Three Students Get Unique Internship Experience with Alum’s Medical Equipment Start-Up

Ana Ilievska, Layle Ledbetter and Kyle Klahs, all seniors at Westminster College, are participating in internships for a company called Insurgical LLC.

Insurgical LLC was founded in 2010 with mission to improve clinical outcomes for patients and operating room efficiency by providing surgeons with sterile, high performance, single-use power tools for orthopedic surgery. The company is managed by Pete Aman, who is the president and CEO, and Frederick Matthews, who is VP of Sales and Marketing. Frederick Matthews is also a WC alumnus who graduated in Business Management in 1990.

“Without a clear plan of what to do, we took the direction of market research and promotion of the product to develop a semester of education and networking.  We approached healthcare from an often-overlooked perspective, from the tool sales approach. We learned a tremendous amount, not just about orthopedic power tools, but what it takes to be a successful sales representative in this turbulent market.”- said Kyle.

“We are very thankful to Frederick for this opportunity. He has been with us since the beginning and has helped us immensely whenever we have struggled. What was most exiting about this internship is the fact that we had to develop our own market research plan which made us appreciate the greatness of the internship even more. It’s experiences like this that reassure me marketing is very demanding and yet fun field to work in.” – said Ana.

Dr. William Carner, associate professor of business at WC, has also helped guide the team during the internship.

“This internship provided me with so much hands on experience that I really could not have gained anywhere else. We got to gather information and design our own sales pitch with the help of our faculty adviser Dr. Carner and our Insurgical Supervisor Frederick Matthews. Next semester we will even get the opportunity to present our sales pitch to a group of orthopedic surgeons. Not many people can say that they gave a sales pitch as part of their internship.”- said Layle.

Pictured above are the members of the Insurgical internship team: Layle Ledbetter ’14, Dr. Bill Carner, Kyle Klahs ’14, and Ana Ilievska ’14.