Keynote with Lisa Earnhardt, Executive Vice President & Group President, Medical Devices at Abbott | LSI USA '25

Juliana Elstad  0:04  
Lisa, so Lisa, it's such a pleasure to have you here in Orange County at LSI conference. Thank you for doing this.

Lisa Earnhardt  0:12  
I have to say, thank you, and I really appreciate the opportunity. And thanks to LSI as well for hosting what looks like it's going to be a tremendous event.

Juliana Elstad  0:20  
So you are Executive Vice President and Group President of medical devices for Abbott. But I would like to start with the person behind the title. So if you don't mind, can you tell us a little bit where you come from and how your journey was to lead medical devices at Abbott.

Lisa Earnhardt  0:40  
Well, as someone who grew up in the cornfields of Illinois, I would say I'm really happy to be here in Dana blight this morning with you all. So it is just a fantastic honor. And so yes, I did grow up in Illinois. Actually came out to school in California. I've spent most of my adult life in California. I did spend some time back in the Midwest, both in the Chicago area and the Twin Cities, which is, as you know, a Mecca in in med tech. But I'm an engineer by training, and did management consulting out of undergraduate actually in healthcare. So I worked with hospitals healthcare systems, trying to drive efficiencies. That still is very much work in process, as we all know in the world of healthcare. And then went back to business school, and I had, as an engineer, had always envisioned doing things in tech. And so, in fact, I did a my senior project at this little company down the road called Apple. And so in the summer between my first and second year business school, I interned at Dell, which at the time was a bit of a, you know, high, you know, high flying startup, and but at the end of the day, I was like, You know what? I really love the impact and the opportunity to have our products really make a difference. And so that's how I found MD tech. So it was the combination of healthcare and technology, and that's where I started out of business school, and I haven't looked back. So I started my career at a company called guidance, which was a leader in cardiovascular medical devices. It was just after guidant had gone public. It had spun out of Eli Lilly, and so it was a it was a great learning ground, amazing leaders and amazing innovation. And so it was a fun, fun, fun opportunity for me to learn and grow. And did a bunch of different roles there, primarily in sales and marketing. And then was running a business. And as you know, Gaiden ended up being sold. Part of it went to Boston Scientific. Part of it went to Abbott. And it's interesting, because some people think I just went as part of the Abbott side. I was like, Oh no, I went to Boston Scientific, so cardiac surgery and cardiac rhythm management went to Boston, and I was running that business. And it was an interesting time, because while I was in the process of integrating the business I was running, we were actually in the process of selling it. So I felt like I was had many different hats on, depending on who I was speaking to. So we spun it out, and I just decided, you know, I live in the San Francisco Bay area. I still live there. As you all know, there's a ton of innovation that happens there, and so much of innovation happens in the startup arena. I was like, if I'm ever going to do it, now is the time. And so I made the move into a startup. So it was early stage. We had just, they had raised their series, a funding, they had then done their bridge loan. They had done the series A prime and I took over from the founder, CEO there. I was employee number 14. So I know what room is that monarch. You know, those are my people. So I know the pain and what it takes. And so fast forward. You know, we always say, like, it's an overnight success story, 11 year overnight success story. But I was, I was there 11 years. So I went from like the very early stage where we had a bioresorbable drug eluting scaffold or stent, but not in the coronaries, which is the world I was in before, but in the sinuses. And so we were charting new ground with the technology. We are charting new ground with the clinical science. And it was a it was a slog along the way. So we raised a couple of different rounds of venture financing, ended up taking the company public, had the great opportunity to leave that for some time, and then at some point, I was like, oh my goodness, I cannot believe I've been here 11 years. So I would never have thought, because usually startups, well, they usually fail, right? Don't tell our friends next door, but they usually do fail, and that's just part of the journey. And so going in, I thought that would probably be what had happened, but as it turns out, we played it forward, and there was just a phenomenal opportunity at Abbott. So I made the move to go from big corporation and then down to really early stage startup. Built that back up, and then got a call with an Abbott, and we can talk more about what I do at Abbott, but I have a great fortune of leading medical devices for Abbott, and I've done that for almost the last six years.

Juliana Elstad  5:11  
Yeah. So how was it in your experience when you were with large, established company and then you moved to a startup? Tell us a little bit more how that was for you as an experience? Yeah, it was.

Lisa Earnhardt  5:24  
It was such a great learning experience, because nothing happens in our in our space without innovation, and nothing happens without a real deep understanding of the customer. And so it really put me, you know, literally, you know, sitting in procedures, really understanding the unmet needs, and really getting very intimate with an understanding what our customer needs were. And so that was just a great as an as an engineer, it was just a great, great opportunity. And it was also just very different. I was just talking to Katie sizeman. We were talking about the difference of being in a big company and then smaller. And if you're the CEO, you're like, oh, let's do this. And literally, like, you do it that day or the next day. That doesn't always happen in a in a big company or company like Abbott. So it was, but I did everything. I mean, I would support cases. I did, you know, you know, clinical data, Q you know, QC, I was the CEO, but I was also the receptionist, and I did the dishes right? And on occasion, if the team needed a little pick me up, I'd run out to Dairy Queen and get some Dilly bar. So whatever it took. So it was really fun. But I think there's a lot of the same, because it's like, really the focus on the customer. And I always say, like, if you do what's right for the customer, you do what's right for the patient, the rest of business really follows So, and that's something I've actually been able to carry forward into Abbott. And I think in a startup, it's very, very clear. So I think that focus on the customer, and then I think it's the focus on just a few things. And like, incredible focus, because in the startup, like you're, you're literally earning the right to do a clinical trial. You're earning the right to commercialize because of the way that the financing works, right? And so it's not like you have a big pot of gold, or I didn't have a big pot of gold, I don't know about you guys, but you really had to, you know, demonstrate, say what you're going to do and do what you said you're going to do. It's as simple as that, but I really learned the sort of the the importance of focus and doing doing one or two things and doing them very well. And you may have a ton of ideas, and, oh my goodness, my team was extraordinary. They had so many ideas of things we could be doing. And it was like, No, we need to do this one thing. Do it well, and then we'll earn the right to do the next

Juliana Elstad  7:40  
thing? Yeah, and I think a lot of innovators can relate to that. You know, I started my career at the big company too. I was with Medtronic, and then when I was running business development, I met a lot of startups, and this like, okay, we can do it, and we can, like, really, all this inspiration and enthusiasm you see from the CEOs of companies like all of you guys here, that's really inspiring, and that made me move to startup world as well. So yeah, but talking about your startup experience, so it does sound like a great success story, right? You came very early on. You did all your work, you know, but from my experience, I know it's rarely a straight line to success. So did you have a few bumps on the road? Oh,

Lisa Earnhardt  8:30  
my God, I took a detour like day one. And so it was. So I started in. When was it like March of 2008 and, you know, I talked about the financing situation, I didn't fully appreciate the situation the company was in. We our dry well date was June, and I started in March, like, and we'd already gone to the Well, we've already gone to our existing investors. We had taken on a venture debt like, we're kind of at the end of the line. And this is where, like, naivete as a first time CEO really worked to my advantage and so, and the great news is I had a fantastic team, and we kind of dug in, we hit the ground fundraising, and that was a great way to kind of learn the learn the business, right? But I think we closed right around Memorial Day, like maybe a week or two. And so that was, that was a little close. There was another time we had a kind of what seemed like almost a near death experience. Oh, by the way, the timing was really great, because you remember what happened in the fall of 2008 right? So better lucky than good. Can't, can't plan for that one. Though, the other time we had a near death experience is, we knew going in that the FDA had said, you know, we're, we're at least a de novo 510 k, so the team took that to be a 510 k, right? So we're sort of down the path. And I remember this so dearly because we were at the FDA on my birthday and found out that we were actually. Going to be a PMA. And, oh, boy. So I went into a company that I thought was going to be a relatively quick 510, K process, and, you know, we would look, we would commercialize, and we'd be successful, and it would be, you know, a three year, three year deal. As it turns out, that PMA was a, it took it. It took a lot. So that was a near death experience. Because it was, it was right in the midst, I think that was 2009 It was a tough time to raise more money. We ended up having to do a little restructuring. We weren't big, but we actually had to focus in, because we realized we need to redo our pivotal trial. And so it was a there we had so many near death experiences. We'd have to, like, catch up over drinks tonight. But we know we had gone through even, even, even when we were like, we had enrolled our pivotal trial and we had our financing lined up, but it wasn't going to go through unless the data was positive. And I remember we unblinded over Labor Day weekend, and so because we've like, well, at least that gives us a couple of days to figure out what we're going to do if it isn't positive. It was positive, but we had already planned to be like, well, we won't take salaries. We're going to stop paying. Are there any lawyers in the room? Probably that, you know, the lawyers, the accountants, they were so used to, like, I just need like, six more months, guys, trust me, you know? But, yeah, it was not at all a straight line, yeah, but as it turns out, it was pretty good outcome.

Juliana Elstad  11:26  
And I think that's very inspiring, because a lot of people probably in the audience had those near death experiences. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and there could be a success story for your startups. And I would like to ask you, so how does your startup experience influence the work that you do at Abbott today? Maybe tell us a little bit more about what you're doing at Abbott.

Lisa Earnhardt  11:50  
Yeah. So I lead medical devices at Abbott, so that consists of eight different businesses, six of which that are actually headquartered here in California. So I'm happily live here still, although I spend quite a bit of time in north of Chicago, which is where we're headquartered. So 40,000 people around the globe focusing on some of the most costly chronic conditions, debilitating diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic pain and movement disorders. So if I think about some of the learnings from the startup, I think very much it starts with the customer, right? And just how important really understanding the customer is. And I still try to make it out whenever I travel, I try to actually spend time with some customers. So I kind of make it, make it a point, so that it's it's something that I keep in touch with some frequency. So I'm hearing, you know, relatively real time. And it's not that my team doesn't provide just a ton of extraordinary input, but I like to hear myself, and just sometimes it's interesting what customers say, and even more interesting what they don't say right, and even observing cases. So I still will do that. So I think it's important to customers. It's the it's it's focused. So I think I took a lot of what we were able to do at intersect and really like a keen focus on doing a few things and doing them well. And had a big company that's hard to do because talk about a lot of ideas, we've got big businesses. My business is nearly 20 billion, right? So you can only imagine there's a lot of different products and projects and initiatives, and so it's just a matter of like, making sure I'm clear, like, what are the most important things I spend my time on, my leadership team spends their time on, and then I think it's the role of innovation. So I think all of those things have been played to sort of what we're doing doing at Abbott. And so innovation is still very much paramount, that that fuels our industry. I don't need to tell this crew that you guys, you live and breathe this every day, but that was something at Abbott that we had a lot of great innovation that had was in various stages of the pipeline. It was just a matter of, you know, getting it through the gauntlet right. So I had products that had been launched and pulled off the market, like we had a leadless pacemaker from a startup called nanostm that St Jude had acquired, that had been launched and then pulled off and so we needed to redesign that, redo the trial, bring it back to market. You could kind of go down the line, whether it be my Tavi device, I mean, a lot of different things in the portfolio, but innovation is what's really fuel, fueling our growth right now.

Juliana Elstad  14:34  
Yeah, and I'd like to talk more about innovation, because most people here are innovators, and very often, as we develop new technologies, they're less invasive to patients, and they take treatments from hospital to ambulatory surgical centers to physicians office and ultimately to patients home. Like at Vibrato, we have a vascular technology to be used at patients homes. So. So at Abbott, how do you think about reaching to patients outside of the four walls of the hospital?

Lisa Earnhardt  15:08  
Well, it certainly is a transformative time in healthcare and in specifically med tech, and I think we are finally at a point where we're moving from a system that's really geared to what I call sick care, right? You go to hospitals, you get something fixed, or you're sick, you get treated to really, more well care or truly health care, and, and, and I think as an industry, we're really leading the way there, especially with things like remote monitoring and management. I'll take, for example, cardio MEMS. So this is our pulmonary artery pressure monitor. It's about the size of a paper clip gets put in the pulmonary artery, and it helps identify signals of when a patient's heart failure might be worsening. And what's a beautiful thing about this is it allows the patient to actually, you know, be home, be ambulatory, living their best lives, and the sensor then will actually identify if they need to maybe change the medications or come in for a clinic visit. And unfortunately, like heart failure hospitalizations, a typical patients in the hospital multiple times a year. It's an incredible cost to the system. It's incredibly disruptive for people living with with heart failure, and it's incredibly resource intensive. So heart failure hospitalizations are incredibly costly and require a lot of staff, which, by the way, we're still very much in a healthcare shortage, healthcare worker shortage, right? And so this is really a win across the board with using sensors. Another great example of moving outside of the four walls of a hospital or clinic is what we're doing with our product called neurosphere. So we have in our neuromodulation business, we have deep brain stimulators, so for people with Parkinson's or movement disorder. So if you're a patient with Parkinson's and you get a deep brain stimulator implanted, you're typically going into a center of excellence. So there's a couple of 100 of them. I'll just talk about the United States, typically about 150 miles away, on average, right. And so those patients need to go in to to to get their therapy adjusted, much like you might change your medications, you're going to change your Stimulation Protocol. And it this actually was one of the fantastic things that came out of the pandemic, is that very early on in the pandemic, we realized that people couldn't go in to access healthcare the way they had previously. And so while we thought something like telehealth was was the future, we we actually and we had it on our product map, like maybe for 2027 or 2028 we actually said, You know what? We need to do this now. The need is now. And so we developed a platform where we're able to conduct visits, healthcare visits, virtually from the comforts of someone's living room, and actually program the device virtually as well. And so they're literally meeting patients where they are when they need us. And so important, especially for patients with Parkinson's, because typically they can't drive themselves. So it's, it's not just taking a whole day to go see a clinician. It's, it's a care provider as well. And so it's, it's been just a game changer. And what's, what's great is we've continued to work and continue to gain support. There's still work we all collectively need to do to make sure, make sure our healthcare system supports things that drive efficiency, like telehealth and moving outside the four walls of a hospital, like things like reimbursement and and things along those lines. But that's absolutely the direction we should go.

Juliana Elstad  18:54  
Yeah, because if you think about patients, and we always put patients in the first place, it's not like they sit and can't wait to go to a hospital, right? Like they don't want to go to a hospital unless they have to. So the more we can bring the technology to where they are, the better. And I'm glad to hear this from you. Another thing that I like about Abbott is that you guys have always been at the forefront of direct to consumer med tech, so maybe talk about that a little bit and how you think about it at Abbott.

Lisa Earnhardt  19:27  
Yeah. So that's one of the unique things about Abbott. And while I run our medical devices business, we have diagnostics. Some of you may have used our binaxnow test in the heat of the heat of the pandemic. That was very much a consumer focused product. We also have nutrition. So we have everything from Similac all the way to ensure and so we literally cover the lives of people and the nutritional needs. And so all of that experience means, like we really understand. Consumers, and that was new for me, because most of my experience has been B to B, right? It's been selling to physicians, selling to health care providers, selling to hospitals and integrated delivery networks. And so it was. It's been really great to be able to tap into the consumer expertise at Abbott, and then specifically within medical devices, we've had our FreeStyle Libre device, which is our continuous glucose monitor, and that's for people with diabetes. So as you know, if you're if you have diabetes, you oftentimes need to check your glucose levels, your blood sugar levels, and you do that by historically pricking your finger. And in fact, that's the standard of care, right? Like that is how people all around the world today, the vast majority of people, do that to get their blood measurement. And now we're able to do that with a little sensor that's on the back of your arm, where we're literally measuring your glucose values every every minute. And it gets sent to your phone, and it'll tell you, like, oh, it's going high, it's going low. Here's what you should do. We're now connecting to pumps, so we're really alleviating the pain there. And that was for me, my first entry into consumer because while that business has historically focused on the endocrinologist and the primary care physician, at the end of the day, the consumer is owning more and more of their health care, and certainly with people diabetes, where they're literally managing their health each and every day, whether it be their nutrition or their exercise, they're oftentimes taking insulin. It's paramount. And so, in fact, today, we have about 7 million people every day that rely on FreeStyle Libre. So it's been a very widely adopted and as I say, like as well as that team has done, and it's been really pretty extraordinary. The adoption in the last five years, there are over half a billion people who could benefit. So they have work to do. So we're just scratching the surface, but we're actually leveraging that technology and how, bringing it into the consumer bio wearable space. So we just launched in the fall a new product called lingo. This is leveraging that same glucose monitoring, but it's for healthy people who want to stay healthy, or maybe people who need a little bit of adjustment. Maybe they want to lose some weight, or they want to have less stress, or they want to sleep better. We've actually launched lingo, and the uptakes been fantastic. And it's actually, it's different, right? Because the information so it's both the sensor as well. It's an it's an app, and the app will tell you things like your glucose is rising or it's spiking. You might want to go for a quick walk. Why don't you do 15 squats? Why don't you make better choices next time all those kinds of things. So I wear I call it my accountability partner. It's like my little buddy. And I know you would think, after 30 some odd years in healthcare, I would know how to make good choices. As it turns out, data speaks what? What better thing to actually have your own data, like personalized insight about how your body might react to stress or nutrition or exercise, and it's giving you suggestions. It's It's coaching you to do better. So, and this is interesting, when you talk about consumers, is you can go online, hello lingo.com, and order it. You can go on Amazon and order lingo. So, completely new world. And thinking about here, it's an opportunity to leverage technology that we use more in a traditional medical setting, to use it in the consumer world. And this is just the beginning, yeah,

Juliana Elstad  23:44  
and I just need to tell you a personal story. So years ago, when I was pregnant, I had gestational diabetes. Continuous glucose monitoring was not available then, so I had to poke my finger three times a day, and that was not fun, yeah and but recently, I tried Abbott's device, just how kind of your Yeah, just to kind of see how my body reacts to certain foods. It's very insightful, you know, like you can hear a lot of like overall guidance, but it's personalized medicine, how like your particular body, you know, reacts with your sugar levels to certain foods, and how you like what you should or should not do, that's very helpful. So

Lisa Earnhardt  24:27  
I think it's the future, right? Personalized Medicine, and we should be able to understand and this is just glucose, right? But when you start putting in things like nutrition and the foods that you rate, your exercise, your sleep, your stress, and you start integrating all of that data and thinking about leveraging AI, it is just so powerful,

Juliana Elstad  24:49  
yes. So thank you for bringing all these products to patients and to people you know, not just patients, but you just mentioned AI, and that is the trend that. It's impossible to ignore. So let's talk a little bit. How does Abbott think about AI and its application of healthcare?

Lisa Earnhardt  25:08  
Well, I think, like any company, it wouldn't even be in healthcare. We're very much leveraging AI on productivity enhancements, right? So things, whether it be customer service or complaint handling, document, preparation, all of those things, thinking about, how can we become more efficient in what we do? And that allows us, if we drive efficiencies, that allows us to do more in innovation, right? And so on the innovation front, you know, just imagine a world where you could leverage, you know, I think about continuous glucose monitors. We probably have 200 or so, 200 terabytes of 200 million terabytes of data. We have 50 billion hours of glucose data. So imagine the power of being able to leverage all of that. And then I think about, you know, I'll just take an example where we have aI today is with PCI, so coronary interventions, so a stent procedure. Stent procedures have been around for, you know, third rashes. I've been because I remember being, you know, in the late 90s, launching some of the first stents. But you think about like the placement there, and you just recognize how AI can be leveraged. We actually have a program that's enabled by AI. It's our Oct imaging platform, which detects calcium within the artery, will detect things like vessel diameter. And I see some folks from the guidance coordinator world in here, so you know what I'm talking about. And and now we're actually able to leverage, literally, you know, 10s of 1000s of experience from physicians to help physicians determine what's the right place to put the stent, What? What? What's the right length of stent, all of those things. So talk about, like, democratizing health care, because you can learn from, you know, millions of patients, or learn from 10s of 1000s of clinicians for the very patient you're treating in the moment, and that's happening now,

Juliana Elstad  27:07  
and so thinking about innovation and the future of med tech. So what do you think is next, in your opinion, for med tech as an industry,

Lisa Earnhardt  27:17  
it's an exciting time in med tech. There's no question about it. I think that's why there's so many people at this conference, because, first and foremost, there's a lot of big unmet needs. We have a lot of work to do to continue to improve outcomes, drive efficiencies, and I think in cardiovascular for example. And you think about like, oh, well, isn't that kind of problem solved? Well, no, it's not. So we're taking things from being, you know, invasive procedures like open heart, you know, valve replacement, to doing it much less invasively through a, you know, trans catheter approach, and doing repair and replacement from the groin. I think just in cardiovascular we have probably 80 something clinical trials that are enrolling globally, in 37 different countries. That's a lot of clinical research. So we don't have all the answers. There's miniaturization of devices. It's even areas that you think are more you know, lower growth or, you know, there isn't, we've kind of solved the problem, right? I think about something like what we're doing with our leadless pacemaker. And so traditional pacemakers, you know, have a wire that's threaded into the heart, couple wires, and you have a generator up here, and the problem with that is there's wear and tear, right? And so the leads may fracture, you know, causing the need to doing re interventions, all of those types of things we have. And this is in this pacemakers have been around 6070, years, right? It's the way it's been done. Like, why would you reinvent that? Well, as it turns out, there's a better way, or at least there's another way for some patients, and that's using a leadless pacemaker. So once again, it's about the size of a AAA battery gets placed a trans catheter in the bottom of the ventricle. No leads. Patient has full movement. And now we're doing it dual chambers. So we actually able to, for the first time, communicate from the top of the heart to the bottom heart with with implantables, miniaturized implantable so I think the miniaturization taking things outside of the four wells of healthcare at four wells, four walls of a hospital, which is traditionally where we've been. I think all the work we're doing on connected tech is really very much in the beginning. I'll take FreeStyle Libre, for example, we actually just just a partnership with a an insulin delivery pump was just announced a couple of days ago, with a with a smaller company, we actually partnered with all the major insulin pump delivery AI D devices as as Abbott and so I think that connected technology recognizing we have. Glucose monitor. It's a leading glucose monitor in the world, but we recognize that people need different, you know, different technologies and so and be able to connect that data, have it flow seamlessly, and actually be able to have the pump then act on what's happening with the sensor and vice versa, right? And so I think connected Tech is a big, a big area, AI, obviously. And then I think about, just like connected tech, it it requires collaboration. And so as I think about the future, gone are the days that a company like Abbott does things on their own right? And in fact, there, you know, we've been around 130 some odd years as Abbott, and traditionally, we had done a lot of things, sort of on our own, as a as a company, and it's we might partner with, you know, a country or a government or, you know, certainly we all have always partnered with our customers. But we're actually thinking probably more non traditionally thinking about partnerships, whether it be even within our ecosystem, with other med tech companies. In fact, I did a partnership that was announced last summer with Medtronic. And you wouldn't necessarily think I would partner with Medtronic, right because, as it turns out, I compete with them on just a few things, but it was the right thing for patients, and it was the right things for customers, because they have a fantastic pump, and we have a leading glucose monitor, and we're actually working together on that. So there's no, I think, a time in my in my career in healthcare, that collaboration hasn't been as important as it is today. Like healthcare is a team sport, and we need to think more expansively about how we partner. And so I just, it's such an exciting time, and it's meetings like this, right that allow that kind of collaboration. It's whether you're you're learning about other companies and thinking about, Oh, we might be able to leverage that, or we might be able to work together, or it's the casual discussion you have over coffee or drink. I think collaboration is so, so critically important,

Juliana Elstad  32:09  
yeah. And I think this is exactly right. Like one thing that I like to see is, like the industry coming together, right? And thank you, Scott and LSI team for providing this fantastic platform for people to meet, to talk, to collaborate, bringing investors, strategics, innovators together. And one of the partnership that I like to see that's happening is between LSI and AdvaMed, and maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

Lisa Earnhardt  32:37  
Yeah, so I've had the great pleasure of serving on the board of avamed for the last I don't know it's been over. I'll just say a decade or two. Maybe we'll see. I'm just, I kind of lose track of time because, well, I'm old and but it's been fantastic, as you might imagine. Evans been pretty busy lately, and I think Juliana, you're doing a session with Lee, Shawn and some of the others talking about what's happening in DC. Because, as it turns out, there's a there's a fair amount, but we actually have a fantastic opportunity. It's actually in Southern California. It's just down in San Diego, we have our Medtech conference that we're hosting in October. So I encourage you all, because we're trying to also could create a convening. I think historically, we've all gone to like the JP Morgan healthcare conference, right? How many of you guys have gone? Yeah, it's a zoo, as it turns out. And it's not just med tech, right? There's everything. And isn't necessarily, um, kind of just our ecosystem. And so I think opportunities like this LSI conference, I think the med tech conference that we have in October, where all of the strategics are there, you know, whether it be the big companies or the smaller public and a lot of the private companies through the Excel, Excel board. And then also, you know, you have the regulators, you have CMS, you've got, you know, it's a global presence as well. And then certainly a lot of investors too. And so we're starting to build out the investor side, recognizing that's a big part of the ecosystem, both VCs as well as private equity. So if you guys haven't checked out that conference, please do. I'm actually chairing it this year, so I'm, I am, I am, I'm actually extra biased that it's going to be amazing, and Juliana and I are going to be working on that. So it's going to be yet another fun opportunity to work with you.

Juliana Elstad  34:23  
Yeah, thank you. But I also want to say thank you to LSI, because you know this conference that he specifically focused on investors, that you LSI team and you Scott bring together is very helpful for innovators.

Lisa Earnhardt  34:38  
Yeah, it's really extraordinary. I hadn't realized how big this had gotten. And I know I was talking to Scott the other night, and I've always had like, a conflict week the week it is in March, and somehow this year, they were a week apart. So I was really excited to be able to be here, and I'm hopeful I can make this an annual, annual deal, because it's super efficient for me as well, and fun, by the way, too, but it is a. So efficient, because I get to see a lot of you and a lot of investors folks I don't always see all the time. I know my team does, but I don't always get the chance to connect with you all. So appreciate the opportunity. Yeah,

Juliana Elstad  35:10  
and I think it's a great way to show case all the innovation that's happening in the industry right here. So and thank you, Lisa for this conversation. It's been such a pleasure to have you here, and I hope you'll keep coming in the future years. 

Lisa Earnhardt  35:25  
Yeah, hopefully it all work out and it's not a bad location. As I said, you can't, you can't beat this. So thank you. I hope you have a great conference that you do take the need for collaboration to heart as well, because it is, it is absolutely a team sport, so thanks for all you do. Thank you.