Editors’ Note

Meghan Scanlon has held her current position since February 2020. In this role, she is responsible for developing and bringing to market global, innovative, industry-leading solutions for urological, urogynecological, and gynecological diseases. Prior to her current role, Scanlon served as Vice President and General Manager for the global Urology and Pelvic Health commercial organization, with responsibility for overseeing the stone, prostate health, prosthetic urology and women’s health franchises. She is a member of the Executive Committee, Global Council for Inclusion and serves as the executive sponsor for Boston Scientific’s PRIDE employee resource group, which is a network of LGBTQ+ employees and allies that fosters inclusiveness and professional fulfillment through corporate and community LGBTQ+ programs and initiatives. Since joining Boston Scientific in 2014 as Vice President, Global Marketing for Endoscopy, Scanlon has progressed through roles of increasing responsibility in Endoscopy and Urology and Pelvic Health, and played a significant role in driving and shaping the global commercial organization structures, portfolio innovation strategies and growth acceleration for both businesses. Prior to joining Boston Scientific, she spent nearly 15 years in leadership roles within the Johnson & Johnson medical device business and started her early career as a design engineer at Gillette. Scanlon holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Tufts University and both an MBA and MSME from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Company Brief

Boston Scientific (bostonscientific.com) transforms lives through innovative medical solutions that improve the health of patients around the world. As a global medical technology leader for more than 40 years, Boston Scientific advances science for life by providing a broad range of high-performance solutions that address unmet patient needs and reduce the cost of healthcare.

What have been the keys to the strength and leadership of Boston Scientific?

It starts with culture and the winning spirit found here at Boston Scientific. Our culture is about fulfilling our mission to improve the lives of patients through meaningful innovation. It has been ten years since our CEO, Michael Mahoney, joined Boston Scientific, and as he came into the company, he had the organization focus on what our core values were going to be to define who we are and how we were going to work. The core values at Boston Scientific have become the foundation for how we operate and how we set strategy and work with our customers and our peers. Those core values are caring, diversity, global collaboration, high performance, meaningful innovation and a winning spirit, which reflects the passion, energy and can-do attitude of our employees.

Will you provide an overview of Boston Scientific’s Urology and Pelvic Health (UroPH) offering?

The UroPH business is made up of 4 franchises: kidney stones, which is the largest of our franchises; prostate health, which includes prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia; prosthetic urology which includes erectile dysfunction and urinary incontinence; and a small business focused on pelvic floor disorders. If you look back roughly seven years ago, this business was approximately $500 million and was largely a kidney stone business. Since that time, we have diversified and transformed through organic, meaningful innovations and strategic acquisitions, and today we are a large, global business that is aiming to eclipse $1.5 billion this year. The UroPH business has become a very meaningful top- and bottom-line part of Boston Scientific and it has been an exciting journey for the team.

How critical has it been with acquisitions to make sure that there was a strong cultural fit and what have been the keys to effectively meshing these companies into Boston Scientific?

Our business is in many ways a melting pot for a number of different teams that have come together under the Urology & Pelvic Health umbrella. Our focus is not on how a team will “fit” into our culture, but rather what that team will add to our culture. We are looking for these teams to build onto our culture and to supercharge it and challenge us to think in new ways about what it means to earn and sustain category leadership. This not only applies to acquisitions, but also to how we think about diversity within the organization. When we are attracting new talent to Boston Scientific, we are not looking at how they may fit into our culture, but rather what they will add to our culture. This leads you to look for people who have different perspectives, experiences and mindsets than those you currently have which strengthens the organization.

This approach and mindset is not unique to UroPH. If you look across Boston Scientific, I would argue that acquisitions and integration have become one of the company’s core competencies, and I think this is because we respect what those companies have built and will bring to our organization. We see ourselves as a melting pot of teams that allow us to continue to strengthen our category leadership.

You mentioned that diversity is one of Boston Scientific’s core values. How critical is it for the company to build a diverse and inclusive workforce in order to mirror the diversity of the communities you serve?

This is of the utmost importance, and I am very fortunate to be a part of a diverse UroPH management team, with just under half of our team being female and almost a third being multicultural with a significant portion of leaders who were not born in the United States. We are a team that approaches problems and opportunities by thinking very differently. We have built trust and appreciation for those differences and as a result we can make much better decisions as a team for our employees, business and customers. This ultimately means we are making better decisions for patients around the world. The past two years we have managed through challenging business issues such as COVID and if it was not for the diversity of our management team, I believe that we would be in a very different place as a business. The power of different perspectives to solve problems cannot be overstated.

We have a number of employee resource groups (ERGs) that our employees are deeply engaged in, such as our Women’s ERG, our ERG for our Black employee population, our ERG for our Southeast Asian population, and our ERG for our Pride community (LGBTQ+), which I am so fortunate be the executive sponsor of. The foundation for all of this work within Boston Scientific was built long before the COVID pandemic which was critical since these ERGs acted as a lifeline, a shoulder and as the connective tissue that kept our teams and company together during very challenging times. These groups enabled us to have honest, open and difficult conversations around issues facing our communities, such as racial inequality following the George Floyd murder, and provided the space to feel safe and be heard and valued. We see our ERGs as key to making sure that we are providing a place for our people to bring their full selves to work so that they can perform to their potential which enables us to fulfill our mission of improving patient’s lives.

In urology, we serve all walks of life – genders, races, ethnicities, abilities, sexual orientation, citizenship – and we need to make sure that our teams reflect the diversity of the people whose lives we are trying to change.