Halden Zimmermann

Halden Zimmermann began his career in manufacturing as an engineer for ITT Automotive, a Global Tier 1 components manufacturer supplying electronics systems to major automotive companies like GM, Toyota, Honda and BMW. While here, his role expanded from manufacturing engineering and product development, to
 continuously improve quality. Then plant management, where he was tasked to lead the turnaround and consolidation of operational facilities. At ITT, he was the first to be nominated for a company sponsored MBA program at the University of Rochester, Simon School of Business as part of his leadership track training, and the youngest to be accepted to University program in its history.

Soon after graduation, Halden started a new career in Alcan to focus on global operational restructuring and continuous improvement. After being shown many aspects of the business and finishing the Alcan corporate leadership development program, Halden relocated to Paris, France in a Global Marketing role. He worked directly for the CEO of the packaging business and focused on leading and transitioning the commercial organization to a value based dynamic function. The value based marketing concept became the standard for the entire company and he led the global roll out to 5 continents.

After the acquisition of Alcan, Halden lead a business unit at Cardinal Health. He became the Director for the Mail Order Pharmaceutical and Alternate Care Services space, where he led the strategy development and significant growth of the business.  At the start, the $4.9 billion dollar P and L business, had not won a new deal in five years and its share was declining in a growing market. Implementing a focused strategy to drive marketing and sales, building a value added consultative service organization from scratch turned the business around and revenue grew to $8.9b in 2 years.

Halden was then promoted to lead Global Marketing and Pricing strategy for the Medical Products business. He had ownership of the strategy and long term growth for the $9 billion dollar supply, capital medical equipment, and laboratory solutions business. He transitioned the business from a cost plus model to a value based offering business, enveloping products with value added services to grow margins and increase sales through differentiation. Some of the most successful pricing strategies were used as a competitive advantage, and Halden’s many service-based patents and offers are still in use today.

Currently, Halden Zimmermann is the Vice President and General Manager for Leica Microsystems. Leica is an operating company of Danaher, focused on industrial technologies, medical / surgical capital and life science research imaging solutions. Halden was initially brought in to reshape Leica’s approach to marketing and spur organic growth in an acquisitive intense environment. Some of the best practices implemented have been used across the Danaher platforms and are in use today. Halden Zimmermann was then given additional responsibility as P and L leader for one of Leica’s largest advanced capital business. Creating a focused strategy, converting to an aggressive hunting organization, improving feet on the street and restructuring to take cost out resulted in 10pts of share gain and operating profit improvement of 50%.Halden Zimmermann is the VP of Leica Microsystems.