Meredith Gannon’s first child, Ella, was born prematurely and with a heart condition. Gannon was fortunate enough to deliver at one of the country’s elite hospitals – Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston – but even with the center’s extensive resources and expertise, it was unable to conduct a needed surgery on Ella as quickly as possible.

“Nobody had surgical tools that were small enough,” Gannon recalls.

Ella recovered well and has since picked up where her mother left off on the soccer field. Gannon’s experience navigating the emotional and logistical land mines of the healthcare system, however, awakened in her a desire to do whatever she could to keep others from enduring similar hardships. Now, as chief strategy and marketing officer for GE HealthCare’s Patient Care Solutions unit, which encompasses everything from maternal and infant care technology to anesthesia administration systems, Gannon finds herself in a position to effect true change.

She’s doing so in part through the company’s concerted effort to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality rates, which remain alarmingly high in the U.S. and around the globe. “Seven hundred twelve women still die every day from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, which amounts to roughly one every two minutes,” she notes. “We’ve made some progress over the last few decades, but maternal health access remains deeply inequitable.”

Earlier this year, GE HealthCare debuted its CareIntellect for Perinatal platform, which leverages data to support delivery- and maternal-care teams. Then there’s the company’s work alongside Powering Milwaukee Forward (through which 10 local nonprofits shared $1 million in grants) and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (two years ago, it received a $44 million grant to develop tools and technology to help HCPs caring for mothers in lower-income countries). Taken together, these efforts suggest that GE HealthCare is invested in the cause in a way that few other organizations have even attempted.

“We can absolutely play a role in reversing some of the trends we’re seeing,” Gannon says. “Not playing a role isn’t an option for us.”

Forged on the soccer field

Gannon was born and raised in New Hampshire, and came closer than most to realizing the childhood dream of becoming a professional athlete. She excelled in soccer, receiving All-New England team honors during her senior year of high school before playing collegiately at Bucknell University.

Like other soccer lifers, Gannon attributes many of the successes that followed to her involvement with the sport. “My parents would hate me saying this, but I wouldn’t be where I am today without soccer,” she says. “It taught me how to lead and how to work with a team. It helped me get into an excellent university and it opened doors that allowed me to see the world.”

It was at Bucknell that Gannon’s mission started to come into focus. She majored in economics, focusing on the ways economic development can impact the lives of people around the globe. Later she received a master’s degree from the University of New Hampshire’s Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, where she specialized in strategic marketing and organizational design.

After completing her education, Gannon joined ORC International, conducting market research and consulting for the likes of Pfizer, Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline. It was there, while working on what she calls “a blockbuster-type drug,” that she experienced her sliding-doors moment. The product was successful and Gannon largely enjoyed the work, but it left her feeling unfulfilled.

“Maybe I was a little too idealistic as an undergrad,” she says. “The product was targeted at helping one specific demographic; we were helping men with their relationships. It was making an impact, but it wasn’t the one I wanted. I wanted to work on the AIDS epidemic, or somewhere I could really make a difference.”

As Gannon wrestled with this dilemma, she received a call dangling the possibility of a job at Philips, which had started to flex its muscles in the med-tech and devices space. Recognizing a kindred sense of mission, Gannon accepted the position and left the consulting world behind. 

“The world was clearly pushing me in that direction,” she says.

The move into med-tech

Thus began Gannon’s transition into the rapidly evolving world of med-tech. Over the course of the next 14 years, she held a range of increasingly senior roles at Philips, notably heading up marketing for the company’s multibillion-dollar sleep and respiratory business.

“For a marketing professional, it was a wonderful place to land, because they believed in marketing and invested in it,” she says. “I was fortunate to grow up there and be developed by some of the top people in the industry. I could immediately see that what we were doing was impacting the greater good.”

Gannon’s leadership bona fides, which she traces back to her time on the soccer pitch, developed in turn. “Meredith is the kind of leader who challenges you to elevate your thinking and your execution,” says Taylor Hagan Vice, senior director, marketing operations in the Patient Care Solutions unit, who worked with Gannon at Philips. “She has a rare ability to navigate large, matrixed organizations and bring teams together toward a shared vision.”

To that end, Gannon worked to elevate the profile of the marketing function within the broader Philips organization – an assignment right up her alley, given her educational background in organizational design. When a similar opportunity at GE HealthCare’s Patient Care Solutions unit presented itself, Gannon pounced.

Her mission: To create a marketing operation that could serve as both a strategic partner and growth engine. “Sometimes marketing is looked at as a kind of supporting function. What I was offered was the chance to define a brand and its vision and its mission.”

Gannon was up to the task. “She built a world-class marketing organization that we haven’t seen before,” says Alla K. Woodson, global general manager, aftermarket services and anesthesia, in the Patient Care Solutions group.

She faced some challenges along the way. When Gannon arrived at GE HealthCare, marketing within the Patient Care Solutions group “was pretty much just marcomms,” she recalls. Evolving the marketing operation, then, would require concerted education around its utility and importance. Looking back, Gannon believes she might have shifted into transformation mode too abruptly.

“When you’re building out a marketing function, you have to make sure you’re not moving too fast,” she says. “You have to match the maturity of the organization, because you don’t want to get into a position where you’re building something that’s too far advanced for where the organization currently is. Being from the northeast, where we like to do everything as quickly as possible, I had to learn to slow down.”

Four years and one promotion later – she added the chief strategy officer title in May 2024 – Gannon has the marketing function operating at peak capacity. A reorganization brought product marketing, strategic marketing, content and engagement, and insight and analytics under a single roof, bringing a needed degree of cohesion to the group. Gannon reports that the Patient Care Solutions leadership team has backed her every step of the way and have empowered her to execute her vision.

“They were open to change in a way you don’t see very often,” she adds.

Looking ahead, Gannon hopes to effect further transformation in the Patient Care Solutions marketing approach. “There are so many more ways to reach our end stakeholders than there used to be,” she notes. She has traded in the soccer boots for tennis and pickleball racquets (“my knees were shot”) and finds bliss chasing her two youngest children around the baseball diamonds, soccer fields and hockey arenas of the midwest.

Gannon’s ability to simultaneously manage myriad personal and professional responsibilities has made an impact on her colleagues. “They may not realize just how deeply Meredith values and respects the balance of being a working mom,” Vice says. “It’s incredibly empowering to see a leader who not only understands the challenges of juggling both worlds, but actively supports her team in finding that same balance for themselves.”

Gannon is open to taking on bigger roles within GE HealthCare, though she notes that “there’s still a lot to be done here in marketing.” That said, count her in for anything involving transformation and the company’s broader mission.

“GE HealthCare will be in a great position to help people globally,” she says. “I’m thrilled and blessed to be part of an organization that’s moving so aggressively in this direction.”

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