LARRY WOOD
CORPORATE VICE PRESIDENT AND GROUP PRESIDENT
TRANSCATHETER AORTIC VALVE REPLACEMENT AND SURGICAL STRUCTURAL HEART
EDWARDS LIFESCIENCES
WHY: Heads largest business unit at Irvine-based heart valve giant, Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement, also known as TAVR. Group accounted for 65% of Edwards’ sales in 2021.
BY THE NUMBERS: The company’s Sapien heart valves—implanted via catheter through the leg, without the need for open-heart surgery—are the most-used TAVR heart valves in the industry, and have been implanted in nearly 800,000 patients, according to Edwards.
FUTURE PLANS: This year Wood took on exec role for Surgical Structural Heart at Edwards. It’s the company’s second largest unit, meaning he will oversee 80% of the company’s expected sales in 2023.
IN THEIR WORDS: “I love being with the teams. I love being in the cath lab. I love being with our clinicians and working on groundbreaking trials, and I love doing all those things,” he told analysts in December. “I think I kind of have the best job in the company in terms of what I get to do.”
