The Challenge

Technology dominated a lot of the medtech news cycle, including product launches, regulatory clearances, M&A activity. What wasn't happening was any sustained, editorially rigorous examination of the people leading the industry, specifically the women who were building and running companies that weren't getting proportionate coverage. MassDevice had no framework for that kind of coverage and no established identity in the DEI space. It also had an audience of 75,000+ professionals who trusted the brand because it didn't editorialize lightly.

The Approach

The program began with an observation: scrolling through the executive pages of the largest medical device companies, women were significantly underrepresented, and the industry press wasn't treating that as a story worth telling consistently. I pitched the concept to our publisher as a directory of who's who among women in the medical device industry, with the understanding that a directory alone had a limited editorial life. The more durable opportunity was coverage: stories about the innovations happening at women-led companies that weren't getting the attention they deserved, told with the same rigor we applied to any other business story.

What emerged was a multi-platform program with several distinct content categories that evolved over time. The annual print issue — published each October — maintained strict editorial standards, including a cutoff of ten years for featured startups to ensure the coverage reflected genuinely emerging leadership rather than established players. Because the print issue was once a year, I developed a year-round programming strategy to maintain consistent, branded coverage in between through newsletters, podcast episodes, and digital content that kept the Women in Medtech identity active and recognizable across all twelve months. The program also required cross-functional coordination with the sales team, particularly when covering women in medtech manufacturing, where editorial and commercial interests intersected and had to be managed carefully to protect editorial integrity while supporting the business.

The long-term signal that the program had genuine impact came not from the metrics, but from the people it covered. Many of the women featured in Women in Medtech have since told me that the coverage was part of their founding story and that being recognized in a credible industry publication at an early stage of their company's development mattered in ways that went beyond traffic numbers.

Outcome

Women in Medtech reached 1M+ professionals across four brand verticals, contributed $250K in incremental revenue to WTWH Media, and earned three ASBPE awards for excellence in DEI reporting. The model was recognized as successful enough that the company replicated it across two additional brand properties.