Pete Stoy and the art of changing the plan

Pete Stoy had already been accepted into law school when he decided to go to work instead. There is something pleasingly inconvenient about that detail. Acceptance is usually the moment a plan becomes real. For Stoy, it became the moment to reconsider it. The future chief executive of Hanger chose business, later earned an MBA, and began a career that would take him through finance, sales and operations. A philosophy graduate had found another place to put his questions.

He graduated from Ohio University in 1996. One lesson he carried away came from Charles Ping, the university president who also taught him. As students discussed the distance between academic life and the world beyond campus, Ping argued for the practical importance of truth and meaning. Stoy remembered the exchange years later. The lesson gave him a way to connect his education with work that looked, on paper, rather different.

That early change of direction supplies a useful opening to his career. It also makes the latest development at Hanger more interesting. In September 2026, Hanger announced plans to combine with Numotion. The proposed combined business would have a different chief executive. Stoy, who had taken the Hanger job in May 2023, was publicly backing the person due to succeed him after closing. Once again, the next chapter required a change of plan.

Thirteen years before the corner office

The route to Hanger involved a long apprenticeship inside large companies. Stoy spent 13 years at Cardinal Health, holding senior roles across sales and operations. At McKesson, where he served in leadership positions from 2014 to 2018, his responsibilities included a business measured in billions of dollars. He later became East Region president at Sodexo. Each move added another kind of responsibility: commercial relationships, distribution, finance, or the daily work of managing a regional operation.

It is a résumé full of unglamorous nouns. Supply chain. Operations. Finance. These are the subjects that rarely make a graduation speech but frequently decide whether a company can deliver on one. Stoy’s experience crossed those functions before he became a chief executive. That breadth would become part of the case for choosing him at Hanger, where he joined as chief operating officer in November 2020.

There is a distinction between a career with several employers and a career with several kinds of work. Stoy had both. His earlier positions put him close to the relationships between commercial promises, resources and execution. The chief operating officer appointment gathered those experiences into a broader assignment. He would have time to learn Hanger from inside before taking its top job, an advantage a new arrival with an immediate CEO title would have to earn while already carrying the title.

A promotion with a long runway

The change at Hanger happened in stages. In January 2023, Stoy became president. On May 1, he became chief executive and joined the board. The succession followed Vinit Asar’s retirement after more than a decade as CEO, with Asar moving to executive chairman. Hanger described the appointment as part of a succession process developed over multiple years. The calendar gives this particular corporate handover its shape: arrival, wider responsibility, then the top job.

Asar’s explanation emphasized Stoy’s experience across commercial, operational, supply chain and finance functions. It was a recommendation built around balance. There was no suggestion that one brilliant specialty could do the work of all the others. At a business with a national footprint and several complementary operations, the ability to understand how those pieces fitted together was central to the appointment.

Stoy called the opportunity “the honor of a lifetime.” Such phrases can disappear into the upholstery of an appointment announcement. Here, the surrounding facts give it some weight. He had spent more than two years inside the organization, working on operating improvements and growth initiatives, before accepting responsibility for the whole. He knew the company as an assignment before he knew it as his name on the chief executive’s door.

“I am most proud of my success in leadership development.”

Pete Stoy · 2023

Giving smaller companies a bigger toolkit

In February 2024, Hanger launched Hanger Ventures, a subsidiary intended to invest in entrepreneurs and small businesses. The idea extended beyond writing checks. A smaller company could gain access to resources and expertise it would have difficulty assembling alone. Stoy described collaboration spanning the journey from an early idea to a commercial product. That is a substantial stretch of road, with plenty of places for a promising young company to run out of fuel.

James Campbell became president of the venture business while retaining his existing responsibilities at Hanger. The arrangement linked the new investment activity to expertise already inside the organization. For Stoy, the public emphasis was on making those resources available to entrepreneurs. The CEO was helping establish a structure through which specialists could do their work, rather than presenting himself as the inventor behind each new idea.

The first investment followed in July 2024. Hanger Ventures committed to lead the Series A round of the Canadian company Bionic Power. Alongside financial backing, the collaboration included technical and commercial support. The sequence matters: a subsidiary launched in February had a named first investment by July. An organizational idea now had a counterpart on the other side of the table, a company with its own executives, needs and timetable.

The conversation gets a larger room

The same interest in bringing people together appeared at Hanger LIVE in Nashville in January 2025. More than 1,600 employees, exhibitors, speakers and industry participants attended. The week opened with the first Global Partners Summit, gathering more than 150 people from manufacturers, independent businesses, universities and professional associations. Across four days, the wider conference offered 120 courses taught by 75 experts. These figures describe the event, not a personal achievement to be credited to the CEO alone.

Still, the format suited the approach Stoy was describing. Partners had a place to compare ideas, and teaching had a substantial place on the schedule. Sessions for women in leadership and a networking reception for military veterans broadened the ways colleagues could meet. The practical question was how to make a large organization useful to the people within and around it. A conference cannot settle that question, but its agenda shows what the organization chooses to make time for.

By January 2026, Hanger LIVE had moved to Grapevine, Texas, with the theme “Bold Moves.” Stoy participated in an open question-and-answer session alongside Michael Oros and Shane Wurdeman. In the event photographs, he appears onstage both addressing the room and seated in discussion. The setting offers a modest visual correction to the solitary CEO portrait: a microphone can also be passed around.

The next name on the door

On September 10, 2026, Hanger announced the proposed Numotion combination. The structure was a cash acquisition of Numotion by Hanger, with the combined company to be called Hanger Numotion and controlled by Patient Square Capital. Both businesses were to keep their existing brands. The announcement placed completion in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions. At the time of this profile, it remains a proposed transaction, and Stoy remains listed as Hanger’s chief executive.

The leadership plan was explicit: Numotion CEO Mike Swinford would run the combined company after closing. Swinford had led Numotion since 2014. Stoy said the two had worked closely during the process and expressed confidence in his ability to lead the next organization. His comments looked back over the work since he joined Hanger in 2020, emphasizing investment in people, technology and organizational capabilities.

A succession announcement changes the way a CEO’s record is read. Projects that once looked like preparations for the next year become part of a tenure with a visible boundary ahead. Stoy’s public response concentrated on what the team had built and on the person expected to carry it forward. His endorsement puts attention on the team expected to carry the combined organization forward. The difference matters when reading a career that is still unfolding.

Who gets to grow next?

Years before the proposed combination, Stoy had identified leadership development as a source of particular pride. Early mentors had entrusted him with responsibilities beyond his experience, and he wanted to extend similar opportunities to talented colleagues. He also supported an Ohio University philosophy student’s participation in an ethics conference. In both cases, the useful thing was an opening: a chance for someone else to take work further than they could have taken it alone.

His connections now include the Ohio University College of Arts and Sciences Leadership Council, the board of Southern Diversified Distributors and a trusteeship with the Committee for Economic Development. These roles sit outside his daily Hanger responsibilities. Together with his continued connection to philosophy, they keep the biography from narrowing into a list of corporate appointments. Business gave him a profession; the university remained part of his working world.

The accepted law-school place makes a tidy starting point because it contains a choice. The proposed Hanger handover contains another. Between them lie years of learning different functions, assuming larger responsibilities and creating opportunities for colleagues and smaller businesses. Stoy’s career has repeatedly advanced through a willingness to revise the original route. The useful question for its next chapter is the one his mentoring already raises: who will be ready when an opening comes?