By Adam Sylvain
28 May 2025
Kelly Albert TEE’17 enrolled in Tuck Executive Education’s Advanced Management Program (AMP) while serving as district sales manager for the medical device manufacturer Medtronic. Although Albert had worked at the company for more than a decade, it was the first role that required managing a large team and significant revenue.
“I was doing a lot of contracting, which demanded a different skillset. The AMP program provided that and helped me think strategically about how to grow the business,” says Albert. “My career took off after that.”
Two promotions later, Albert is now senior director of enterprise accounts for Medtronic’s neuroscience, spine, and medical surgery division. The leadership role is the latest stop in her nearly 20-year tenure with the company. It’s been a fulfilling journey, and one Albert admits she never could have predicted.
“The AMP program … helped me think strategically about how to grow the business. My career took off after that.”
A biology and chemistry major at Valparaiso University, Albert ultimately decided against medical school and discovered her pre-med background and people skills were an asset in the medical device industry. She landed her first job as a marketing associate at Stryker and later took on sales roles at Schering Plough Pharmaceuticals and Clozex Medical before joining Medtronic in 2006.
“There are so many ways you can use your degree, and they aren’t always obvious,” Albert says. “That was certainly the case for me.”
It is a message Albert shares often, including with a group of Thayer School of Engineering students she met through Phil Barta, executive director of Tuck Executive Education. Two of those students have since joined Medtronic, including Lyndsi Ross-Trevor D’18 TH’20, who Albert hired as an intern and now works for the company as a senior product specialist in Amsterdam.
Albert says the most important qualities she looks for when building teams are grit as well as an ability, and willingness, to adapt quickly to change.
“The role we are hiring for today, could be completely different five years from now,” she says. “You want to find someone who is comfortable navigating through that ambiguity.”
Working in an industry where change is constant, Albert cites Coxe Distinguished Professor of Management Vijay “VG” Govindarajan’s “Three-Box Solution” as a helpful framework.
“Having a clear vision for how an organization is optimizing current operations and investing in future growth makes it a lot easier to explain when it’s necessary to abandon strategies and practices that no longer fit,” says Albert.
When it comes to future growth and innovation, she says much of the focus at Medtronic has been on the expanded use of artificial intelligence, in internal operations as well as product development.
“How we adapt and learn with AI is mission critical for us,” says Albert. “Internally, we’re continuing to evaluate how we can use AI to work better and more efficiently. At the same time, AI technology is also front and center in a lot of our new products.”
“Having a clear vision for how an organization is optimizing current operations and investing in future growth makes it a lot easier to explain when it’s necessary to abandon strategies and practices that no longer fit.”
This includes a product Medtronic is developing called GI Genius, a first-to-market, computer-assisted polyp detection system powered by AI. The product is designed to help identify flat polyps that a surgeon can’t see with the naked eye.
“You can imagine the impact technology like this can have on patient outcomes,” says Albert. “It makes it exciting to come to work every day.”
