Our team for endoscopic minimally invasive spinal surgery
Innovative thinking and execution combined with longtime professional experience are the strengths of the operative senior management team of joimax®.
Wolfgang Ries – CEO & Founder
More than 40 years business experience, with 35 years in the health care and 6 years in the telecom industry. Prior to the foundation of joimax® in fall 2001, he held positions of growing responsibilities in sales, product and marketing management and VP Business Development Europe at Baxter CardioVascular Group, today Edwards LifeScience. At the German-French venture, Saphir Medical, he was the Managing Director and at HydroCision Inc., Andover, MA he was VP Marketing & Business Development. His educational background includes a telecom engineering and a degree in medicine (4 years) from the University of Vienna, Austria. Besides that he completed several business management programs and courses like the Baxter-IMD Lausanne Leadership 2000 MBA program.
Rainer Schmitz – CFO/COO
More than 39 years business experience in finance and controlling. Prior to joimax® he worked several years as a General Manager Finance/Controlling at TerraTec Electronic GmbH, a global acting consumer electronic company. Prior to that, he held the position of the Director Finance in Conceptware AG, a global acting consulting and IT company. His educational background is based on commercial education with graduation in business administration, a 1 year trainee program in Business Administration in South Africa and 4 years study of Business Economics at the University of Hagen, Germany.
Maximilian Ries – Executive Vice President, Business Development and Operations
Maximilian joined joimax® in 2009. Since 2015 he was the Integration and Operations Manager of joimax GmbH and since 2016 General Manager of joimax® Inc. He holds degrees in Technical Management and Business Management. In 2023, Maximilian took on the newly created role of Executive Vice President, Business Development and Operations at joimax®. In this position, based in Germany, he is responsible for scaling global operations. Maximilian’s diverse education and experience over multiple departments helps the company to adopt quickly to new challenges and is supporting the growth of the company.
Tony Troncale – General Manager
Formerly Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at joimax® Inc., Troncale was promoted to General Manager in 2023; Over the past two years, Troncale, in addition to increasing his responsibilities, successfully capitalized on the significant interest in endoscopic techniques to expand US sales operations. He joined joimax® in 2021 bringing 20-years of experience in the spinal device industry where he served in sales and marketing leadership roles at Stryker, K2M, and Synthes Spine.
Levon Zanadvorov, MD – Director of Clinical Education
Levon is a trained general and thoracic surgeon. He joined joimax in 2019 to lead the clinical education team in the United States. Prior to joimax, Levon worked under leading endoscopic spine surgeon, Dr. Christoph Hofstetter, at the University of Washington. Levon previously served as Assistant Professor, General and Thoracic Surgery at Yerevan State Medical University in Armenia. Levon completed his medical education, residency and fellowship in Armenia and Germany, respectively.
Joe O’Connor – Senior Director, US Sales
With over 30 years in healthcare, Joe leads the US sales team. He began his career in clinical practice and was formerly a registered respiratory therapist. Joe moved over to the medical device industry in 2002 and rose through sales leadership positions at Intuitive Surgical and Mazor Robotics where he refined the approach to capital equipment sales. He joined joimax in 2021.
joimax® GmbH
Since joimax® was founded by Wolfgang Ries in fall 2001 in the Karlsruhe area, the number of employees has continued to increase. With this strong team of qualified people we acquired the status as “Expert in Endoscopic Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery”.
Amalienbadstraße 41, RaumFabrik 61
76227 Karlsruhe, Germany
joimax®, Inc.
By founding a 100 % subsidiary in Irvine, California, USA, joimax® paved its way into the American market since 2006. The medical industry sector offers excellent opportunities for innovations which are globally researched and developed by joimax®.
140 Technology Drive, Suite 150
Irvine, CA 92618, USA
joimax® ASIA
The office in Hong Kong was already up and running in mid-2019. By the end of 2020, a second Asian location was added with the office in Singapore.
The team responsible for the Asia-Pacific region can now contact distributors and customers directly on site.
joimax® ASIA – Hongkong office
Rykadan Capital Tower,
135 Hoi Bun Road,
Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, China
joimax® ASEAN – Singapore office
Vision Exchange Building
2 Venture Drive,
Level #24-01
Singapore 608526,