The people building InspireMD: why this team looks built for the next phase
⚠️ Reader notice: The author holds a position or has active interest in NSPR at the time of writing. Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice. All analysis is based on publicly available information. Do your own due diligence. ⚠️
There’s a difference between a company that has a board and a company that has been deliberately assembled with the right people for a higher-stakes phase.
Most small-cap medtech companies have boards filled with capable people who bring general healthcare experience, provide governance oversight, and collect their quarterly fees. That’s not a criticism, it’s simply the norm.
InspireMD’s board and senior leadership team looks different. Not because the names are universally famous, but because when you compare each background to the specific demands of this moment in the company’s history, the fit is unusually precise.
Someone built this team with a very clear phase of development in mind.
Raymond W. Cohen: The Operator Who Has Done This Before
Raymond Cohen is the co-founder and former CEO of Axonics, Inc. In 2012, Cohen co-founded Axonics to develop a next-generation sacral neuromodulation device. He took the company public on Nasdaq in 2018. He built it into the market leader in its category. And in January 2024, he sold it to Boston Scientific for $3.7 billion.
That exit represents one of the more successful medtech transactions of the last decade. Cohen didn’t stumble into it. He engineered it, deliberately, methodically, over twelve years.
What He Built At Axonics
- Built a clinical evidence package strong enough to challenge an incumbent standard
- Established US manufacturing infrastructure
- Built a commercial team focused on hospital and physician adoption
- Scaled revenue to strategic relevance without losing the plot operationally
- Assembled a board with strategic credibility
- Ultimately sold the company to Boston Scientific at a premium
Every one of those disciplines is visible at InspireMD right now. Cohen joined InspireMD’s board in July 2025. The fact that he has already sold a company to Boston Scientific is relevant, not because it proves anything here, but because it tells you he knows what serious strategic value looks like when he sees it.
He is not here, in my view, for the director fees.
James Ward: The Chairman Who Knows The Industry From The Inside
James Ward spent approximately 30 years at Medtronic, one of the largest medical device companies in the world, in Senior Vice President and President roles across cardiovascular, neurological, and diabetes businesses.
Medtronic’s cardiovascular and vascular divisions operate in exactly the kind of market InspireMD is targeting. Ward spent three decades understanding how those businesses are run, what clinical evidence larger strategics find compelling, what commercial metrics matter, and how serious device companies think about market positioning.
He also spent thirty years competing directly against Boston Scientific, Abbott, and other large strategic players in cardiovascular. When InspireMD presents itself to the market, whether to physicians, hospitals, investors, or eventually larger industry participants, it does so with a Chairman who has seen how these businesses are judged from the inside.
Dan Dearen: The Governance Layer
Dan Dearen joined InspireMD’s board in August 2025, one month after Cohen, with nearly 40 years of experience in medical devices and life sciences. He chairs the Audit Committee.
An Audit Committee chair with deep medtech experience becomes especially valuable when a company is entering a phase of broader scrutiny, more operational complexity, more investor attention, more regulatory visibility, and possibly more strategic interest. All of those are consistent with what InspireMD appears to be building toward.
Paul Stuka and Thomas Kester: The Directors Who Put Their Own Money In
Paul Stuka and Thomas Kester are both board members at InspireMD. Both of them purchased InspireMD shares in the open market in August 2025, with their own personal capital, not as compensation grants.
Stuka purchased 20,661 shares. Kester purchased 30,991 shares.
When a director writes a personal check to buy stock at the market price, they are making an investment decision independent of their compensation arrangement. They are saying: at this price, with everything I know about this company from my board seat, I believe this is worth buying with my own money. Both made that decision in the same month that Cohen and Dearen joined the board.
Dr. Peter Soukas: The Clinical Credibility
Dr. Peter Soukas is the Chief Medical Officer of InspireMD, appointed in November 2025. He is also the Director of Vascular Medicine at The Miriam Hospital and an Associate Professor at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, positions he maintains while serving as CMO.
Soukas is a practicing interventional cardiologist who performs carotid procedures himself. His reputation in the interventional cardiology community is built on peer-reviewed research, clinical outcomes, and academic credibility. When a physician of that profile agrees to have his name publicly associated with a medical device company as its Chief Medical Officer, he is making a statement about the clinical validity of the technology that carries real professional weight.
Pete Ligotti: The Commercial Builder
Pete Ligotti was appointed Executive Vice President and General Manager of North America with over 30 years of commercial leadership experience in US medtech, specifically in building and scaling sales organizations for medical device companies in hospital and physician office settings.
His appointment to lead North America, replacing a European COO profile with a US commercial operator, is one of the clearest signals that the company understands what phase it is in and what execution now matters most.
Shane Gleason: The Execution Layer
Shane Gleason is InspireMD’s Chief Commercial Officer, the person responsible for the day-to-day execution of the US commercial launch. His commentary on the March 18th earnings call was notably precise:
- 80+ centers with completed cases,
- 200+ meters in the pipeline,
- half the sales team having started only in Q4,
- VAC processes measured in quarters not months.
A commercial leader who can articulate exactly where every account sits in the adoption funnel is the kind of execution layer a serious rollout depends on.
What The Team Looks Like Together
- Cohen: Built and sold Axonics, knows how medtech assets become strategically valuable
- Ward: 30 years at Medtronic, understands how large device companies assess markets and operators
- Dearen: 40 years in medtech, governance prepared for growth and scrutiny
- Stuka/Kester: Directors buying with personal capital, conviction beyond compensation
- Soukas: Practicing physician and academic, clinical credibility money can’t buy
- Ligotti: 30 years in US medtech commercial, building the field infrastructure this market requires
- Gleason: Operational precision, execution detail that supports adoption
This is not a random collection of qualified people. This is a deliberate assembly of specific expertise for a very particular phase of company building.
Companies that are merely maintaining the status quo don’t build teams like this. Companies entering a more serious commercial and strategic phase often do.
Next in the series: ‘The Syndicate Supporting the Thesis of InspireMD (NSPR): 48 Institutions, One Thesis’
🟢 Disclosure: The author holds a position or has active interest in this name.
⚠️ I produce these analyses for my own enjoyment and because I’m always looking for new opportunities. I am not a financial professional, and I don’t have access to professional-grade tools or proprietary data. Everything here is built from publicly available information and my own reasoning — which means I can be wrong. I may not always see the full picture, and my views will change as new information emerges or as I come to understand data points I initially overlooked or underweighted. I only operate with cash positions — no leverage, no margin, no shorting. I never bet against the market or individual companies. My analysis reflects the company’s fundamentals, not its price action. The company is not its price, and the price is not the company. I express my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation to share this. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. Nothing here is financial advice. Do your own due diligence.