Twenty-four years is long enough for a company to become part of your professional vocabulary. You know its shortcuts, its recurring arguments, the people who can get something done before the meeting about getting it done. In July 2024, Dan Zortman left that kind of familiarity at Roche to become chief executive of Sysmex America. He arrived with a career in sales and commercial operations, and a new set of responsibilities stretching across the Americas.
The appointment came with a compact declaration: “My focus will be to meet the moment while staying true to our core purpose.” There is a useful tension inside that sentence. Meet the moment, and change is unavoidable. Stay true to a purpose, and continuity matters. A new chief executive has to make both instructions fit into the same working week.
Within three months, the business had a substantial Illinois expansion to announce. Later came plans for a new facility in Brazil. Alongside the buildings and investment was a smaller, rather revealing initiative: a program that helped employees consider whether they actually wanted to become managers. Zortman’s story at Sysmex takes shape between those two scales - the geography of a growing company and the individual deciding what to do next.
A long apprenticeship in the customer’s chair
Zortman’s route to the chief executive’s office ran through the commercial side of the business. Before Roche, his sales experience included Pharmacia Dx, Sanofi, Bio-Rad and Chiron. Those names belong to different chapters of the industry’s corporate history. The common thread in his own career was the work of selling: getting an organization’s offering into another organization’s hands.
His subsequent Roche responsibilities included regional business management in the northeastern United States, national sales and marketing leadership in Canada, and global sales and marketing roles. These are different vantage points on a business. A territory requires attention to particular customers; a national operation introduces a wider set of priorities; a global role makes coordination part of the job.
By the time Sysmex recruited him, his most recent position was senior vice president of commercial operations. The move to CEO therefore expanded the scope of an already substantial commercial career. Selling, marketing and operating experience now sat within a responsibility for the direction of the whole regional organization. The interesting question became how that background would appear in the choices made under his leadership.
The first autumn had a price tag
On October 7, 2024, Sysmex America and Illinois officials announced a $20.6 million expansion in northeastern Illinois. The announcement coincided with the first day of Governor JB Pritzker’s trade mission to Japan. For a company whose parent is based in Kobe and whose American headquarters is in Lincolnshire, the setting joined two ends of the same business relationship.
The stated employment commitments were specific: 110 new full-time jobs and nearly 550 existing jobs retained in Illinois. These were announced commitments, rather than a completed hiring tally. The distinction matters. Investment announcements describe an intended future; the work of turning them into occupied workspaces and functioning operations comes afterward.
Zortman publicly thanked the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity for its part in advancing the company’s growth plans. The expansion gave his opening months a practical subject: facilities, capacity and employment. Those are less portable than a slogan. They attach a company’s ambitions to a place, and to the people expected to carry them out.
There is a particular weight to the retained-jobs figure. The new positions describe what a company hopes to add. The existing positions describe the organization already in motion. Put together, the two numbers suggest why a succession and an expansion have to account for continuity as well as change. You can announce both in a day. Making them work together takes longer.
Four miles can be a strategic distance
In January 2025, Sysmex America announced another property decision, this time in São José dos Pinhais, Brazil. The company had purchased 563,000 square feet of land for a new manufacturing, distribution and service center. The site was only four miles from its existing leased manufacturing location. In an international business story, four miles can look like a rounding error. Here, it was part of the point.
Andy Hay, then Sysmex America’s president, explained that keeping employees was a reason for choosing land nearby. The planned location also preserved access to an airport and seaport. Its design called for updated storage and conveyance systems, cross-docking and modern workspaces. A location decision was serving several needs at once: staff continuity, movement of goods and room for a different physical operation.
This was a company project announced during Zortman’s tenure, with Hay explaining its rationale. It belongs in the story of the organization he leads without needing to become a tale of one executive personally drawing the blueprint. Large businesses do their work through overlapping responsibilities. The credits are rarely as tidy as the organizational chart.
The Illinois and Brazil announcements also offer a useful way to read his remit. The Americas are a collection of operating places, each with its own workers, premises and routes to customers. On a presentation slide, the region can occupy one colored shape. In practice, its expansion can turn on something as local as the distance between an old workplace and a new one.
A promotion with a question mark
Then there is the matter of who will run all this. In August 2025, Sysmex America received a Brandon Hall Group bronze award in the category for development programs for frontline leaders. The recognized initiative, Considering the Shift, was offered through Sysmex University and developed with DX Learning. Its audience was employees exploring a move from individual contributor to people manager.
That word, “considering,” does real work. A promotion is often narrated as the obvious next step, with the new title supplying its own justification. A program built around readiness allows a less theatrical question: does the work of managing other people fit the person thinking about taking it on? An impressive business card cannot answer on someone’s behalf.
The program covered self-awareness, communication, delegation and leadership biases. Zortman’s response directed attention to the talent development team and to employees deciding whether leadership suited them. The award belonged to the company’s program. His public endorsement makes it a concrete example of the approach he supports, rather than a personal trophy to add to his shelf.
“For Sysmex associates, there is a shared focus - working together to provide the best experience for the customers.”
Dan Zortman · message to prospective associates
The customer stays in the conversation
In his message to prospective employees, Zortman connects the company’s internal culture with its external relationships. He describes opportunities to learn and grow, recognition for ingenuity, and support for associates as individuals and professionals. The customer appears alongside the employee throughout that account. The two groups share space in his explanation of what the company values.
Read against his commercial background, that emphasis is understandable. His career has repeatedly involved the point where a company’s plans meet someone else’s requirements. The interpretation is straightforward: the customer orientation of the earlier jobs carries into the language of his current one. It is visible in what he chooses to emphasize publicly, without requiring a theory about his private thoughts.
By July 2026, the same emphasis appeared in his comments ahead of the company’s industry exhibition in Anaheim. He spoke about conversations with customers, including what was working, what was changing and where support was needed. The occasion was a product showcase. His remarks made room for listening as part of the event’s purpose.
There is a modest discipline in that approach. A company can arrive at an exhibition with a polished demonstration and leave with an awkward question. The question may be the more useful souvenir. Zortman’s stated priorities give those exchanges a place in the business, alongside the launches and plans that are easier to put on a stage.
A wider title, familiar priorities
In 2026, his responsibilities acquired another formal dimension. Sysmex’s corporate executive roster lists Zortman as an executive officer as well as CEO of Sysmex America. The March personnel announcement set out the appointment as part of changes effective April 1. The additional title places his regional position within the parent company’s executive structure.
His route there has included DeSales University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing, and a succession of commercial leadership roles. Outside work, his stated interests are family time, golf and travel. He has also held board positions with the Indiana Red Cross. Those details give the executive biography a life beyond job titles without needing to turn a round of golf into a management philosophy.
For now, the most telling contrast in Zortman’s Sysmex tenure is one of scale. There are millions of dollars allocated to expansion, and there is an employee considering a first management role. Both concern the organization’s next stage. One asks where the company will have room to work. The other asks who is ready to take responsibility for the people doing it.
The promise he made on arrival still fits that pair of questions. Meeting the moment involves new commitments. Staying close to a purpose involves the people, customers and working relationships already there. Zortman has put his name to both sides of the assignment. The buildings and the careers will give that sentence its practical meaning.