Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier
Los Altos Hills resident Ginger Howard, president of the Vascular Intervention Group at Guidant Corporation in Santa Clara, talks about the moment she heard the news that the FDA had approved the ACS Multi-Link heart stent made by her company. She gave her co-worker a thumbs up and since that moment in October of 1997, people around the world have received the stent that helps clear blocked arteries to the heart.
Town Crier Staff Writer
LAH resident's firm invented revolutionary stent to fight heart disease
Ginger Howard still bursts with excitement when she remembers last Oct. 2.
This Los Altos Hills resident, who grew up on a chicken farm in Arkansas, was giving a talk that day at her alma mater, the Harvard Business School, when her beeper went off.
"I knew what it was. But I literally was talking. I couldn't tell anybody," Howard, 41, said. She is president of the Santa Clara-based Vascular Intervention Group of Guidant Corporation, a medical device company.
That memorable beep was the moment Guidant received FDA approval for Howard's company's ACS Multi-Link heart stent. This 2-inch long, stainless steel, flexible, chicken wire-like device, which is narrower than a straw, is inserted into a blocked artery. It stays inside the artery, like scaffolding, and keeps the artery open.
After the talk, "I ran to a pay phone and called the CEO of Guidant, in Indianapolis. A press release was issued that night by 8 p.m. Eastern time," she said.
Since that beep, "The business changed dramatically. Revenues grew dramatically. We went from zero in the third quarter (of 1997) to $188 million (in sales) in the fourth quarter."
Amy Arnell, senior communication specialist at Guidant, calls the ACS Multi-Link stent "a heavy hitter. It's the biggest product we've ever had."
In February the ACS Multi-Link bumped its nearest competitor, Johnson & Johnson, long the leader in the stent market, to second place, a company spokeswoman said.
In Howard's corner office, a stuffed mama pig and her babies sit on a counter below the windows. The pigs are gathered around a trough full of Monopoly money.
"Those pigs," Howard said, and laughed. Since the stent has become so successful, "Everyone is wanting to spend the money. There's always more ways to spend the money than money to spend." She said she keeps the pigs there as a reminder. "It's about choices."
Howard talked about choices she has made. She grew up wanting to be a veterinarian. On her family farm, in addition to the chickens, her parents raised beef cattle and quarter horses.
But during college she changed her mind and switched to business, earning a degree in agricultural economics in 1979 from the University of Arkansas. She went to work for Eli Lilly and Co., a drug company.
After years with Lilly, she took a leave and earned a master's degree in business administration from Harvard in 1986.
Jan. 1, 1993, she began as president of Lilly's Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, which at that time was one of the five businesses that made up Lilly's Medical Devices and Diagnostics Division.
In September 1994 Lilly spun off those five companies to Guidant, with ACS becoming the Vascular Intervention Group. In December that year, in an initial public offering of Guidant stock, the price was $7.25. Recently the stock reached $78.
When Howard moved to the Bay Area, she chose a house on 1.5 acres in Los Altos Hills because she wanted to be in a horse community. She rides in Rancho San Antonio Park.
"I was born on a horse, I've always had horses. I love horses," she said. Howard admits she works a 60- to 100-hour week. For her the horses are "my therapy, even cleaning stalls."
Her two horses, Janie and Priss, "are members of the family." Both were born on her family's farm in Arkansas.
Howard drives a Ford Explorer, "so I can pull my horses."
Howard isn't home much in Los Altos Hills. Last year she traveled 200 nights.
"I'm in hospitals all over the world, often in the operating room, where I scrub and watch the procedures," she said. She's on hand when her company's stent is being implanted.
"It's very personal when the doctor points to you and says, 'her company makes the product.'"
In 1996 Howard earned $387,000, in salary, bonus and a relocation allowance, according to the company's proxy statement. In addition, she received long-term incentive pay of $406,000, bringing her total compensation package to $793,000. Howard also received stock options with a potential value of $3.1 million.
The 1997 numbers have not yet been released. But she doesn't plan any spending sprees.
"I'm a miser. I save," she said. "There are things I'd like to do for my family," she said, such as helping nieces and nephews with college.
She's single, but only for six more weeks. In addition to running a company with a product that is so successful it is off the charts, she is planning her wedding.
Her finance, Jack Graham, is in the reinsurance business and lives in Boulder, Colo. She said theirs will be a marriage of the '90s, with commuting between Colorado and California.
Her best friends are a group of women from Harvard who get together once a year at fun places, like the Adirondacks or Laguna Beach, for a weekend. "Tahoe this year," she said.
She describes her years at Harvard as "life altering, so intense, so competitive."
Staff at Guidant in Santa Clara hold Howard in "great respect," Arnell said. An aura of energy, yet unpretentiousness, surrounds her.
"She's recognized when she walks down a hall and people part the way. They are impressed that she can hold such a high level and still be one of the gang," Arnell said.
At Halloween the senior staff wear costumes. Last year, "She was Cruella de Ville (from "101 Dalmatians") and her staff dressed as Dalmatians. I wasn't too well liked when I had to tell the senior staff they had to dress like a dog."
When Howard came to Santa Clara in 1993, the stent wasn't in trials yet and had never been put into a human, she said.
At first the early patient trials didn't look good because of bleeding complications and the amount of medicines needed to combat that.
As that problem was addressed, the company tackled trials aggressively, first in Europe, then in the United States.
Heart disease is the number one killer for both men and women in the United states. With heart disease, "There are plumbing problems and electrical problems. We work on the plumbing. If your pipes are closed, we work on that.
"The stent cannot prevent heart disease, but if a vessel is diseased and clogged, the stent will keep it open. God makes nice straight conduits. Disease makes them lumpy and bumpy. Stents make them straight again," Howard said.
To implant a stent, first a balloon is inserted to clear the way. "A stent is a little scaffold or little bridge that is left behind," Howard said, that keeps the artery open.
With angioplasty, often the artery clogs back up later. The stent "increases the odds there probably won't have to be a repeat procedure," Howard said.
Just ask Bob Yoxall.
This 71-year-old Los Altos resident plays tournament racquetball. Two years ago he had the ACS Multi-Link stent implanted during clinical trials.
Four weeks after the implant he was back on the racquetball court and continues to do fine. In fact, in February he placed fifth in a national masters racquetball tournament, "in my age group," he said, "70 and older." He is state champion in his age group.
Two years ago Yoxall had had no symptoms of heart disease. As part of a routine physical, his doctor, a cardiologist, discovered that Yoxall had a blocked artery.
Yoxall said he had a few problems with cholesterol and took medicine to control his blood pressure. But he'd had no shortness of breath, "nothing indicative of any problem."
The doctor decided to use a stent, Yoxall said, "but the existing stents were too rigid and fairly large in diameter."
The day of Yoxall's procedure, the Guidant stent was released to 30 U.S. hospitals for testing and one was El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, where Yoxall was scheduled for angioplasty.
The Guidant stent was not yet FDA approved, but Yoxall said he was comfortable with it.
One of the beauties of the stent procedure is that it is done with just a local anesthesia and a hospital stay of only one to two days.
"I watched the whole thing," Yoxall said, on a fluoroscope above his head. "I felt a little pressure, it frightens you a little. That's the only thing you feel."
Afterwards, "I'd have been playing racquetball sooner, but was told to wait four weeks."
Analysts say stent competitors are chomping at Guidant's heels. But a non-invasive gadget, implanted without a general anesthesia, with just a brief hospital stay, to deal with the number one killer in the United States, can't help but capture hearts.