Cardialen Management Team

Paula Skjefte, Executive Chair and CEO, brings over 30 years of medical and healthcare experience,  a major portion at senior executive and VP levels with Medtronic, Inc. She is the former President and CEO of Waterford Consulting, a company focused on driving strategic growth in medical technology through innovation, disruptive market approaches, and creative commercialization. She serves on the board of numerous medical companies in the US and internationally, is a NACD Fellow and Women Corporate Directors board member, and is a frequent speaker on successful strategies for building high growth businesses in regulated medical markets.  She earned a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Wisconsin.

Nick Lanners, VP Operations, brings 30 years of product development and operations experience across multiple engineering disciplines, including product development, technology management, manufacturing, project management, and operations.  Prior to Cardialen, Nick was a partner for 8 years in a consulting firm specializing in medical devices.  Prior to that he was at Medtronic for 12 years, where he served in a series of roles that spanned from leadership of a division wide product development organization, leadership of a technology development organization, Sr. Program Director leadership of a pacemaker program, and leadership of several development and manufacturing groups.  He also served for 15 years at Honeywell in technical and program leadership roles.

Brent Shelton, VP Development, brings over 27 years of medical device experience from Medtronic, including implantable AF device development and marketing, new therapy research and development, upstream and downstream marketing, and business development. In addition to his business development experience at Medtronic, Brent is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Twin Cities Angels, an entrepreneurial-minded fund, and has operating experience in two other start-ups in finance and technology leadership.  Brent brings a wide breadth of experience, ranging from highly technical skills to business planning.  

Travis Murphy, CFO, (not pictured) brings 30 years experience as a senior financial executive with several start-up and  emerging medical and technology companies. In addition to providing leadership in finance and accounting, administration and human resource management, Mr. Murphy has been instrumental in the development of long-range strategic plans and forecasts, raising both private and public equity financing and securing debt financing to support development and growth of several businesses.