NuVasive Realigns Sales and Leadership Structure

San Diego, Calif.-based spine company, NuVasive Inc. has made changes to its leadership team. According to the firm’s leadership, the changes are “designed to enhance the company’s organizational alignment and accelerate its market share-taking strategy.”

Pat Miles, NuVasive’s current president of global products and services, will assume an expanded role as president and chief operating officer. In this new role, Miles will continue to be responsible for leadership and management of global products and services. In addition, he will take on NuVasive’s operational duties, including customer fulfillment, manufacturing, supply chain management and quality engineering. The integration of the global products and services function with operational activities will allow NuVasive to better leverage product development insights globally and allows for greater alignment between the development of procedural solutions and their efficient delivery in the field to fulfill the requirements of the many surgeries the company supports every day, according to the company.

Miles has been with the company for 14 years.

“This strategic integration places NuVasive in an optimal position to further scale the business as the Company accelerates its momentum to drive beyond $1 billion in revenues while increasing operating profitability,” officials noted in a recent press releases.

Chief Operating Officer Keith Valentine will step down from that role and will leave the company effective April 30. Valentine is working with the firm to ensure a seamless transition of responsibilities over the coming months.

Alex Lukianov, NuVasive’s chairman and CEO, said: “After 14 years with NuVasive, Keith Valentine has made the personal decision to leave the company to explore different career options as he looks to fulfill long-held professional aspirations. While he will be greatly missed, we are supportive of Keith’s decision to pursue new opportunities and we thank him for his tireless devotion and dedication to the entire NUVA family. He has been an instrumental member of the team, laying and sustaining the foundations for NuVasive’s long-term growth, while playing an integral role in the shaping and supporting of our distinct culture. We wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

Lukianov characterized Miles’s contributions to the company as “invaluable,” noting that he is “the right leader to move the organization forward as we continue to transform, adapt and scale our business.”

Lukianov added: “With this leadership transition, we have a unique opportunity to combine the best elements of both operations and products and services in a way that will continue to spark our innovative brilliance. This integration creates a unified team with a focused vision and purpose: changing spine surgery and improving patient outcomes. From product conception to inventory and distribution, the global integration of our product, services and operations functions will enable us to become an even more efficient and responsive company to better serve our customers and patients.”

NuVasive also plans to implement structural changes to its U.S. sales and services departments to best support its customers. As part of this optimization, the company will integrate and align all U.S. field personnel to form a combined sales and services organization. This will include the consolidation of the company’s field sales, clinical associates, IMI neurophysiologists and monitoring contracting. Matt Link, who is currently executive vice president of U.S. sales, will become president of U.S. sales and services and will lead the expanded team.

“I congratulate Matt on his newly expanded role and appreciate his unwavering commitment to NuVasive and to meeting the needs of our customers. Under the leadership of both Pat and Matt, we are taking important steps to ensure that NuVasive is prepared to scale our business in line with our growth expectations as we anticipate and respond to the evolving needs of NuVasive customers worldwide,” Lukianov said. “I am confident this strategic shift in the organizational alignment of our Company will further our competitive positioning as an innovator and disruptor in the spine market, and I look forward to seeing enhanced efficiency in both the operational and the sales and services teams under the leadership of Pat and Matt.”

NuVasive’a principal procedural solution is its Maximum Access Surgery, or MAS, platform for lateral spine fusion.