Chief Marketing Officer
Erik Mertz compliments the team with a background in marketing and a passion for innovation, graduating with honors from Arizona State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and completing a thesis, “Product Innovations in Patient Transfer for Herman Miller.” This thesis was developed as part of a product development and innovation program at ASU called Innovation Space, which forms teams of engineers, industrial designers, and business students who work together to identify product opportunity gaps in a sponsor’s market, and develop prototypes and commercialization plans to facilitate product launch at the end of the program. His project resulted in the development of a dual-axis ceiling mounted patient transfer device, Orbis, which reduces nurse injury rates associated with the manual lifting of patients at hospitals. During his time at ASU he also worked with the Technology Venture Services Group where he studied emerging markets and wrote commercialization plans for innovative technologies developed at ASU including emerging RFID technologies and environmentally friendly pest controls. After graduation he worked as a marketing management consultant for a local design and manufacturing firm where he identified opportunities to differentiate on customer service, and products in various levels of development that were ready for launch.