Verna Rodriguez has over 35 years of experience in leading and contributing to strategic product development, operations and quality objectives in medical device companies. In 2018, she founded Manty Medtech which provides product development and design control consulting services to the medical device industry. In addition, she teaches at Santa Clara University in the Bioengineering and Engineering Management departments. Her areas of expertise include product development, root cause analysis, risk management, design control and process validation for medical devices. She received her Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from UC Berkeley. Before embarking on consulting and teaching, Verna spent the previous six years as Senior Director R&D at PneumRx, Inc., a Bay Area start-up where she focused on leading the engineering team to develop a nitinol (nickel-titanium) implant for treating patients with severe emphysema. PneumRx was successfully acquired by BTG plc in 2015 for $475M. Prior to that, she led engineering teams at Boston Scientific and Guidant Corp. (now Abbott Vascular) for development of various cardiovascular devices including stents, grafts, balloon and ablation catheters and delivery systems.
She is passionate about advising/mentoring start-ups and engineers and building an inclusive environment in engineering organizations.