Madeline Wehrle Interviewed at Octane's Medical Innovation Forum in Irvine, California

Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and today we are in Irvine, California at the Medical Innovation Forum powered by Octane. And my guest is Madeline Worley. Madeline, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. All right. So we're at day two of the conference. We're halfway in. How are you feeling? I'm feeling motivated, energized. It's been really great to hear from so many different startups that have so many different products they're working on. Yeah, well, what's been one of your favorite parts of the conference so far? I love that there is both the aspect from the large strategics to kind of kick off what they're specifically looking for, but also Bringing so many different technologies on the stage across so many different indications and subsegments. It's a lot, right? It's amazing. Yeah. It's so, and to me it's always inspiring to come to conferences like this because you see these founders and these people with these big ideas and to me it's always, it's a lot to take in. I totally agree. So looking at the presentations, looking at the founders, looking at the ideas tell us a little bit more about what you do at Goddard. Yeah. So Goddard is a full service product development consultancy. We're located in Boston. We're also located in San Diego. And we are focused on how we can help the medical device startups as well as the large strategic companies and all the way through. We support starting with ideation and concept generation all the way through verification and validation of product and really all facets of engineering, whether it's mechanical, electrical engineering, software, firmware. And even on the product side, industrial design, human factors, making sure things are safe and efficient and usable. What's one of your favorite parts about working in the industry just overall? Cause you have, I feel like you have a unique vantage point cause you're looking at so many different things through Goddard and through your work. Yeah. I think it's always fun to look at the synergies between. Technologies that are so different. When you go down to the fundamentals, everybody has to abide by the laws of physics. Everybody has the same data book of materials they can pull from or processes they can use to make parts. So it's always nice to be able to go in and leverage the minds of, I mean, specifically at Goddard, the 100 staff that we have that Let's say somebody specialized in cardiac, but they can advise on an ortho related project. Yeah. And just those little nuggets that might be a little outside of the room of what would have been discussed, in theory, was How did you get involved in the business originally? Well, I'm trained as a biomedical engineer. I found early on in my career I much prefer the business side and being just dangerous enough on the technology. So I got into business development. I actually worked in the materials industry and manufacturing industry for about 10 years before coming back around to Goddard. So it's been a long and winding road with a bit of a detour. Now are you mentioned locations in Boston and in Southern California are San Diego. Yes. Yes. Which one are you out of? I am based out of San Diego. Okay. So what do you think about this? I was hoping you'd say that because I'm I'm so interested. I've just started covering the octane events and I've just gotten more involved in this medical community down here, and it's thriving. So I'm curious to hear from your standpoint, like, about that entrepreneurial medical community and all the things going on. Like, like, what do you think about this ecosystem that's built down here? Yeah. So I'll speak to San Diego specifically, San Diego versus some of the other large technology hubs has a much more wholesome, camaraderie, community. And it sounds cheesy and corny, but it's genuinely true. People will go out of their ways to make introductions, industry agnostic investor agnostic. So that's really amazing. The other thing is, so when you think about MedDevice, there's so much more opportunity and technology development here in San Diego. Orange County. But in San Diego, there's A lot of biotech and what comes with biotech is drug delivery and different process automations and the device side, either FDA regulated or not that helps supports the regenerative medicine and cell therapies, et cetera. So. That's unique. It's interesting to me to see kind of like the culture going all the way up the coast. And it's not when we think about this, the span of like driving distance isn't that far, but there's just all these different little hubs, whether it's San Diego, whether it's Orange County, whether it's the LA side of things, or even go all the way up to Silicon Valley, like each has their own unique characteristics, their own unique ecosystems. But I feel like they all cross over at some point, like at some point, depending what you're doing, what industry, I feel li

Mission Matters Business Podcast with Adam Torres