Canada's Greenest Employers (2025) - Flipbook - Page 54
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CANADA'S GREENEST EMPLOYERS (2025)
Health care sustainability is essential to Medtronic
P
adina Pezeshki has had
an impressive journey
with medical device
maker Medtronic
Canada. In 2020, she was
hired as a medical science advisor
and clinical research specialist for
the company’s medical surgical
portfolio. Today she is one of the
firm’s medical science liaisons.
She continues to cover her initial
portfolio, but she also covers
sustainability.
The more sustainable our
products and business
model are, the better we
all are as global citizens
and certainly as Canadian
corporations.
aligned with sustainability,
environmentalism, being green
and just mindful of the planet and
health,” Pezeshki says. “Living a
healthy life isn’t possible unless it’s
on a healthy planet.”
Medtronic began in the 1950s
making bulky pacemakers, devices
that are now the size of a vitamin
and inserted through a catheter.
The Canadian headquarters has
electric vehicle charging stations
and there’s a hybrid work model
so employees can reduce
commuting.
“Our headquarters happens to
be our first LEED-certified green
building, which is a blueprint for
other Medtronic sites,” says
Pezeshki.
Maisie Cheung, senior market-
ing director, says sustainability is
one of Medtronic’s five strategic
pillars in Canada. “So we aspire to
be in the forefront working with
the health-care systems here to
look for meaningful initiatives to
reduce their carbon footprint.”
Cheung adds that her group has
just recruited an environmental
scientist to join the marketing
team to help make the right
sustainable initiatives to pursue
with customers.
“The more sustainable our
products and business model are,
the better we all are as global
citizens and certainly as Canadian
corporations,” says Cheung.
While the first front is to work
with Canadian health-care
systems, the second front is to
work with industry and green
associations, she says.
“We’ve been invited to sit on the
industry committees in terms of
sustainability. We’ll work with
partners to define what are the
near-term, mid-term and
long-term targets we can all strive
to achieve,” Cheung says.
Medtronic is also a founding
member of the Canadian
Coalition for Green Healthcare,
which focuses on the development
of an environmentally sustainable,
net-zero and climate-resilient
health system.
“We are also in one-to-one
discussions with our biggest
customers to talk about our list of
sustainable ideas and, together, to
prioritize what’s most meaningful.
— Maisie Cheung
Senior Marketing Director
“I got into this because green
and sustainable practices are a
trending topic within the surgical
field and the operating room,
which I support, and this is
personally close to my heart,” says
Pezeshki. “I started looking into it
more, learning about it, making
personal connections and I grew
to own it more formally.”
Brampton, Ont.-based
Medtronic recently received
several sustainability accolades
and awards. Pezeshki highlights
two — one for emitting 42 per cent
less carbon dioxide per every
dollar of revenue and another for
being one of the world’s most
ethical companies.
“I think those awards alone
speak to the way that Medtronic is
Maisie Cheung, senior marketing director (left), and Padina Pezeshki, medical science liaisons, at Medtronic
Canada.
