Omar Ford | Editor in Chief, MD+DI | Navigating Medtech Journalism, Storytelling in Healthcare, & Personal Growth

Omar Ford, Editor in Chief of MD+DI, shares his journey from small-town print journalism to covering medtech, and the steep learning curve that taught him how to find the real story behind press releases, FDA pathways, and industry trends. Omar explains how thinking like a “contemporary medtech historian” helps connect past events to present innovations, and why curiosity—and an unusually open, helpful industry—accelerated his growth. He reflects on defining leadership moments, imposter syndrome, and the mentors who shaped his style, plus memorable conversations from his Let’s Talk Medtech podcast.

 

Guest links: [e-mail] | https://www.mddionline.com/ 

Charity supported: March of Dimes

Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at [e-mail]. 

PRODUCTION CREDITS Host & Editor: Lindsey Dinneen Producer: Velentium Medical

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 078 - Omar Ford

[00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.

[00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.

[00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives.

[00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives.

[00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.

[00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and today I'm delighted to welcome as my guest Omar Ford. Omar is an experienced Editor in Chief, currently at MD+DI, with a demonstrated history of working in the medical device industry. Skilled in medical devices, technical writing, marketing, strategic planning, and marketing strategy, he also has a strong media and communication professional background with a bachelor's degree focused in journalism from the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

Well, hello, welcome. I'm so excited to have you here today. Thank you for being here, Omar.

[00:01:28] Omar Ford: Lindsey, I'm excited to be here as well. You know, I have been prepping for this all week, and then all the little notes and all the things I took down, I said, "You know what? I wanna give her the original experience," so I'm gonna chuck 'em to the side and we're just gonna do this off the top of my head. How's that?

[00:01:43] Lindsey Dinneen: That's perfect. My favorite.

[00:01:46] Omar Ford: Awesome. Awesome.

[00:01:48] Lindsey Dinneen: That's how conversations work in real life. I feel like this shouldn't be any different, so, great.

[00:01:53] Omar Ford: Agree. Agreed.

[00:01:54] Lindsey Dinneen: Love it. All right, so would you mind starting off by telling us just a little bit about yourself, your background, and what led you to medtech specifically?

[00:02:02] Omar Ford: Oh wow. So that is an interesting story what led me to medtech. But a little bit about myself first. So, I graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2001 as a print journalism major. And, my goal was to go into newspapers, you know, I wanted to go into-- I wanted to be that next print journalist 'cause I had a face for radio, right? I had a face for print, you know, wasn't the, the, the broadcast type. And so I, I did small newspapers for a few years and then this magical thing called marriage happened. And, I was looking at the salary that I made as a print journalist, and it just, it, it just wasn't enough to sustain a family. So, was looking at branching into something else.

And back then, we had the, the, the classified ads in the newspaper where they would actually advertise jobs, and I and my wife pointed this one out to me and it was a, a job about it was a job for a company called AHC Media and they had a publication called Medical Device Daily, and that was around, I wanna say 2007.

And she said, "Why don't you try it? You know it the pay--" 'cause they advertised the pay there too back, back then-- she said, "The pay is much more than, you know, being, you know, a newspaper reporter. You can, you can leave that, tha