Rachel Knutton | Founder & CEO, Alluvia Studio | MedTech Storytelling, Brand Consistency, & Joy-Driven Leadership

Rachel Knutton, founder and CEO of Alluvia Studio, shares how a 30-year healthcare journey—from hospital marketing and public relations (PR) at HCA Healthcare to medical device commercialization, product launches, and sales—shaped her belief that everything in MedTech ultimately comes down to storytelling. Rachel explains how her “been there” experience in hospitals, cases, and value analysis environments helps her create messaging that’s compelling, compliant, and built to endure. She also opens up about becoming an “accidental entrepreneur,” discovering unexpected fulfillment in leading people, and building an agency culture grounded in authenticity, humor, and joy. 

 

Guest links: www.alluviastudio.com | www.linkedin.com/rachelknutton | www.linkedin.com/alluviastudio 

Charity supported: Sleep in Heavenly Peace

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 073 - Rachel Knutton

[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 Rachel Knutton. Rachel is founder and CEO of Alluvia Studio, a strategic medtech marketing agency based in Tennessee that supports some of the largest medtech brands in the world. Her experience in healthcare spans 30 years, including hospital marketing and PR for HCA Healthcare, as well as various roles in medical device commercialization, sales and marketing.

Right. Well, welcome to the show, Rachel. It's so nice to you for having me.

Of course. I would love if you would start off by just, uh, telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and what led you to medtech.

[00:01:36] Rachel Knutton: Yeah, so I actually have a pretty interesting background and I bet I'll cover a little bit more of it as we go through the discussion, but currently I have an MedTech marketing agency. We have 16 employees. been in business technically since 2011, so 14 years. And just really focused on this industry.

My path to getting into MedTech actually came through HCA Healthcare. I started working in hospital world back in 1996. And actually it was accidental. I, you know, I was pretty new outta school, a couple years outta school and I'd answered an ad and I dove right into a really exciting world. It's, you know, of course headquartered here in Nashville. Learned all about hospitals. I supported I think eight different hospitals at that time that were in region, the Nashville region, doing marketing and public relations, walked into my first open heart surgery case, helped feed employees at midnight, handled all kinds of interesting PR events because we're hearing Nashville, a lot of country music stars might get hospitalized.

And I did that for about 10 years. And then I ended up moving into devices a recruiter, and it's when Kimberly Clark Healthcare had gone into the medical devices arena through the purchase of Ballard. so honestly I really didn't know much about it. But I had, you know, I did have my MBA, I had been working in healthcare, which sort of met the qualifications at that time. And I got a early start in marcom. Learned so much, got back into the hospital through that role from the other side of the coin and I had the chance to do product management, launch a product, and then I moved into sales and sold the product a whole bag and then got back into the hospital, you know, working through the whole value EIS ecosystem and working with physicians and being in cases. So it's been a very interesting path for sure.

[00:03:37] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. An