Andrew Willett

Andy Willet

Senior Principal Therapy Consultant, Structural Heart – TAVR

Medtronic

Andy is a medical device industry rep with 33 years of experience, the last 29 years being in the cardiac space. He began his cardiac experience back in 1997 when he joined the cardiac surgery division of St. Jude Medical covering all of New England. As part of his job responsibilities, he helped support valve replacement surgeries in operating rooms throughout his territory.
In 2019, he transitioned from SJM (acquired by Abbott in 2016) to Medtronic joining their transcatheter heart valve (TAVR) division where he currently still works supporting cases in Cath Labs and hybrid ORs.

During his time with SJM back in 2008, Andy was approached by Chip and Ceeya while at a cardiac surgery conference in Boston asking if there was any way that SJM would be able to donate some heart valves to support a mission trip to Rwanda in the coming months. It was during that conversation that his interest in getting personally involved to help Team Heart was born. He traveled with the team a few months later as a non-clinical volunteer and his life was forever changed for the better.

Since then, Andy has traveled on every TH surgery trip to Rwanda and has even had his wife Julie and two of his sons Drew and Cole join him to help on multiple trips.

His family wanted to help Rwandans in other ways as well so his wife Julie reached out to Bridge to Rwanda which is an organization that helps very bright Rwandan students who have been accepted at prestigious US colleges and universities find host families. They were fortunate enough to be chosen to host two MIT students from freshmen year in 2016 through graduation and have watched both young men thrive in life and in their careers.

Additionally, Andy and Julie worked with BC High where their three boys went to school and arranged for a group of BCH students and host teachers and Andy to travel to Rwanda for 10 days in 2018 as part of the first student exchange program. During the trip, the BCH students attended school and stayed with Rwandan host families and they all found it to be a humbling and amazing experience.