“It gives me great perspective,” Knudsen said of his time spent as an EMT. “It’s one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done.” Knudsen joined Zoll 13 years ago from Covidien (now owned by Medtronic), not long after Tokyo-based Asahi Kasei Corp. acquired the company.
“It gives me great perspective,” Knudsen said of his time spent as an EMT.
“It’s one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done.” Knudsen joined Zoll 13 years ago from Covidien (now owned by Medtronic), not long after Tokyo-based Asahi Kasei Corp. acquired the company. Zoll’s revenue has nearly quintupled over that span, to $2.4 billion in 2024.
Most recently, Knudsen has led Zoll Itamar, a sleep-apnea test maker that Zoll bought four years ago. His latest promotion came after then-chief executive Jon Rennert announced Knudsen as his successor, while Rennert became Zoll’s chairman. Among Knudsen’s big tasks ahead will be ensuring a successful rollout of the newly launched Zenix monitor/defibrillator system, and building on the Itamar deal to further expand into other sleep-assistance technologies.
(Plus, on Friday, Zoll announced a new partnership with the Red Sox.) Knudsen’s volunteer work, he said, will inform some of the decisions he makes as chief executive.
“I’ve been able to see firsthand the challenges that our customers face,” Knudsen said.
“I’ve seen the impacts of our products. It’s not hyperbolic [to say] it’s an amazing thing what we’re able to do. Someone is literally dead, their heart’s not beating, and we’re able to restart it.”
While Governor Janet Mills supports a moratorium on new data center proposals in Maine, Governor Maura Healey is taking a different position. After speaking to the New England Council on Monday, council president Jim Brett asked Healey about her stance on data centers in light of a pending moratorium bill in Maine. Healey responded by saying, in essence: We need more of them.
“In Massachusetts, we need to have data centers of some sort for the kind of . . . innovation economy we want to have,” Healey said to the crowd of 400-plus people at the Seaport Hotel.
“We need to find a way to build out the infrastructure that’s going to help us get to where we need to be. . . . A ban, that’s not going to help our economy. That’s not going to help our future.”
Healey acknowledged concerns about community impacts and electricity costs but suggested the pitfalls could be avoided by collaborating and communicating. Healey’s stance wasn’t particularly surprising; she signed an economic development bill in late 2024 that included language exempting data center proposals from the state’s sales tax. Massachusetts has largely avoided data center controversies in part because high electricity and land costs here tend to keep developers at bay.
However, concerns are growing about the potential for one in Everett, and Lowell city councilors enacted a one-year ban in response to an expansion proposal for an existing data center there. Healey’s response was also in keeping with the innovation focus of the speech she had just given. She kicked it off by citing examples of how tech from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Cambridge-based Draper, and the David Clark Co. in Worcester supports NASA’s current Artemis II moon mission.
She named AI leaders opening local offices — Nvidia, Anthropic, Lovable, among others. And she wrapped up by describing her TechGeneration pilot program to support tech interns, beginning this summer with 100 college students. Mayor Michelle Wu is still looking for her next chief of economic opportunity, and she has turned to the region’s business leaders for help.
In a meeting with top corporate officials at Harvard’s David Rubenstein Treehouse in Allston last week, Wu talked about her search to replace Segun Idowu, who stepped down at the end of February. (Donald Wright is currently filling in as Wu’s interim chief.) Speaking alongside Harvard professor and mentor Ed Glaeser, Wu said the hire represents “a really important opportunity” to build relationships with the business community.
“I invite all names, . . . all resumes,” Wu told the local leaders assembled to discuss Boston’s innovation economy.
“It would be great to get your advice and vision.” Wu later told reporters that Idowu’s successor should, among other things, think long term about Boston’s position in the global competition for business, talent, and innovation. That person, she noted, won’t be able to do it alone.
“Boston has some incredible, unbeatable core strengths,” Wu said.
“But how do we recruit the businesses to fill commercial vacancies? How do we build the collaboration so that . . . attracting and keeping the next generation of founders and innovators is seen as all of our shared role?” To find reasons that it’s a good idea to keep SharkNinja’s headquarters in Greater Boston, chief executive Mark Barrocas doesn’t need to look any further than his inbox.
Late last month, Barrocas spoke to about 150 students at Boston University. The next day, he received emails from more than 15 of them, asking about internships or full-time jobs at his Needham company.
“The talent pipeline is unbelievable,” Barrocas said at a Q&A session later that week with Jim Rooney, the chief executive of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
“The engineering talent [in this area] is just incredible. I can’t think of a better place to be.” Barrocas views his 4,000-person company — which brought the world Shark vacuums and Ninja blenders, among other household appliances — as an important player in Boston’s tech scene.
Last week, he took to LinkedIn to describe his “Jailbreak SharkNinja” program to give away $1 million to employees who come up with clever ways to put AI to use. Barrocas’s appearance at the Boston chamber marked the first event in its “Executive Exchange” series, sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Bose chief executive Lila Snyder will be the next one to speak, on May 28.
“We’re looking at the business leaders of prominent brands in Massachusetts,” Rooney said.
“It’s important for those leaders to express what they’re hearing, what they’re seeing, and what their challenges are so that A: others don’t feel alone, and B: people who have the opportunity to help fix things can hear directly from these leaders.” Architect Danyson Tavares is finally getting to see what it’s like being a client, as he plans for a new home for the Boston Society for Architecture. The BSA is moving early next year across downtown from 290 Congress St. to 99 Chauncy St. As a result, the BSA will get a street-level space again.
That’s something Tavares’s organization lost when its office near Fort Point Channel was cut in half roughly two years ago, when the prominent green staircase connecting its upper and lower floors was disassembled, and the BSA was relegated to the second-floor space. It’s time, Tavares said, to get back to the street, to hold public-facing events such as movies and lectures. The new space at Chauncy Street will also be split in two floors, and connected by a staircase (though not a green one), but will be smaller than the 15,000 square feet that the BSA occupies today on Congress Street.
When Tavares became the BSA’s executive director in 2024, shortly after the “Green Stairs” went away, he was determined to get the BSA out of its lease, so the professional organization and its 16-person staff could find a first-floor location again. The organization hired NADAAA, a Boston firm, to redesign the new space.
This story was independently reported by 2 sources. Click any source to read the original article.
