Maggie Nixon

Maggie Nixon is the CEO of Capstan Medical, a Santa Cruz medtech startup building a robotic platform and catheter-delivered implants for minimally invasive mitral and tricuspid heart valve replacement. A nationally ranked high-school shot put and discus thrower, she earned a Stanford athletic scholarship, designed her own biomechanical engineering major, and then spent more than two decades at Intuitive Surgical across instrument design, clinical development, quality and regulatory, and China operations and strategy. In 2022 she reunited with her first Intuitive boss, Dan Wallace, to lead Capstan, where in 2025 her team completed the world's first robotic catheter mitral valve replacements in humans after raising a $110M Series C.