Lukianov Joins Orthofix Board

Alex Lukianov is back in spine.

Orthofix International N.V. announced on December 13, 2016, that Lukianov is now one of the company’s board members. His appointment expands Orthofix’s board to 10 directors, of which 9 are independent.

Lukianov is darn near a legend in spine after leaving Medtronic SofamorDanek and revitalizing a little San Diego start-up, called NuVasive, Inc.

When Lukianov joined NuVasive in 1999 (two years after it was founded) the company had no sales and was losing about $6 million a year. The next year NuVasive sold $52, 000 of classic spine fusion products—and lost $14 million.

When he suddenly and unexpectedly resigned 16 years later, NuVasive employed 1, 500 people, was the third largest spinal implant supplier in the world with annual sales in excess of $760 million and had a market value of more than $2 billion.

Lukianov has over 30 years’ experience with senior executive positions with Medtronic and Smith & Nephew Orthopaedics, where he was the director of a business unit that brought limb lengthening technology to the U.S. from Russia. He was the founder of and served as the chairman of the Board and CEO of BackCare Group, Inc., a spine physician practice management company, and from 1999-2015 he was the chairman and CEO at NuVasive. He’s served on a variety of public, private and not-for-profit boards including the Volcano Corporation, the California Health Institute, BIOCOM, and the Medical Device Manufacturers Association (MDMA).

On a personal note, he’s also a mean bass in various chorale groups and produced orthodox liturgical music CDs and concert tours for the Patriarch Tikhon Choir. He followed that with producing the Broadway musical, MEMPHIS, which won a Tony Award. The Russian immigrant studied at Rutgers University and served four years in the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman and surgical technologist.