Claus Harris

Strong teams. Strong strategies. Sustainable growth Experienced Transformational Business Leader with a track record of driving growth, leading turnarounds, and managing M&A initiatives. Actively exploring opportunities to contribute as a Managing Director, General Manager, Country Manager, or Board Member/Advisor in dynamic, high-impact environments. Skilled in business transformation, strategic growth, and operational excellence.

As a member of a global leadership team, I helped create, implement and develop a global indirect channel organization, including tools, processes, and strategies. This was a groundbreaking modernization within the Med Tech Industry, and it focused on the life cycle management of indirect channels. Moreover, I was also responsible for leading the European & EEMEA indirect business operations concepts, which increased the focus on growth, improved profits, and compliance. As a result of our efforts, we achieved an all-time high financial result in 2023.

General Manager Central Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Baltics, Greece and Turkey. As the P&L responsible and commercial lead for all cross-functional operations and over 70 dealer companies, my team and I successfully acquired and integrated the main dealer in Turkey, marking the first in Stryker Corp's history and taking the organization direct in this market. This initiative led to increased revenue and significant market share gains. Additionally, I optimized country and dealer profits by adjusting the CEE company footprint through reallocating resources, closing/exiting markets, and opening new ones. As interim additions to my role as General Manager, I periodically served as Dealer Director EEMEA and Marketing Director EEMEA. In my role as Dealer Director, I oversaw indirect channel programs for our dealers and agents. As Marketing Director, I supported a team of marketing professionals with cross-divisional activities in Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Israel, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Africa.

Together with my team, I successfully orchestrated a turnaround of the Danish subsidiary of Etac A/B, which had been experiencing years of negative results. Through rationalizing and optimizing business practices, implementing a reorganization plan, and introducing a revised go-to-market strategy, we achieved profits above budget in the first year of the turnaround. Additionally, we consistently experienced double-digit year-on-year revenue growth. Furthermore, I held two more roles within the company. I served as a Board Member of Etac A/S, and for the first 10 months of my tenure, I also served as Director of Sales and Marketing.

With this role I was responsible for Stryker's total Medsurg portfolio, I oversaw sales, marketing, and technical service in the Nordics & Benelux. In addition to my role as General Manager, I also served as the Country Manager for Stryker Scandinavia. This position had a special focus on working with authorities, public tenders, distributors, operations of facilities, and establishing contacts with government officials. Moreover, this was a matrix function, where I had extensive authority and responsibility across all business functions.

As the person responsible for all of Stryker's cross-divisional and functional commercial activities across Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, I also oversaw its various offices and legal entities. My primary focus was on improving the company's profits and loss, which was achieved through revisiting cost and pricing structures with the goal of maximizing return on investments. Additionally, I successfully launched a performance culture program, which led to higher engagement scores across the entire organization.

I was responsible for indirect business management in the Middle East and Northern Africa, working from the Dubai office in collaboration with 28 multinational dealer companies. I headed departments of Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Technical Service. My task was to support and develop the organization, by setting direction and developing strategies. I translated these strategies into tactics and executed operational implementation. As part of this, we rolled out new compliance procedures to all dealers in the region, resulting in a large change management project.

As the overseer of Sales, Marketing, Customer Care, and HR departments at Stryker Denmark, I led the team to achieve exceptional growth. By streamlining processes, fostering innovation, and optimizing resources, we were able to gain significant market share from our competitors and establish Stryker Denmark as a highly profitable business.

Focused on sales processes and creating customer relations, I aimed to qualify for public tenders within orthopedics, hips, and knees prosthesis. It was a very productive and informative period of extensive "hands-on" sales activities, where I successfully promoted products and procedures to healthcare professionals in the orthopedic departments across hospitals in Denmark, positioning Stryker as a strong player in the market.

This was my first real sales representative job, and my area of responsibility was to promote and sell hospital and care beds to Danish healthcare institutions. Through my experience in direct sales, I soon discovered that my commercial acumen was not just a hunch but rather an inherent talent. In combination with building skilled business relations, I soon produced strong sales results.

I briefly worked in occupational health consulting, providing support to member organizations across a wide spectrum of businesses, with a focus on improving their work conditions physically and psychologically.

After graduating as a physiotherapist, I worked as a self-employed practitioner in a clinic, with a focus on osteopathy. While practicing, I developed an interest in commercial, financial, and organizational areas and pursued a post-graduate education in these fields in the evenings.

I served my military service as a sergeant, spending 10 months in education, and a little over a year as a platoon leader training recruits in combat techniques.