Lisa Casavant née Hopkins

Lisa Casavant, née Hopkins, graduated from Norwin in 1991 and went on to receive a BS in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University in 1995 and a Master of Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Delaware in 1997.

Casavant is known for her contagious enthusiasm, fearlessness in business, and being “the glue” in her organization. With a passion for helping people, she focused her engineering career on the development of medical devices and built a company with an unheard-of level of work-life balance and flexibility for employees, long before the pandemic made those benefits the norm.

While working at Bayer Healthcare, Casavant and a colleague noted a significant lack of consulting resources in regulatory affairs and quality engineering, especially for start-up medical device companies. These roles in medical device product development teams are critical to obtaining approvals from regulatory authorities like the FDA and in ensuring safe and effective products get to the patients who need them. They studied the market and developed a business plan to address this white space with a fast-growing engineering consulting firm. Despite many business and industry experts advising Lisa and her business partner, Maria, to keep their day jobs, they confidently launched RQM+ in 2008, in the middle of the Great Recession. The business was profitable in just two months.

RQM+ is now the world’s leading MedTech service provider, offering consulting, clinical trial, lab, and reimbursement services. Since 2008, Casavant and the RQM+ team have grown the company to over 600 employees across eight countries, with a valuation of $385 million in 2021. They’ve supported over 1,000 MedTech manufacturers with 5,000+ projects, helping to get new and improved products to patients worldwide.

Casavant is a member of the board of directors of RQM+ and of the Founders Council of Chartwell Investments private equity firm in New York City. Casavant is also a board member of Mission: Agape, a McKeesport-based non-profit founded by fellow Norwin alumni, Kelly (Sickels) Doyle (’91) and Mike Doyle (’92), focused on addressing food insecurity at its roots and giving children a safe and fulfilling after-school program.

Casavant and her family live in Irwin. She is enjoying real estate investing and growing her photography skills with her husband of 23 years and raising their amazing teenagers—a future software engineer and a future music teacher. Lisa looks forward to family entrepreneurial adventures in the coming years.