Director - North America Physician Relations

Company Overview:

Headquartered in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, Artivion, Inc. is a medical device company focused on developing simple, elegant solutions that address cardiac and vascular surgeons' most difficult challenges in treating patients with aortic diseases. Artivion has over 1,400 employees worldwide with sales representation in over 100 countries. The Company has manufacturing facilities located in Atlanta, Georgia, Austin, Texas and Hechingen, Germany. Additionally, it has sales and distribution offices in various countries throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. For additional information about Artivion, visit our website, www.artivion.com.

Position Objective:

• Elevate and professionalize Artivion's physician advisory infrastructure across North America, delivering best-in-class, compliant advisory boards and surgeon councils that shape clinical education, program development, and adoption of Artivion's aortic stent graft technologies currently available in the U.S. and the company's future aortic pipeline.
• Serve as a senior strategic partner who deepens relationships with top cardiac and vascular surgeons, ensuring alignment between physician perspectives, clinical needs, and Artivion's aortic technology roadmap.
• Represent Artivion with a highly responsive, clinically fluent presence to ensure surgeon leaders feel valued, heard, and strategically connected to Artivion's mission and innovations.

Responsibilities:

Advisory Board Leadership and Execution

• Own the full lifecycle of physician advisory board meetings and surgeon council activities related to Artivion's aortic stent graft technologies, including planning, agenda development, physician engagement, meeting execution, and post-meeting follow-through.
• Develop industry-leading advisory experiences using structured discussion methods such as formal consensus building, structured polling, and facilitated group evaluation to drive clear, actionable output.
• Lead physician identification, qualification, and contracting processes in partnership with Legal and Compliance functions, ensuring compensation aligns with Fair Market Value requirements and all interactions follow applicable health care professional engagement standards.
• Build repeatable engagement frameworks that reinforce continuity between advisory meetings and ensure insights translate into meaningful actions for clinical education, market development, and future device planning.

Strategic Physician Engagement and Relationship Development

• Cultivate and expand strong relationships with top cardiac surgeons, vascular surgeons, aortic specialists, endovascular specialists, and program leaders across North America. Strengthen credibility, accelerate clinical adoption, and build long-term loyalty within the open, hybrid, and endovascular aortic treatment spectrum.
• Create tailored engagement strategies for high-priority hospitals, aortic centers, and influential referral networks to support clinical adoption and long-term alignment with Artivion's aortic technologies.
• Ensure rapid, high-quality responsiveness to physician inquiries related to Artivion's current aortic stent graft technologies, procedural considerations, clinical experience, or upcoming innovations.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Serve as a strategic resource across the organization, acting as a conduit to key opinion leaders by facilitating introductions, coordinating discussions, and arranging surgeon meetings as needed to support priority projects.
• Partner with Upstream Marketing, Research and Development, and Clinical Affairs to share relevant surgeon insights and feedback that inform new product development, future pipeline planning, and ongoing clinical studies.
• Coordinate closely with Sales, Downstream Marketing, and Medical Affairs to ensure physician feedback is communicated effectively in both directions and that all required follow-up actions are completed in a timely, organized manner.
• Provide regional insights and best practices to Global Physician Relations leadership as well as Sales and Marketing leaders across geographies, supporting the long-term strategy for aortic technology development and strengthening surgeon partnership models.

Execution Excellence and Responsiveness

• Maintain exceptional responsiveness and professionalism in all interactions with senior cardiac and vascular surgeons.
• Ensure all physician engagements comply with the Advanced Medical Technology Association Code of Ethics (AdvaMed Code), internal compliance policies, and regulatory requirements.
• Provide regular executive-level updates on advisory outcomes, relationship status, risk areas, and opportunities related to aortic stent graft adoption and future pipeline development.

Qualifications:

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Biomedical Engineering, or related field; MBA or advanced degree strongly preferred.
• 15+ years of experience in the medical device industry with substantial involvement in physician relations, sales, marketing, or market development for aortic stent grafts, thoracic endovascular aortic repair technologies, abdominal endovascular aortic repair technologies, or other complex aortic and vascular device technologies.
• Extensive experience designing, facilitating, or executing physician advisory boards, surgeon councils, or expert panels, ideally in the aortic or structural heart domain.
• Ability to communicate in a clinically fluent manner with surgeon leaders about thoracic aortic repair, abdominal aortic repair, hybrid surgical approaches, and endovascular treatment strategies.
• Demonstrated success collaborating across commercial, clinical, marketing, and medical affairs functions.
• Strong clinical knowledge of aortic disease and endovascular interventions.
• Exceptional presentation, negotiation, and executive communication skills.

Key Competencies

• Exceptional relationship-building capability and strong executive presence.
• Highly proactive, organized, and responsive in a fast-paced, surgeon-facing role.
• Skilled in structured meeting facilitation, agenda development, consensus-building techniques, and follow-through.
• Strong communicator capable of translating complex clinical and strategic discussions into clear action steps and recommendations.
• Deep understanding of compliant health care professional engagement requirements, including Fair Market Value principles and transparency obligations.
• Willingness to travel frequently (approximately 50-60%) to major cardiac and vascular centers across the United States.
• Resilient, adaptable, and able to thrive in a dynamic, high-growth environment.