Hiring for Good is a podcast exploring the transformative power of leadership and what happens when the right person takes the job. Thank you for tuning in to this episode with our guest Smriti Agrawal, Ph.D., Medtech Innovator.
Hiring For Good Website: https://www.hiringforgoodpod.com/
Smriti Agrawal’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/atsmriti/
Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/288s2ur…
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Tanis Morris: Director of Business Development at Acumen Executive Search Email: tanis@acumenexecutivesearch.com
Suzanne Hanifin: President at Acumen Executive Search Email: suzanne@acumenexecutivesearch.com
Acumen Executive Search Website: https://www.acumenexecutivesearch.com/
Acumen Executive Search is the leading certified woman-owned Executive Search and advisory Firm on the West Coast.
Acumen Executive Search, Portland, Oregon, is proud to present the Hiring For Good Podcast. Join us as we examine the transformative power of leadership. Through discussions with impactful leaders, we explore hiring for longevity, hiring to elevate organizational operations and mindset, and how the effects of exceptional leadership extend far beyond the walls of the workplace. Follow Acumen Executive Search to be notified of new episodes.
Hiring for Good Transcript
0:00 well hello and welcome to hiring for good podcast I’m Tanis Morris with
0:05 Acumen executive Search and as usual with me is my lovely co-host Suzanne
0:11 Hanifin well welcome thank you Tanis we are honored to have with us today Dr Smriti Agrawal who is a seasoned
0:18 scientist turned entrepreneur with over 10 years experience in developing and commercializing innovative Medical
0:25 Technology Solutions with a strong focus on Go To Market strategies Smriti has
0:30 successfully navigated the regulatory and reimbursement pathways driven market
0:35 adoption, accelerated revenue growth, and optimized product positioning in the global Healthcare landscape with a Ph.D.
0:42 in molecular human genetics from Baylor College of Medicine and a background in medical devices and Therapeutics, Dr
0:49 Agrawal brings a unique blend of scientific expertise and strategic acumen to drive innovation and shape the
0:55 future of patient care as the co-founder of a pioneering medical device startup Lazarus 3D Dr Agrawal has led the
1:03 organization from early-stage development through commercialization achieving rapid market penetration both
1:09 domestically and internationally. She has a proven track record in launching new products expanding into new markets and
1:15 securing over $1 million in VC and non-dilutive funding. Her expertise in
1:20 healthcare innovation has been recognized in major media outlets including CNN, CBS, Business Insider,
1:28 NPR, and more. Dr Agrawal’s persistence passion dedication to Innovation and
1:33 patience and commitment to creating positive change in medicine have revolutionized surgical planning
1:38 ultimately improving patient outcomes and transforming the future of healthcare Smriti is also an advocate
1:45 for entrepreneurship. She’s an active community and industry volunteer and is
1:51 widely recognized as a leading light in entrepreneurial voice entrepreneurial voices in Medtech in the region. Smriti, Dr
2:00 Agrawal. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, Tanis, really appreciate it. You’re welcome. To be here. Yes we’ve…
2:07 I’ve been very much looking forward to this um I think you have such a fascinating story uh we always begin by
2:13 asking our guests to just kind of sketch out how they got into leadership and um
2:19 your story is particularly compelling if you don’t mind we would love for you to share your journey yeah absolutely so I
2:27 early childhood I was born in India I grew up in Mumbai and um always was in
2:33 the shadows of my family that had a family they ran a family business there
2:38 and I would go you know to trade shows with them I designed the logo for the family business and I was always excited
2:45 um to see that hustle and bustle of like that upcoming um event or you know
2:52 opportunity whatever was happening and even though I was a a child at the time I would still see you know my my parents
2:59 and and my uncles like you know negotiate or do whatever you know um um
3:07 I guess had to be done to get the job done right um so that was my early childhood from there when I moved to the
3:14 US um my dad got a job in the US um here I was the new kid and so I had to create
3:21 my own path to you know getting um you know that building building those bonds
3:28 and like sort of starting over and I think that’s why when we talk about immigrants there is like that
3:34 unique element of um them when they are here and what they do with their lives
3:40 it’s always interesting and its always inspiring um so when I moved here that was I grew up half of my life um here
3:48 then moved to Houston for school so that’s where my career started I guess um I was at Baylor College of Medicine
3:53 and Houston uh focusing on my PhD in Genetics um and at the same time
3:59 somebody had asked me hey why don’t you consider the MD-PHD route um and so from there I had to make this decision um I
4:07 ended up going into a lot of surgeries and observing how people train and how you know people are treated how patients
4:15 are treated and identified a gap there so that sparked um a host of um ideas in
4:24 me and created I created those opportunities for myself that have paved the path to where I am today. Yeah you
4:31 mentioned these gaps kind of fill in what what were the gaps and yeah
4:36 absolutely so um the first um I guess encounter uh was it’s a funny story it
4:44 was a fellow on the shuttle one day from Baylor uh who had talked about how he
4:51 had operated on a bell pepper and yeah and exactly and I thought it was funny
4:56 and I thought it was a joke but it wasn’t um so surgeons early in their
5:01 careers you know when they’re learning often train on fruits and vegetables or
5:07 cadavers but you can’t really operate on cavers so in this particular example he had removed seeds from the bell pepper
5:13 using a surgical robot and um to me I was just baffled and very shocked that
5:20 this was now going to translate to you know actual patient procedure right um
5:27 and so I asked him if there was an intermediary in between those two and he
5:32 said yes of course we observe lots of cases you know dozens of procedures he would observe or even assist uh in the OR
5:40 so I was like okay well that’s really fascinating because if I just observe somebody do surgery I don’t think I
5:45 would like feel comfortable well and as a potential patient going from bell
5:51 pepper seeds to my brain right and I asked him that and I was like how comfortable are you doing
5:58 this transition you know are you really like completely um good to go on your
6:05 first case and he’s like no like the first case is you know there’s so much
6:12 on the line and it is frightening and they are nervous but it’s not just the
6:17 first case it’s dozens of cases and in some instances, it could be hundreds of
6:23 cases and and really if you look at statistics in some procedures you know like for example kidney cancer treatment
6:31 for uh kidney cancer where they removed the tumor itself the learning curve is 300 cases so that’s to go from starting
6:39 out to achieving competency and then furthermore additional cases to go from
6:45 competency to excellency right and so it can take years and it does and I was
6:53 just asking myself the whole time I was like well there has to be a better way.
6:58 And yeah, no, this is amazing because again it’s scary to think that that way
7:04 because you look at your physician and you go they they are the expert but like all of us it is a
7:11 learning you know we we go through that evolution of learning and looking back
7:17 you know again going from PhD MD into
7:24 entrepreneurship besides these aha moments of there’s a recognized gap
7:30 What, share with us some other formative experiences whether it’s with a mentor and and how you were able to
7:38 make that transition. Yeah so this like I said it was one um instance and then actually I
7:45 decided not to go to medical school uh for those reasons and others um but in
7:52 life in general everything we do is we are always learning right and it’s
7:58 through experience that we grow so for me early on I had a really phenomenal
8:04 mentor uh my my um PI, my boss at Baylor, um and I asked him and I was like hey
8:10 you know I was considering going to medical school like doing an MD-PhD but I
8:16 have identified this gap and I think I may have some ideas that I want to
8:21 pursue um and I don’t want it to be you know a conflict between my work at
8:27 Baylor and this other thing that I want to do and he was really um I loved his
8:34 response and he was like well this is a place for you to learn
8:39 right and you can explore whatever opportunities you create for yourself or
8:45 opportunities that come your way as long as it doesn’t interfere with the work that you’re doing you know your thesis
8:51 work um and so I was really passionate about both and I was really happy and
8:57 and relieved to hear that um advice from him and that was like at the beginning of my journey and through those years uh
9:05 you know I spent four years at Baylor uh working in Therapeutics um so first it
9:10 was Diagnostics um focusing on um neurodegenerative conditions that are
9:15 inherited and these are rare rare neurodegenerative conditions that lead to blindness in kids and young adults
9:22 it’s progressive so I focused on the diagnostic aspect of it and then I did
9:27 um Animal Studies um to validate um those targets that we were identifying
9:32 in in my lab and then from there we progressed to Therapeutics so using gene
9:38 therapy tools to basically create treatments for patients that have these
9:43 conditions um so I was doing this thing I was really passionate about it at the same time I was also building my company
9:50 Lazarus 3D um and at the end of this journey well at the end of my PhD uh
9:56 when it was time to leave um I asked my boss the same question and I
10:02 was like hey I’ve been really passionate about the work that I have done here and I know that there are so many
10:07 opportunities to pursue this further in the biotech space, especially at that time it was booming and I mean it still
10:15 is still in its infancy um and so and then however I have created this company
10:22 and I think it has a very bright future so if I exit Academia do you think this
10:27 is a a good idea you know to go on to build a startup uh would that you know
10:35 limit me and he said again huge like
10:40 moment for me to hear this from him and he said you don’t have to limit yourself
10:47 for any reason, right this um life is limitless like there’s so many
10:53 opportunities and if you feel passionate about the startup you are young so why
10:59 not pursue it take that risk and 99% of startups fail so he’s like you know if
11:06 that happens you would learn tremendously from it, and you would bring
11:11 so much value to whatever you do next and so if then you decide you want to
11:17 come back to Academia that’s a very easy transition right and so I was and he’s
11:24 like then you can just have both why limit yourself what great advice oh I
11:29 and I think I think that advice of you know like I look in my career and every
11:35 time I’ve leapt it’s been amazing and you take that chance and you kind of go
11:41 for it because we learned so much from the road rash of falling down of that
11:48 versus never falling…MmHm…you know so that’s amazing yeah yeah I I I love that
11:57 um the mentor that you had in Academia was
12:03 really thinking about like holistically about what you learn you know outside of the lens of just what you’re learning
12:09 you know for your PhD but but viewing life as an opportunity to learn and and
12:15 why not go for it it’s um what I tell my kids but kind of on a bigger scale but
12:22 but it’s just I love I love that sensibility um you know as the founder
12:27 of an organization you were pretty young when you started everything did you go through
12:34 intentional work to kind of identify your own personally held values and then
12:39 think about the culture of the organization you were building or did that just kind of innately I mean there’s different ways you kind of
12:45 stumble into a startup or you kind of have to…I mean like how intentional were you or or what ended up really
12:51 resonating culturally within the the company that you built that that’s kind of a part of who you are yeah I think it
12:58 was always a part of who I am um being entrepreneurial right like as I said
13:04 whatever my exposure was to the family business growing up definitely is
13:09 something that shaped me right um I was probably not aware of that at the time
13:15 when it was happening but um as I was beginning my early career journey you
13:22 know I always had this strong sense of diversifying my efforts
13:30 and so not putting all of your eggs in one basket right um so even when I was
13:36 starting out I actually had taken on like many projects like I had four or five going in parallel because at least
13:43 in science you never know like when your project will fail and and how long it
13:48 will take to fail and so I think it’s always better to fail sooner than later but that doesn’t always pan out right so
13:56 I always had multiple projects starting out and and I think I had just done it as a um safety mechanism right just to
14:04 be prepared for failure not ex..not want it not desire it
14:09 but anticipate the possibility of it um so to be cautiously optimistic and I
14:15 think all scientists are cautiously optimistic in life like no matter what they’re doing um so that’s always had it
14:22 it has always been a part of me um and then to pursue Lazarus at a you know
14:28 parallel path um in that Journey was um I think huge risk but also a huge
14:35 reward um because of the impact and I think those the impact had always been a
14:42 part of who I am to everything that I cared for and everything that I have committed to in life has always come
14:50 from a place of care right so you talk about like why I mentor uh startups and why I volunteer and why I’m involved
14:57 with those other organizations, it’s because because of the impact and um if
15:03 I can make a difference in this other person’s life whether it’s a patient or whether it’s a mentee I really care
15:09 about that, so that impact has always been a part of it it’s been a force and
15:16 uh with Lazarus 3D of course the goal is to the vision is to improve patient
15:21 safety and outcomes in surgical care where every patient even if that patient was me we all deserve the best and so
15:29 enabling it and you know driving it um pioneering technologies that really make
15:36 it a reality was the was the mission and the impact of what came from within it’s
15:43 the passion that drives you and it’s you know having that um desire that undying desire to just
15:52 make it happen yeah and so as you’re building this organization and growing
15:58 the team let’s talk to us about how you hire and
16:06 those values and how do you bring that in to continue with that culture and to
16:11 grow an organization yeah that’s a um really interesting question I think hiring um
16:20 at a startup is such a difficult um task right to to do it it
16:29 right and I don’t think anyone ever does I think everyone learns from their
16:34 mistakes and and they’re not really mistakes I think it’s just a learning curve um so you hire people initially
16:41 you’re like oh you have the right skills and you know you seem to be a right the right fit you’re entrepreneurial um and
16:48 so you and then you also hire based on what you can afford and so I think that’s where the learnings come from and
16:55 I have definitely gone through that journey and recognize now that whoever
17:02 you hire right they may have been a fit at the time of hiring but as you grow
17:08 and um acquire growing pains you’re going to have to also level and maybe
17:15 reshuffle right so you may have to pivot from even what those criteria were uh
17:22 because now today the criteria is no longer what it used to be now the criteria is we want to hire the best
17:29 people and the best and brightest people that are not only entrepreneurial but
17:34 also are committed like we are and passionate about what we’re doing and
17:40 know what their why is like that’s so important yeah we had a guest on on
17:46 hiring for good and and this is a couple months ago who said you hire 70% of what
17:51 you need today and 30% of what you need tomorrow and that has stuck with me
17:58 because if we all had a crystal ball it would be easy to say this person’s gonna
18:03 be able to evolve and grow with the organization right but it’s tough as a leader to make those decisions well and
18:11 particularly in a startup environment where the skill set is so multifacet..I mean
18:16 the necessity of a multifaceted you know set of skills is is really um
18:23 foundational to success and you have to have people who are flexible, but you know then as you grow sometimes those
18:28 skills don’t necessarily transfer to being able to effectively run one element of an organization you know so
18:35 that can be really tricky I think uh something that you learned before I get into kind of our next um official
18:42 question I I would love it if you could just kind of fill our audience in on
18:47 what transpired with Lazarus because I don’t you know we’ve talked about you starting this and I know it’s still a
18:53 young company but do you mind um just kind of giving yourself a little pat on the
19:00 back with the awards that you won and and and the the traction that the the product gained um yeah across the the
19:07 world um yeah so Lazarus is still a early stage company right just
19:13 disclaimer but when it started it was just a very small team right and it
19:19 started out of my kitchen um so I was a student I didn’t have a lot of money I
19:24 invested all of my savings into the company to support it in the early days and those were the the most critical
19:32 days right because like I said most people most startups wouldn’t have made it through that like initial hump um so
19:42 we were able to grow and succeed at that juncture
19:47 because even though the goal was to build um a platform or a technology um
19:54 that surgeons would leverage as a tool to drive direct impact on patient care I
20:00 actually identified a secondary problem which was equally as big which is really
20:07 as technologies are evolving right and new innovation is coming into Healthcare,
20:14 the medical device manufacturers which are you know Fortune 500 Fortune 100 companies are having to train the user
20:22 their customer which is Physicians on how to um you know
20:29 use their whatever device right and so what they were doing at that time they
20:34 were using chicken or they were using you know grapes um like the largest
20:39 medical the surgical robotics company was they’ve had all these videos on how
20:44 to operate on a grape for example and so I looked at that and I was like why are they doing that right and then the
20:51 alternative was the rep would go into the OR with the patient and um the surgeon would also be there obviously
20:58 and the rep would work with the surgeon um in providing care for that patient with this new equipment right and there
21:05 which again is kind of scary there is a liability burden there right as you would imagine and nobody wants that like
21:12 really it was just not what anybody wanted but it’s what they had so we
21:18 created a parallel opportunity uh which ended up becoming uh beneficial in many
21:24 many aspects of it right so first was training the teams uh for the medical device companies so that they knew you
21:30 know uh ins and outs of the the technology um so that they were really informed on what they were selling then
21:38 second was um basically alleviating the pain of logistics in planning um they
21:44 didn’t have to deal with chicken they didn’t have to deal with you know uh biohazard they didn’t have to deal with
21:50 that liability burden of patients they would just carry organs in their backpack like a bladder or a kidney or a
21:56 colon literally…let’s clarify. Hang on they would carry a 3D printed bladder or
22:02 colon in their backpack that that you made for them. So we created synthetic soft tissue replicas of organs that were
22:10 representative of their target patient so it wasn’t the patient and then the
22:16 the sales and marketing teams would leverage these tools um to
22:22 empower um training you know doing it safely um and they it helped them draw
22:29 uh drive their topline and also reduced uh costs right of all the expensive
22:35 stuff that they were doing prior to our existence so I really like that that sort of secondary market that I
22:42 identified and I was able to build really good relationships with my customers those early customers became
22:48 our supporters, our advocates, and actually funded the company through
22:53 revenue um and so we got through that initial hump anyways long story short um 2018 FDA um came out with this guidance
23:02 document that said what we were building is actually going to be regulated, um, and so we were like, huh, this is interesting
23:10 what do we do now? And so we we were really scared um and really like ended
23:16 up collaborating with so many um great people on the regulatory front um and
23:23 societies too that guided us in this journey um and so years later we were
23:29 able to get the core technology which is the patient-specific models on the market as a diagnostic FDA-cleared
23:37 device uh where it’s obviously bespoke so it’s you know for the upcoming care of the patients, and we launched in
23:44 urology that was two years ago. So I’m going to break in and just do a tiny bit of
23:49 like layman’s decoding. Sure. So I think what you uh just Illustrated is that
23:57 Lazarus 3D takes uh a a specific image…they they do
24:03 imaging of a particular patient who’s about to undergo some sort of surgery
24:08 and then the company can print a replica a scale model of whatever body system
24:15 will be operated on, um, and give it to the physician to practice on or or look
24:22 at or utilize prior to surgery. Is that correct? Yes correct. So, it’s to rehearse
24:29 for that upcoming case and so that’s the technology that we were building all along and then we created that secondary
24:35 market so now the two kind of go hand in hand um and that journey really
24:42 was I think just perfect. Unplanned but perfect. Because one helped the other
24:48 grow um and early on though we didn’t know that this is how it was all going to happen um we we knew what the vision
24:55 was and we stayed true to that and we were committed to the mission. And and so
25:00 this is kind of a really side question but if you’re building a
25:06 model why would the FDA get inv..involved? Because it has nothing to do with your
25:11 internal body or drug you know. I I don’t understand. That’s a great question. So um
25:18 it’s because surgeons are using these synthetic organ replicas of their
25:23 patient to guide decision-making for what they would be doing so so if they
25:29 have created a plan but there is uncertainty because of the high risk
25:34 right for specific procedures even a highly trained surgeon would anticipate
25:39 risk right um so the ability for them to exercise their plan on the organ replica
25:45 of their patient for that upcoming procedure allows them to Pivot if plan
25:52 said plan didn’t go so well and so then they can try different approaches right so this is unprecedented for for the the
26:00 power that it gives to the surgeon in their hands uh is really uh very
26:07 impactful in driving the care of that patient so that’s why it is considered a
26:13 device similar to even just looking at the MRI of the patient right that is an
26:18 image it is not utilized you know surgically in the care of the patient but it is how surgeons are diagnosing
26:25 the patient in the first place the um technology that enables that is um FDA
26:31 it’s a medical device too yeah I did not know that thank you for that education it’s good it’s always so fun to learn so
26:38 sometimes we have guests who come on here who are really in the kind of later
26:43 stages of their career but you’ve had this fascinating arc and you’re still kind of
26:51 just getting going so I I you know typically we ask now what advice would
26:57 you give your younger self and I’m going to I’m going to ask you that question but I also am curious to know um how you
27:06 will harness that power as you move forward into whatever is next yes um when I was younger um I
27:15 think I was very Type A right and I mostly still
27:21 am but at that time I had created a road map for exactly how my life should have been and um what the steps were towards
27:28 it so I knew I wanted to you know be a scientist I knew I had to go to grad school for that and when I decided like
27:35 I narrowed down that I had I I was really interested in genetics I knew exactly what I had to do you know post
27:43 PhD um and I just created like this entire road map for what company I wanted to be at and everything you know
27:51 like to to perfection um however I don’t think that’s a really great
27:57 strategy I think you need to have the fluidity to embrace um you know what
28:03 comes at you what opportunities you may not have even anticipated or what opportunities you
28:10 might create right like 5 years or 10 years from now there may be jobs that we
28:16 have not even anticipated with where we are you know um AI is advancing so many
28:22 things automation um and just the pace at which it’s happening is unprecedented so
28:29 where we will be in 5 years. Like I cannot tell you today what that would be like what job I would have right and so
28:37 having that even though its ambiguity embracing it and having that flexibility
28:43 is really important I didn’t have that at the time, but I would advise myself to
28:49 think differently yeah absolutely isn’t that funny I my mom and dad always tell
28:55 a story when I was probably four that I was crying one day my dad’s like what’s
29:00 the matter and I said I don’t know if I want to be a ballerina or the first woman
29:06 president and um I don’t think either of those two are gonna happen but again it’s
29:13 being open for the options and again we talked about leaping yeah yeah we always
29:19 close up our our interviews with hiring for good and what that term means for
29:26 you so what does it mean I think um I love the phrase hiring for good um I
29:33 think it is so important to look at what
29:39 your needs are today and to try to anticipate you know is this hire a
29:44 good fit for the long haul because at least in a startup you know early on you
29:50 are just um doing so many different things and and wearing so many different hats and as we evolve you know there
29:58 might be a a shift and there might be more specialized tasks that you’re
30:03 focusing on so when you’re hiring for good you are proactively anticipating
30:09 that long term opportunity to work with the candidate and um I think asking the
30:16 candidate like vetting them on that element of it is really important yeah
30:21 I love that because again we talk about it all the time it’s the alignment of those goals values mission
30:28 vision and it’s not just skill set it’s this softer well what makes who we are what
30:36 we know is that if a candidate does not align culturally with an
30:43 organization it’s just not going to work in the long run and so you know a great deal of our work in Executive Search is
30:49 spent kind of making sure that there there is that alignment and then the other of course the skill set the
30:55 pedigree all of that is very important as well but really the kind of softer more nuanced
31:01 aspects of like I would even say you know alignment and then that other
31:08 percentage that’s going to elevate or or help the the organization get to where they want to be is the other kind of
31:14 secret sauce right I will say like as a Founder I don’t think you’re going to find the people that are as passionate
31:23 um for what you’re building right um but
31:28 I think if they can come close to it or if there is a drive from within that
31:33 really um it’s impact driven and it’s meaningful to them then you will find
31:39 that alignment finding those people is also not easy um I think it’s it’s a
31:44 very arduous task um and I think I’ve had my uh fair share of learnings uh so yeah
31:51 I think I’m still learning actually and still growing uh from those learnings so
31:58 I think it’s really interesting you know how many pieces of the puzzle you have to factor in like right at the beginning
32:05 it’s like chess almost and you have to anticipate those next phases of your
32:12 growth and whether this person is a good fit so I don’t even know fully how you assess that right now but I’m working on
32:19 it awes well you can call us no but but anyway well this was just lovely thank
32:26 you so much for your time it wonderful to have you as a guest and I know our audience is going to be really excited
32:33 about um all the the great wisdom that you shared today and just kind of your
32:38 incredible journey as well yes thank you so much thank you both of you really appreciated it yep thanks for joining us
32:46 today at Hiring for Good if you were inspired by our conversation don’t forget to Like, Follow and Subscribe
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33:05 so much and don’t forget to join us next time for another in-depth conversation about transformational leadership till
33:11 then have fun