Velentium, a professional engineering firm that specialises in the design and manufacturing of therapeutic and diagnostic active medical devices, has hired industry veteran Mario Garcia as vice president of manufacturing.
SABRINA CASAS
Mario Garcia
Garcia brings 22 years of experience in the medical device industry, having previously led international and multi-site manufacturing operations of class I, II, and III medical devices and products.
Garcia’s hire comes on the tailwinds of Velentium’s continued commitment to growing the capabilities and presence of their onshore medical device manufacturing in Katy, Texas, located outside of Houston in Fort Bend County. Velentium’s leadership team believes that Garcia’s industry knowledge and experience will help the company strengthen its manufacturing processes and throughput capacity. Garcia’s hire is in tandem with the appointment of Terry Daglow as vice president of manufacturing engineering last May. Velentium is also in active negotiations for a larger build-to-suit corporate facility in Katy. Here, the manufacturing and design & development teams can be located at the same site, which Garcia and Daglow will help oversee.
Dan Purvis, chief executive offier and co-founder of Velentium, said: “Velentium has seen tremendous growth in the past few years. As we look to offer our clients the full suite of medical device manufacturing services to complement our world-class design & development services, we needed to make yet another strategic hire that will help us get there. From our initial conversations, I could tell that Mario’s values aligned well with Velentium’s. His passion for improving lives through medtech manufacturing, as well as his extensive industry knowledge and experience, will be a great benefit to our team.”
Throughout Garcia’s career, he has worked for a variety of well-known companies in the medtech industry, including Integer, CMR Medical, Avanos, and B. Braun after graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Electronic & Industrial Engineering from the Technological Institute of Chihuahua. From the beginning, Garcia has been interested in engineering and developed a passion for it at a young age. He became interested in manufacturing and specifically, medical manufacturing when the 2000 recession hit, and he saw a rapid and dramatic decline in all manufacturing industries except the medical industry. This led to Garcia’s desire to help people prioritise taking care of their health through manufacturing and now to Velentium.
Garcia said: “I love and enjoy working on medical devices. I know that every single thing I am doing is to help a patient. Working with Velentium will allow me to do that on an even greater scale. Velentium’s strong culture and leadership team are what separate us from our competitors. With my knowledge and experience, I am confident that our manufacturing will grow quickly into a strong and notable manufacturing company within the industry because we have the right people to get us there.”
In addition to Garcia, this month Velentium also announced the hire of Uday “UK” Rao, vice president of information systems, as well as Scott Armstrong, director of electrical engineering, a position made available by the promotion of Chris Jensen to vice president of technology in May 2022. Over the past two years, Velentium has also doubled its project management team and its team size overall.
Purvis added: “Our vision is to grow to 1,000 families. We’re scaling up because we want to directly impact the lives of 1,000 families whose loved ones work at Velentium, changing patients’ lives, clients’ lives, and our staff and their families’ lives for a better world.”
