Manny Villafaña (born 1940 in New York City), a child of Puerto Rican immigrants, he attended Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx.
In 1967, he was hired away from Picker by Earl Bakken, CEO of Medtronic to become their first international sales administrator.
[3] In 1976, he founded St. Jude Medical where his team engineered the first bileaflet mechanical heart valve, which reduced the frequency of blood clots in patients.
[6] In 1987, he founded Helix BioCore, which eventually transformed into ATS Medical, a company that developed a bi-leaflet valve which uses an open-pivot design to reduce clots and improve blood flow.
[7] Then in 2000, he launched CABG Medical to pursue the creation of an artificial graft for coronary bypass surgery.