The Importance of Friends,Alex Lukianov & Pat Miles
“One of the executives that created the #1 U.S. market share position in spine was Alex Lukianov from Sofamor Danek. He recruited both myself and Pat Miles to NuVasive in late 2000.”
In many ways, Lukianov was getting the band that made Sofamor Danek #1 in spine back together at California-based NuVasive.
Valentine was eager to work with Alex again, and had already been working with Pat for many years. Over the next 15 years, Valentine held several executive roles at NuVasive including Marketing, Development, Operations and ultimately President and Chief Operating Officer.
“I was truly fortunate to work for Alex Lukianov. He taught me the value of driving an accountable culture that is centered around having stretch goals as an organization. As you achieve those goals you celebrate them; if you don’t achieve them then it is visible to the organization and you must create a recovery plan. This kind of transparency trickles down to the entire organization. Pat was the best driver of marketing and development in spine. He was a student of the requirements for good spine surgery, and it was reflected in NuVasive’s products. We were a team that held each other accountable and didn’t avoid the hard conversation.”
Stuart Essig Comes Calling
Today, everyone knows Stuart. But in late 1997 he was a relatively unknown 37-year-old hotshot at Goldman Sachs when a struggling artificial skin company in New Jersey asked him to be their CEO. To be perfectly clear, the “opportunity” Essig was evaluating was to head up a company with $14.7 million in sales and $17 million in losses. And, by the way, he had exactly zero operating experience.
The opportunity was Integra LifeSciences.
How did Stuart do?
When, in 2012 Stuart handed the CEO reins to Peter Arduni, Integra’s sales were $830 million, profits were $41 million and the company’s market value was $1.1 billion.
It is no exaggeration to say that Essig’s stewardship and leadership of Integra over those years is among the great success stories in the medical product industry.
Of course, Stuart stood on the shoulders of giants most notably Integra’s founder Richard Caruso—and then the great team he assembled, also with Caruso’s mentorship and direction.
Among the 60+ acquisitions that Intergra’s put together during Stuart’s tenure was a market basket of spinal implant and bone graft companies—SeaSpine, Theken Spine, Therics and GenSci/Isotis Orthobiologics, among others.
In 2014 Integra made the strategic decision to spin this market basket of products off as an independent public company. SeaSpine had not lived up to its potential and being part of the Integra family was not going to fix things. Time to see if SeaSpine can make it outside the mothership.
But, first, SeaSpine needed a leader. So, Stuart called Keith.
Valentine remembers his reaction to the offer to lead SeaSpine as a newly public company—in other words, to be a first time CEO in the Wall Street fishbowl. “I was cognizant of the fact that this was my first opportunity as a CEO and I was pleased to have had some mentoring from Stuart Essig, Ph.D. Despite his incredible success at Integra he doesn’t have a big ego. In fact, he has great humility.”
“Kirt Stephenson was another valuable voice in my ear. He was saddled with being on the front line when the company announced the spinout. But he handled things with aplomb and had not only a deep knowledge of the spine market, but a love for the SeaSpine name because he created it.”
