“Work Hard, Play Hard.”
Shaun Winnail is an accomplished healthcare commercial executive with more than 25 years of leadership experience across the medical device, diagnostics, surgical technology, and healthcare services sectors. Throughout his career, he has built a reputation for transforming commercial organizations, introducing disruptive technologies, developing high-performing teams, and establishing lasting executive-level partnerships. His professional journey spans large multinational organizations, venture-backed start-ups, emerging growth companies, and entrepreneurial ventures, giving him a well-rounded perspective on how organizations must adapt, compete, and execute at different stages of development. Whether launching a new technology, developing a national sales strategy, or coaching future leaders, Shaun approaches each challenge with a combination of commercial discipline, strategic thinking, energy, and accountability.
Shaun currently serves as Executive Director supporting HelioGenomics through Syneos Health, where he is involved in the early commercialization of HelioLiver, an AI-driven diagnostic blood test designed for the early detection of liver cancer. In this role, he is helping build the commercial infrastructure required to bring an innovative diagnostic technology to market, including sales, customer service, communications, and marketing support. He oversees a commercial organization that includes a sales team of approximately 23 professionals, drawing upon decades of experience in market development, organizational leadership, commercialization, and customer engagement. This position reflects a recurring theme throughout Shaun’s career: his ability to operate effectively in environments where a company must simultaneously educate the market, develop processes, build teams, and generate measurable commercial momentum.
Prior to this role, Shaun served as Sales Director for the Eastern United States at HemoSonics, where he helped lead the early commercial expansion of the Quantra point-of-care and laboratory diagnostic platform. The technology entered a market characterized by established competitors and complex clinical buying processes, requiring a sophisticated approach to market development and stakeholder engagement. Shaun managed a regional sales organization while working closely with clinical teams and customers across cardiovascular surgery, trauma, transplantation, laboratories, transfusion medicine, anesthesia, perfusion, hospital leadership, supply chain, group purchasing organizations, and channel partners. Under his leadership, his team finished first in capital sales and revenue for three consecutive years, including 2025, when the organization achieved 113 percent year-over-year growth. His responsibilities extended beyond revenue generation to sales training, process improvement, coaching, and the continued professional development of the broader commercial organization.
Shaun’s experience with early-stage and disruptive companies has been a defining element of his leadership career. As National Sales Director for Secure Transfusion Services, he was responsible for developing the sales strategy and building the U.S. commercial organization for a start-up focused on modernizing platelet collection and helping address blood component shortages. Reporting directly to the CEO, Shaun helped grow the company from an emerging concept into a meaningful commercial operation. During his tenure, the organization secured approximately $44 million in new business, including relationships with prominent healthcare institutions such as Duke, Northwestern, Ohio State, Wake Forest Baptist, the University of Rochester, Oregon Health, and LSU. He also negotiated opportunities involving major healthcare organizations and purchasing groups, including Vizient, Premier, Ascension, CommonSpirit, and Banner Health. That experience reinforced his ability to translate a differentiated value proposition into enterprise-level business opportunities while navigating the complexities of institutional healthcare purchasing.
His strategic-account expertise was further developed through leadership positions with Verax Biomedical, SecQure Surgical, Applied Medical, and Haemonetics. Across these organizations, Shaun worked extensively with C-suite executives, large health systems, integrated delivery networks, academic medical centers, national and regional group purchasing organizations, laboratories, supply-chain leaders, surgeons, and clinical stakeholders. At Applied Medical, he managed Corporate Account Directors across the East Coast, with his team ranking first among five teams in total revenue growth and focus-product revenue during 2018. At Haemonetics, he led corporate and national account initiatives involving complex enterprise solutions that included diagnostic capital equipment, software-as-a-service offerings, and consulting services. In 2015, he finished first among seven leaders at 101 percent of plan and helped close a three-year SaaS agreement with Baylor Health valued at approximately $2.1 million.
Shaun’s performance throughout his career has been recognized not only through commercial results but also through leadership awards. At Haemonetics, he received the 2015 IMPACT Award, presented for making the greatest positive impact on the North American sales organization. He was also recognized with a Global Leadership Team STAR Award for his role in delivering the company’s first CBMS account, demonstrating his ability to create opportunities where no established roadmap previously existed. These achievements illustrate an important aspect of his leadership style: Shaun is not simply focused on meeting established objectives. He is most effective in situations requiring teams to challenge conventional approaches, create new market opportunities, and translate complex strategies into practical execution.
Earlier in his career, Shaun developed deep operational and people-leadership experience with Aesculap, Power Medical Interventions, and Medtronic. As Regional Sales Manager with Aesculap, he managed an $18 million-plus territory and a team of eight to ten sales professionals across the Mid-Atlantic region. His organization ranked second nationally in consecutive years, while multiple team members earned President’s Club recognition. At Power Medical Interventions, a disruptive surgical technology start-up that was later acquired by Medtronic, Shaun hired, trained, coached, mentored, and managed a five-person sales organization focused on powered surgical stapling. His team finished second among 12 regions in percentage of plan and revenue growth. His earlier tenure within the Medtronic, Covidien, and U.S. Surgical organizations included regional sales, structural heart, surgical sales, and sales training leadership, providing the foundation for the executive-level commercial perspective he applies today.
Shaun also understands leadership from an entrepreneurial perspective. As Owner and Vice President of Operations for Padalily, he was responsible for nearly every component of the business, including sales, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, information technology, and customer service. The company tripled revenue year over year for three consecutive years, expanded to more than 1,500 retail customers, established an international presence in six countries, and ultimately licensed its product successfully. The venture also received an invitation from the television program “Shark Tank.” That experience gave Shaun first-hand appreciation for the realities facing entrepreneurs and founders, from allocating limited resources and building brand awareness to solving operational challenges and remaining accountable for the entire business rather than a single function.
Throughout his professional life, Shaun has developed expertise in commercialization, corporate and strategic accounts, business development, sales leadership, contract negotiation, team building, coaching, mentoring, product launches, market development, strategic planning, and disruptive technology adoption. His network includes relationships throughout many of the leading academic medical centers in the United States, and his career has repeatedly placed him at the intersection of clinical innovation and commercial execution. Although medical devices and diagnostics represent his primary areas of industry experience and interest, Shaun remains open to working with organizations across different sectors and stages of growth where his leadership experience can create value. He is particularly drawn to companies that need guidance in scaling revenue, strengthening commercial discipline, developing leadership talent, navigating institutional customers, or successfully bringing differentiated products to market.
Shaun’s educational background complements his practical business leadership experience. He earned his Master of Business Administration from Regis University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Ambassador University, where he attended on a men’s varsity volleyball scholarship. His continuing professional development includes Resilient Leadership through Harvard Business School Online, Harvard’s Exercising Leadership: Foundational Principles program through edX, Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt training, Situational Leadership development through the Ken Blanchard Companies, training in instructional design, business development coursework, and specialized clinical certifications related to surgical technologies. His commitment to continued learning reflects his belief that effective leaders must remain students of both people and business, particularly in rapidly changing healthcare environments.
Beyond his professional responsibilities, Shaun values coaching, mentorship, teamwork, personal accountability, and an active lifestyle. His interests include basketball, volleyball, hiking, skiing, and virtually anything outdoors. His personal motto, “Work Hard, Play Hard,” reflects a philosophy that has shaped both his professional and personal life: significant achievement requires discipline and effort, but lasting success also depends on relationships, perspective, energy, and a genuine appreciation for life outside the workplace. He also has experience with public speaking and remains open to opportunities that allow him to share lessons from his career, particularly around leadership, commercialization, team development, and organizational growth.
Shaun is now seeking board and advisory opportunities where he can apply his experience to help organizations make stronger decisions, build more effective commercial strategies, and accelerate sustainable growth. Although he has not previously served in a formal board role, his career has consistently required him to operate with an enterprise-level mindset, advising senior leaders, managing complex commercial decisions, building organizations, negotiating strategic relationships, and assuming responsibility for business outcomes. He views board service as an opportunity to give back by sharing the lessons developed over decades of operating experience while also expanding his own perspective through exposure to new companies, leaders, industries, and strategic challenges. For organizations seeking a commercially minded executive who understands how to move from strategy to execution, develop people, challenge assumptions, and successfully introduce innovation into demanding markets, Shaun offers a distinctive combination of leadership experience, business judgment, healthcare expertise, and entrepreneurial perspective.
Character:
Shaun demonstrates character through a leadership philosophy grounded in accountability, perseverance, mentorship, and a genuine commitment to helping others perform at their best. His willingness to embrace difficult commercial environments, build teams from the ground up, and remain engaged through both successes and setbacks reflects resilience and a strong sense of personal responsibility.
Knowledge:
He brings more than two decades of accumulated knowledge across medical devices, diagnostics, healthcare systems, commercialization, enterprise selling, strategic accounts, start-ups, and organizational leadership. His understanding of clinical stakeholders, GPOs, IDNs, academic medical centers, executive buyers, and emerging technologies enables him to evaluate opportunities from both operational and strategic perspectives.
Strategic:
Shaun combines long-term commercial vision with the practical ability to translate strategy into measurable results. He has repeatedly developed market-entry strategies, built commercial teams, established strategic partnerships, launched disruptive technologies, and identified pathways for organizations to differentiate themselves in competitive healthcare markets.
Communication:
An experienced communicator who has spent his career engaging everyone from frontline sales professionals and clinicians to CEOs, hospital executives, purchasing organizations, and strategic partners. His approach emphasizes listening, coaching, consultative dialogue, and the ability to simplify complex business and clinical concepts so stakeholders can make informed decisions.
