NEWS
Empowering Women, Improving Health: Medtronic and Women As One Celebrate Five Years
Published Date – 5 July 2024
Together we are working to change the status quo for women physicians.
Since the founding of Women As One in 2019, Medtronic has been a consistent partner, supporting our mission since day one. Our strategic partnership has helped Medtronic develop and foster meaningful relationships with emerging and established women physicians, identify talent for professional opportunities, and gain feedback around key business considerations by utilizing the voice of Women As One’s community. Our organizational missions collectively support the vision of driving gender equity in medicine.
To celebrate five years of our successful partnership, Women As One wants to showcase the work we have accomplished together, how this work has impacted our community, and share what we hope to accomplish in the future.
The partnership between Medtronic and Women As One over the last five years has resulted in meaningful relationships with established and emerging female physicians. We’ve been able to leverage their voices to directly impact our business strategy along with identifying strong female physicians for professional opportunities based on their expertise and areas of interest. We look forward to our continued partnership!
Nina Goodheart
Programming in Action: How our partnership has impacted our global community over the years
Women As One’s programs provide a platform to engage directly with our community through in person leadership programs (RISE), virtual skills training (CLIMB) and grant funded awards (The Escalator Awards). Medtronic’s support of our programs, starting with our first program launch in 2019, has allowed for countless women cardiologists to advance their careers. Here are some highlights:
- Career Funding: Medtronic’s funding has translated to supporting six women physicians through the Escalator Awards program, ultimately offering six research awards across five continents.
- Educational content: Through the support of CLIMB, Medtronic’s partnership has resulted in 48 case-based learning programs offered across eight topics, spanning 30+ countries.
- RISE sponsorship: Medtronic was an inaugural supporter of RISE, featuring in a panel discussion providing an industry perspective to our audience on the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion. We are pleased to have Medtronic join us at RISE @ ESC Congress 2024 this August and continue to provide a valuable experience for our RISE participants.
Strategic Engagement: Meeting with our community to achieve our collective goals through empowerment
Corporate Membership, a year-long reciprocal partnership designed to advance gender diversity goals, allows for an innovative approach for industry partners to meet our women cardiologist community through engagement events. These events are an opportunity to further our partnership and provide key opportunities to women cardiologists.
- Our first engagement event, in a pandemic! In 2021, in-person learning was not an available option, but the need for women cardiologists to connect was at an all-time high. Women As One worked with Medtronic to create a virtual event that focused on Women in Cardiology in leadership roles where over 100 attendees participated in this recorded session, now available through Wondr Medical.
- Gathering insights, proving a safe space: To increase women cardiologists’ engagement directly with industry, we need to hear their perspectives and provide actionable results based on their feedback. To collate these collective experiences, in 2022, Women As One and Medtronic developed an intimate focus group held during TCT, to understand the female physician perspective on what it means to be a thought leader for industry.
- Building on our successes: In 2023, we held a second focus group at TCT, led by our founder Dr. Roxana Mehran, where we discussed the importance of improving gender diversity in clinical trials from physician leadership to patient enrollment. This resulted in key learnings for both to create messaging and resources to support gender diversity in clinical trials.
Accessing Talent: Utilizing the Talent Directory to foster meaningful connections
The Talent Directory is a global professional community that allows women in cardiology to access development programs that can help unlock professional advancement opportunities. For our corporate members, the talent directory provides access to the insights and qualifications of a global pool of women physicians. With access to over 2500+ women cardiologists, Medtronic leveraged the data to identify potential thought leaders, advisory board participants, potential speakers, and expand their network of women in cardiology while growing their thought leader engagement strategy.
A Look to the Future
Our partnership with Medtronic has been critical to our mission’s success over the past five years. While we have achieved great successes together, we recognize there is much more work to be done. In looking to the future, we look forward to more successful years of partnership and extend our thanks to Medtronic, for their support and true partnership to drive meaningful change.
Learn more about how Women As One and Medtronic have partnered together through our recent collaboration on Capitol Hill to bring much-needed public attention to women’s cardiac health and the persistent gender disparities in treatment, representation, diagnosis, and belief. Read our reflection blog here, and watch a full recording of the morning’s session, ‘Elevating the Future of Women’s Health,’ thanks to event media partners, The Atlantic.