putting infrastructure in place that really enables the company to move faster, keep the team aligned, and be more successful.”

A New Kind of Talent Profile

Culture and hiring are inseparable, and ours is shifting in a deliberate direction. The neuromodulation field is technically demanding and small. “People in the neuro technology field in particular aren’t just walking down the street,” Lewis acknowledges. “It’s a relatively small community.” Competing for that talent against larger, commercial medtech companies means offering something different; not just a paycheck, but a role in determining the future.

Where we once hired primarily for hardware or software development, we’re now recruiting for what Lewis calls a “total solution” orientation — engineers and scientists who think about therapy outcomes and not just device specifications. Our internal capabilities are growing to match. We’ve also stood up a new feasibility team focused on the earliest stage of product development, where ideas are assessed for technical and commercial viability, creating career paths inside the organization that didn’t exist before.

The common thread across every hire, Lewis says, is a specific kind of mindset: “Folks who are curious about technology, curious about learning new things. People who can come in, do a variety of things at a high level, and continue to grow.”

We’re also applying that same philosophy further upstream through our intern program. Rather than casting a wide net, we’re sharpening our focus on specific schools, with the goal of identifying and developing talent earlier. People who can grow alongside the organization’s ambitions instead of arriving fully formed for one narrow role.

Where This Leaves Us

None of this transformation is finished, and Lewis is candid about that. The work of the past 18 months has laid a foundation — not a finish line. What’s changing is the pace at which we operate, the transparency we extend to our own people, and the kind of talent we’re building toward.

The model Alfred Mann built — bridge the valley, build the thing, do it together — is still the model. What’s different is how deliberately we’re now building the culture underneath it.

Shawn Lewis is Vice President of Human Relations at huMannity Medtec.