Sonova Holding AG announced that Robert Woolley has been appointed GVP Hearing Instruments and member of the Management Board, effective April 1, 2022. With his appointment, the Group will combine the Research & Development, Wholesale and Marketing functions of its Hearing Instruments (HI) business under one leadership. At the same time, Martin Grieder will be appointed GVP Consumer Hearing within the Management Board. This will follow the creation of the new Consumer Hearing business after the completion of the planned acquisition of the Sennheiser Consumer Division announced in May 2021.
Related article: Sonova to Acquire Sennheiser Consumer Division
Arnd Kaldowski, CEO of Sonova, said: “Under the functional leadership in our HI business, we have built strong and successful teams. It is now the logical next step to create a dedicated HI business management team under one leader to ensure that we continue to define and implement effective growth strategies for this important business. With his extensive leadership experience in the medical devices industry, his engineering background, as well as his commercial track record, I am convinced that Rob is a great addition to the team and will be taking the HI business to the next level. Martin Grieder, who thus far successfully led our HI Marketing function and brings with him extensive consumer experience from his time at Nestlé, will be representing the Consumer Hearing business on the Management Board. By creating a dedicated position for this new business, we highlight the strategic importance of this additional growth platform for Sonova.”
The current management structure remains in place until the end of the 2021/22 financial year. As of April 1, 2022, the functions of HI Wholesale, HI Marketing and Research & Development will report to Rob Woolley in the newly created position of GVP Hearing Instruments.
Woolley will join Sonova from the Straumann Group, an esthetic dentistry company, where he has held the position of Executive Vice President for North America and then became the Executive Vice President Western Europe, both as member of the Management Board. He has longstanding experience in leadership roles in the medical device and healthcare sector according to Sonova, both in the USA and Switzerland, among others at Stryker, Trivascular, and Medtronic. Woolley comes with “a broad range of functional experiences including roles with increasing responsibility in general management, sales and marketing, product portfolio management, and business development.” An engineer by training with a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University, Woolley also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is expected to join the company in the first weeks of 2022 to allow for a thorough onboarding and smooth transition of responsibilities before taking on his role on the Management Board at the start of financial year 2022/23.
Sonova’s new Consumer Hearing business will be created following the completion of the planned acquisition of the Sennheiser Consumer Division and will be headed and represented in the Management Board by Martin Grieder. Greider has been with Sonova since 2014, leading the global HI Marketing function. Most recently, he has been instrumental in the successful launch of the Phonak Marvel and Phonak Paradise platforms. Over the past years, he has also championed the buildup of Sonova’s own in-house efforts in the field of consumer hearing and was a driving force behind the planned acquisition of the Sennheiser Consumer Division. In addition to his leadership roles at Sonova, Grieder has – in previous career steps – held various management roles at the global Nespresso business of Nestlé, according to the announcement.
Source: Sonova
Image: Robert Woolley/Sonova
