Howard Root is the retired Chief Executive Officer of Vascular Solutions, Inc., a company he founded in 1997, took public in 2000 and grew into a worldwide medical device company that he sold to Teleflex in February 2017 for $1 billion. Over the company’s 20 years, Howard led Vascular Solutions in inventing, developing and launching over 100 new medical devices used to improve the lives of patients suffering from cardiovascular disease. The motivation behind the sale of Vascular Solutions and Howard’s voluntary early retirement is a true-life legal nightmare that is detailed in Howard’s book: Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO on the Feds’ Hit-List.