Chris Reese is the Senior Vice President of Sales at NeuroPace, a medical device company dedicated to improving the lives of people with drug-resistant epilepsy through advanced neurostimulation technology. With nearly two decades of leadership experience, Chris has played key commercial roles at leading medtech companies — including driving over $800 million in value during Vertiflex's acquisition by Boston Scientific and leading US sales for the ENT business at Medtronic. A former US Marine, he brings a unique blend of military discipline, startup grit, and Fortune 500 expertise to his work, making him an influential mentor and champion for developing future medical sales professionals.

In highly regulated industries like medtech, growth rarely comes from moving fast and cutting corners. It comes from earning trust, aligning teams, and making smart decisions when the stakes are high, but what does that really look like in practice?

For Chris Reese, a sales leader in the medical device industry, the answer starts with people. He believes that sustainable growth happens when teams are aligned around purpose, patient impact, and mutual accountability. Chris shares how strong relationships, healthy tension across functions, and leaders who show up consistently create the conditions where both people and performance can thrive.

In this episode of In Good Company: Where Relationships Drive Results, Lisa Kilrea is joined by Chris Reese, Senior Vice President of Sales at NeuroPace, to discuss leading commercial strategy and growth in medtech. They explore navigating regulation without losing momentum, building trust across sales, marketing, and clinical teams, and developing leaders who balance empathy with high standards.

Madeline Witt is the Marketing Manager at Thompson Retractor, a company that designs and manufactures table-mounted surgical retractor systems used in complex procedures such as liver, spine, and cervical surgeries. Over her nine-year tenure at Thompson, Madeline has held leadership roles spanning Assistant Product Manager to Clinical Specialist, and her unique hands-on experience in the operating room has helped shape the company's products and relationships with surgeons nationwide.

Strong relationships don't just shape careers, they shape entire industries, especially when the stakes are as high as patient care. In a world where innovation moves quickly, how do medical device companies earn trust that lasts for decades?

For Madeline Witt, the key lies in building genuine, long-term partnerships with the surgeons and teams who rely on these tools every day. She explains that Thompson works alongside surgeons from their earliest training through the full span of their careers, learning directly from their feedback and evolving needs. That kind of consistency doesn't just improve products, it helps make surgery better together.

In this episode of In Good Company: Where Relationships Drive Results, Lisa Kilrea is joined by Madeline Witt, Marketing Manager at Thompson Retractor, to discuss building lasting relationships while innovating in surgical device marketing. They explore surgeon-driven product development, the value of firsthand clinical experience, and how trust supports long-term adoption. Madeline also shares advice on caring for people beyond business.

Dean E. Carter is the CEO of Instill, a company dedicated to driving cultural transformation within organizations through advanced AI and real-time organizational intelligence. With a proven track record of stabilizing at-risk engagements and building billion-dollar businesses, Dean has held senior executive and board leadership roles at renowned companies such as Patagonia, Sears, Fossil, and Guild, and is the co-author of the #1 bestselling book Employee Experience Design. He is widely recognized for developing innovative employee experiences, nurturing the next generation of leaders, and shaping workplace cultures that balance both business performance and human wellbeing.

Uncertainty has a way of exposing the cracks in leadership. When pressure mounts and answers are unclear, what actually keeps people aligned, motivated, and willing to stay in the boat together?

According to Dean E. Carter, a longtime people-first leadership thinker, trust is built through everyday actions, not grand speeches. He points to simple but powerful moments, like keeping your word, listening with intent, and leaving people and organizations better than you found them, as the real foundations of leadership. In times of disruption, those habits become the difference between teams that fragment and teams that rise together

In this episode of In Good Company: Where Relationships Drive Results, Lisa Kilrea is joined by Dean E. Carter, CEO of Instill, to discuss how leaders build trust in uncertain times. They explore why trust breaks down when leaders default to process over people, how relationships drive performance even in crisis, and what it means to design employee experiences with — not for — your teams. Dean also shares advice on using transparency, consistency, and learning to lead people through change with confidence.