John Rizzo—New EVP at ABANZA

John Rizzo, a seasoned leader with over 30 years in the orthopedic medical device industry, is the new Executive Vice President for U.S. operations at ABANZA, an orthopedics and arthroscopic soft tissue repair company based in Spain.

Prior to joining ABANZA, Rizzo was the senior vice president of sales at Embody Inc., playing a vital role in the company’s transformation from pre-revenue to the successful acquisition by Zimmer Biomet in February 2023.

“My 34 years of experience in the orthopedic industry has culminated to this point preparing me for this new role at ABANZA,” Rizzo told OTW. “Particularly helpful was the period since 2011 when I joined the team at Knee Creations (Subchondroplasty Procedure), overseeing U.S. sales and building from zero to $50M in revenue within six years. During that time, we managed a successful exit with an acquisition by Zimmer in 2013, incorporating subchondroplasty into the Zimmer sales organization; repeating the process in 2015 when Zimmer acquired Biomet.”

ABANZA CEO Juan Abascal said, “We are at a critical inflection point as we launch the U.S. commercialization of our best-in-class WASHERCAP^™ Soft Tissue Fixation System. WASHERCAP is just the first in a series of planned innovative product releases focused on Soft Tissue repair/fixation.”

“We are thrilled to have an executive with John’s credentials join the ABANZA family as we take the next steps to building our organization into a Sports Medicine ‘Start Up to Watch,’ as SmartTRAK^® noted earlier this month.”

“In early 2020 I joined Embody Inc., running U.S. sales, and building the distribution channel from scratch,” said Rizzo to OTW.

“I was blessed to have found the best combination of sales managers, direct reps, and independent distributors to grow Embody’s Tapestry sales consistently month over month and quarter after quarter. This demonstrated growth caught the attention of several potential strategic partners and in the end, Zimmer Biomet acquired Embody in a very successful exit worth up to $275M.”

Looking six months out, Rizzo told OTW, “We are planning a deliberate and steady approach to commercialization of WASHERCAP in the U.S. during the first 6–12 months.”

“Our goal is to work with influential key opinion leaders who can help us build both early clinical evidence and share their experience within their networks. In addition, we will be assembling a team of high caliber independent distributors throughout the U.S. over the coming year. As WASHERCAP has demonstrated an order of magnitude improvement of residual graft displacement vs. any other product on the market we expect rapid adoption.”