Celebrating Women's Achievements as a Woman Owned Business

Happy International Women’s Day! The whole month of March is dedicated to international women’s month, but March 8th holds special importance as international women’s day. This day has been linked to the start of various strikes in New York against oppression, inequality, and for voting rights. Since 1911, International Women’s day has been celebrated each year on March 8th.¹

Today, and this whole month is about recognizing and appreciating the role women hold in today’s world. There have been many women in our history who have paved the way to allow women today a voice in the workforce, society, economy, and politics.

To honor this day, Starboard Medical would like to recognize one of its founders, shareholders, and CEO, Kerry Edgar. Kerry has shown what it is to be a strong and determined woman working hard in her career and life to overcome obstacles. Taking each obstacle as just a bump in the road, she kept her steadfast focus to overcome them with excellence.

At 44 years old, her husband who was 45 at the time was diagnosed with lung cancer and died within six months leaving Kerry and three children (ages 10,13, and 17) behind. Being a two-income family, the horror of not being able to afford the bills was very real. Luckily, Kerry was part of a startup company in an exciting market and with the help of her strong, faithful, and inspirational managers, she immediately started to lay down a foundation for future success.

The company was Medegen, the developer of the MaxPlus Clear® needleless access device and it was taking the market by storm. After Kerry’s husband had passed away, the company was sold to Carefusion (now BD) and Kerry was an integral part of the management team and that successful merger transaction. The following year, Kerry moved over to the acquiring company but she missed the excitement and fast pace of the startup so she decided to partner with her father to own her own medical device company, Starboard Medical.

Starboard Medical was a small manufacturer of thermistor temperature sensors that are used in patient temperature probes. Shortly after Kerry came on board, they embarked on developing and launching their own line of disposable temperature sensors and started to gain market share. A few years into the business, while in a hospital visiting a friend, Kerry was reminded of the time when she provided PICC line care to her ailing husband. He had a PICC line for 7 months. She remembered how she dreaded the weekly dressing changes, especially opening and removing the securement device the home health agency provided. She remembered that one time during a dressing change the gates to open the securement device were so stuck she had to use incredible force to open them, and this force caused the PICC line to move. Being in the industry, she knew the risks of the PICC line not terminating in the proper location. So she took her husband to the local ED for an X-ray to confirm the location of the tip. As suspected, it significantly moved and the catheter needed to be pulled and replaced. Her memory of this traumatic incident sparred curiosity. Was there a way to develop a better, more useful securement device? Soon she began to work on the design and development of a securement device with the help of her father, Tony Beran. Her strong belief that with faith in God and self, life perils can build strength and lead to something better provided her ambition to develop a better securement device to help patients and caregivers, like her husband and her.

Kerry and her father went on to develop a full line of specialty catheter securement devices which was recently sold to a market-leading company in the vascular access space. Now that the catheter securement product line is no longer a part of Starboard Medical, Kerry’s focus has shifted to continuing growth and market penetration of the Starboard brand temperature probes. In addition, there are several other projects in Starboard’s R&D pipeline, many inspired by personal experiences.

Within the various stages of her career, Kerry has also been a manager that helps her employees grow. She hired many non-industry employees and helped them learn the ropes. Many of Kerry’s hires over the years now hold high-level executive positions at leading medical device companies. It’s great to work with Kerry as you can see how she likes to help her employees develop. She can be very hands-off, but she does provide the directions, tools, and insight that helps us succeed.

Outside of business, Kerry has shown that the statistics of children being raised in a single parent or fatherless home will have poor outcomes can be beaten with strong faith and the grit to assure that it happens. With the odds against her, she pulled through more so than most. Despite having a career that was very demanding and required frequent travel, the focus on her children always came first. Now, Kerry has three adult children. All who are quite successful themselves. She thanks God for giving her the strength to move things in the right direction, her father teaching her strong work ethic and the medical device industry, and her mother, God rest her soul, for giving her the attitude that turns lemons into lemonade.

Kerry has demonstrated how much a woman can accomplish by maintaining a positive attitude, even when facing challenges. She has continuously shown great strength and has been a wonderful leader to her employees, which is why we love to shine a light on all her hard work. She has demonstrated hard work in achieving her goals as a leading woman. We are so thankful for Kerry and love to honor her today.

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