What Makes a Successful Healthtech CEO in 2025?

In 2024, the healthtech industry saw notable developments in PE activity (e.g., New Mountain Capital’s Payment Integrity merger), public market activity (e.g., Tempus and Waystar IPOs), and generative AI-bolstered fundraising. Nevertheless, overall market conditions remained dampened relative to prior years, and holding periods continued to be lengthened.

Early signals form late 2024 show improving market conditions for healthtech with an increase in deal flow activity, although Healthtech investors are likely to continue to encounter a dynamic environment for 2025. Much of this will be driven by the continued disruption by generative AI, constrained capital environment as investors continue to monitor interest rates, changing political landscapes, and a continued tight market for executive talent. As such, healthtech organizations will need to continue to think critically about who is best equipped to lead them through this uncertainty—particularly at the CEO level. Answering the question, “what problem are we trying to solve for” has never been more important for investors and boards to address.

Board and CEO work makes up over a third of RRA’s healthtech practice’s search and advisory work, and through conversations with investors and boards, we’ve found one of the top questions to be: ‘What are key experiences that make a CEO successful in the healthtech space?’

At the beginning of 2024, Russell Reynolds Associates launched its inaugural research of healthtech CEOs with successful exits in order to help leaders identify the CEOs best equipped for success in 2024. We studied the functional and industry backgrounds of those companies’ CEOs, uncovering key insights about their leadership profiles and routes to the top. In the second year of our study, we expanded our analysis to include insights based on 270+ placements of healthtech leaders over the past four years and 60 top healthtech exits* (public and private companies) since 2015.

Even though market dynamics changed, 2024 highlighted consistency in the profile of CEOs with successful exits in line with 2023 findings:

• Prior CEO experience is not required for success: 62% of healthtech CEOs with a successful exit or significant revenue achievement were first timers in the role.
  
  
• Healthcare industry experience is relevant, but not necessary: Only 58% of successful exit-CEOs were at a healthcare organization prior to taking the top job. 1/3 of CEOs in this group have prior general management experience, with operations and product leadership positions as the next most common backgrounds.
  
  
• Multifunctional experience is critical: 70% of CEOs brought demonstrable P&L leadership experience, whether as a president or within another C-suite role.

Snapshot: Healthtech CEOs’ route-to-the-top

In charting their paths to success, we looked at CEOs’ prior CEO experience, P&L leadership experience, and role held immediately prior to reaching the top position.

^{Source: RRA proprietary research on 60 Healthcare Technology CEOs; companies have achieved $1B in revenue or a successful exit via IPO, M&A, or LBO – initially PE-backed. Exit occurred between 2015 and 2025.}

CEO experience is not a prerequisite to a successful exit, but prior P&L leadership experience was common among the leaders in this group. Just under half of first-time CEOs had prior P&L experience as a president, GM, or Divisional CEO. Aside from the CEO and president archetypes, chief operating officer and chief product officer were the next most common step-up roles. Bringing an enterprise and systems thinking view is a critical factor to success.

We also found that successful CEO talent may join a healthtech organization from another industry. The majority of leadership has healthcare (across healthtech and health services) experience, but 25% of CEOs joined their healthtech company from the technology industry, and 20% hailed from professional services, private capital, or other industries. There have been recent appointments outside of healthcare to CEO roles in healthtech, and we often advise clients to think about the holistic composition of the team.

This combination—P&L responsibility and familiarity with disruptive technologies (in the healthcare space or otherwise)—equips future healthtech CEOs with the agility to innovate and execute company objectives.

Hiring and supporting the healthtech CEO of the future

Given these findings, investors and boards seeking their next healthtech CEO should consider the following:

Emphasize skills and experiences over titles: The data shows that prior CEO experience is not a primary indicator of future success as a CEO in healthtech. However, the role of the CEO has become more and more complex. When evaluating CEO candidates, it’s important to look for skills that are fit for purpose of today’s CEOs: managing complexities, setting strategy and executing for results, bringing a decisive approach, and reputable leadership and influencing abilities. Decisive and galvanizing leadership matters when managing companies amidst healthtech’s complex environment and road ahead.

Don’t underestimate the support a board can provide: Since healthtech CEOs are often first-time CEOs, it’s important to evolve boards in an optimal way to provide appropriate guidance at the business’ key inflection points. Strategic board appointments of tenured healthcare and technology executives will provide invaluable insight and perspective to support a first-time CEO, especially in a dynamic market.

Complement your CEO: When building the executive team, leaders must ensure they hire complementary skillsets and industry expertise. In a healthtech organization, this often means bringing in SaaS and product leadership early on, so the organization is equipped with the innovative thinking needed to scale. Onboarding and integration are critical to bringing in executives to healthcare from outside the industry.

Implications for healthtech leadership teams

The data on healthtech CEOs’ experiences prior to their CEO role sheds light not only on the archetype of a successful leader, but also on implications for investors, boards, and the broader executive team. Since prior CEO experience is not necessary for outperformance, it’s reasonable to hire CEO talent for potential. Assessing for decisive leadership, sense of urgency, and systems thinking is key to success. Rather than focusing on a checklist of titles and experience, CEOs can show strength through functional and industry experience and leadership traits, especially if existing leadership team members’ skills are complementary. To that end, when building out top teams and board seats, consider the expertise already present within the organization and mapping new leaders to current and future gaps when making decisions about new leadership talent.

Dynamic markets require dynamic leadership teams and formidable CEOs to impart the right strategy and direction for their organizations. Today’s healthtech CEOs and investors can look to the roadmap and experience of leaders who drove successful exits in the past to inspire and inform future success.

Methodology

*In this analysis, we defined a successful exit as having achieved $1 billion in revenue or having led a private equity-backed company through an exit—be it an IPO, acquisition, or LBO.

Authors

Noël Auguston leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Healthcare Technology practice. She is based in Boston.