How Did You Do That?

Lori Cross dropped out of her all-girls’ high school in Michigan because there wasn’t enough physics and math to keep her challenged. Technical college was a little better, but Cross found her place at Northwestern University, where she got a degree in chemical engineering and became the first woman to play ice hockey on a men’s NCAA team. Cross received her master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Then, she was recruited to be a systems engineer at Baxter Edwards Laboratories, where she commercialized a series of catheter-based innovations from the research lab and completed her MBA along the way. That launched a career as a product intrapreneur at a number of well-known medical technology companies. "[My philosophy is] that you gotta find something, a problem that’s really worth solving that gets you excited about a solution," says Cross. "Think big, act small — that's sort of my motto." From creating one of the first video arthroscopy devices