Hi everybody I'm Diane Brady. I'm talking today with Dr. Ken Washington who is

Senior Vice President as well as Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for Medtronic.

Ken you've been in the job six months. and Innovation Officer for Medtronic.

Ken, you've been in the job six months now.

Let's start with that.

How has it been?

It's been a great six months.

Some of the most rewarding months of my career.

And that says something, because this is my fifth company to work for.

And I've been in the workforce for over 35 years.

And I have had an amazing time making a difference for a

company that does work that really matters. Well I love your background

because let me just go you first of all, you have a PhD in nuclear engineering.

You were at Lockheed Martin, C. T.O. Forbes, most recently general manager of consumer robotics at Amazon. What's the throughline there if you had to identify

just see what you brought to these roles and how you've built on your skill set?

So what starts with my formal training as a nuclear engineer, I wanted to do

the nuclear engineering because I was told that it was like the hardest.

But as I studied it, I realized that it's the one engineering discipline where you need to know a lot of different things. You need to know thermodynamics, you need to know materials, you need to know software, you need to know controls. And, you know, artificial intelligence wasn't a buzzword back then but it turned out

modeling and simulation was super important in the field of nuclear engineering and so

what's common about all of my career roles is that they all involve complex, multidisciplinary, hard problems.

And they all involve advanced technology and they all involve advanced technology and they all involve solving problems that really have a purpose and a mission.

And I feel like I've landed really like in my dream job because Etronic has a mission that is hard to be.

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