Dominique Filloux brings more than three decades of medtech experience to his role as Fogarty Innovation’s new chief development officer. In this capacity, he is working with Fogarty’s resident companies as an advisor and coach with an emphasis on R&D and operations, including quality assurance, quality management systems, regulatory and clinical affairs.
His experience makes this position an ideal fit: having spent the majority of his career in startups, he has deep understanding of the challenges they face as well as the skills and knowledge needed to help a company thrive. “In startups, there are always a million things that need to get done,” said Filloux. “Over the course of my career, I have fine-tuned my ability to prioritize myriad competing needs to make sure I’m addressing those that are most urgent. I look forward to passing on the lessons I’ve learned.”
A Childhood Passion Kickstarts His Career
Growing up in San Diego, Filloux spent every spare minute on or in the water, sailing and scuba diving. While studying mechanical engineering at UC San Diego, he worked at Scripps Institute of Oceanography as a tech and research diver. He was often based on oceanographic vessels and adventured to far-away places in the summertime.
While most of his classmates took jobs with defense manufacturers after graduation, Filloux parlayed his interest in the ocean into a position at a small startup in the Bay Area that made scuba diving equipment.
“I was excited at the prospect of working in an environment that allowed me to pursue the passions I enjoyed as a kid,’” Filloux said. In addition to making sport-diving equipment, the company was starting a division focused on diving equipment for the military. Filloux jumped at the opportunity to get involved, aided by the fact that he already had the requisite security clearance because of work he had done previously for the Department of Defense while at Scripps.
The division was designing a new closed-circuit rebreather, a diving system that allows the diver to avoid releasing bubbles when they’re swimming to avert detection. While working on it, he learned a lot about pulmonology and metabolic functions, and his wife who was working in accounting with a medical client, suggested he explore the field of medtech for his next endeavor.
He began to pursue relevant opportunities, and eventually was hired at Endovascular Technologies, a small startup in Menlo Park, as its first manufacturing engineer. He spent eight years there, then went on to work for a number of other medical device companies, primarily startups.
Most recently, Filloux was the COO at Minerva Surgical, Inc., where he led the development of the first endometrial ablation product to substantially raise the bar in clinical effectiveness since 2001. Over his 14-year tenure with the company, he helped it grow from a startup with a single approved product into a best-in-class uterine health company with a broad portfolio of products following the acquisition and integration of the women’s Intra-Uterine Health business unit of Boston Scientific.
An Industry Like No Other
Over the course of his career, Filloux has identified three elements that have attracted him to the companies he’s worked for and the medtech world in general: the clear goal everyone is working towards; the team approach they take; and the value of the design control process.
In fact, he recently gave a presentation on design controls to a group of physician inventors. His favorite slide in the deck says, “Why do we have to do this?” and the first bullet is “Because it works.”
“The design control process is a smart and effective approach for transforming ideas and information into a cohesive project and well-structured plan, significantly increasing your chances of success throughout the development cycle,” Filloux said. “I appreciate working in an industry that has this kind of discipline.”
However, like many in the medtech industry, it is the ability to have a profound impact on so many people that he finds most compelling. “I have had a number of experiences over the course of my career that reinforced the reason I made this my life’s work,” he says. “It’s amazing when you do a first-in-human clinical study with new technology, and you realize it’s the first time a patient has been helped by a product that, until that day, was just an idea.”
Finding a Home at Fogarty
Filloux comes to Fogarty with deep connections to the staff and companies-in-development, having worked previously with Fogarty CIO Mike Regan (Minerva), Fogarty strategic clinical and regulatory advisor Peggy McLaughlin (Cierra), Enspectra Health, Inc. VP of quality & regulatory Grace Kao Li, and others.
He became even more familiar with Fogarty’s goals and culture after Regan joined the team and invited Filloux to accompany fellow Fogarty colleagues on several backpacking trips. The weekend trips spurred him to think about his next steps, and in addition to Regan, he consulted with Fogarty CEO Andrew Cleeland and Fogarty’s former director of strategic initiatives, Greg Bakan. “I talked at length with Mike and Andrew about how being at Fogarty would be different from my role as an ‘operator’ in medtech start-ups, and Greg was a great sounding board for me as I was figuring out my next step—all the grand mentors mentoring a mentor-to-be,” he said.
As the trio helped him think through what this shift would mean and how the value of what he had to offer would change, Filloux recognized that joining Fogarty Innovation would be a great fit. “I looked back on my later-stage career when I had been active in mentoring and coaching other employees, helping them develop their careers and technical acumen, and realized how much I had enjoyed that and how this would be a rewarding opportunity to continue that work.”
Filloux has always had a work-hard, play-hard mentality and enjoys spending as much time as he can outside—whether backpacking, running, cycling, swimming or competing in long course triathlons. He also loves to travel, and given his French heritage, he and his wife particularly enjoy going back there to visit family.