vanquishing pain
Maria Bennett’s fast growing startup, SPR, is bringing drug-free relief to thousands.
By Brian Albrecht
Photos by Roadell Hickman
As the coiled stainless steel wire, about twice the thickness of a human hair, slides under the skin to a nerve site of excruciating pain, it carries a little bit of the Case School of Engineering – along with the potential for blessed relief.
The wire is connected to a small battery and a device that remotely triggers a pain-relieving electrical impulse – the heart of the SPRINT PNS (peripheral nerve stimulation) System developed by Maria E. Bennett, MS ’98, researcher, entrepreneur, wife, mother, and community leader.
Bennett, 52, is president, founder, and CEO of SPR, one of the fastest-growing private companies in Greater Cleveland. Her startup sprang from her thesis for a 1998 master’s degree in biomedical engineering from the Case School of Engineering. That thesis led to eventual development of a 60-day treatment – without surgery, medications, or permanent implants – to treat nerve trauma pain from nearly head to toe.
SPR’s system is now being prescribed by doctors nationwide. The company employs more than 300 people and was named the fastest-growing business in Greater Cleveland in 2024 and the second-fastest growing business in 2025 by Crain’s Cleveland Business. The newspaper cited revenues surging by 1,200% over the past five years, to reach $76.8 million annually.
The founder takes more pride in the life-changing impact of its product.
“Pain can be subjective and hard to measure, but it is real and can have a devastating effect on a person’s mental and physical health, and their overall quality of life,” Bennett says.
“The stories we hear from patients about the simple activities of daily living that they struggle doing—going to get groceries, getting dressed, or tying their shoes—is a daily reminder of their pain and limitations.”
Her solution does more than bring relief to sufferers of chronic pain. It is helping to address a national health crisis.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 50 million adults in the U.S. suffer chronic pain and about 17 million experience high-impact chronic pain, the kind that mars daily life. Seeking relief, many have turned to powerful opioids, drugs that can have tragic side effects. In 2022, more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses and opioids were involved in the majority of those deaths, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Thanks to SPR, pain sufferers now have an alternative: Peripheral nerve stimulation pioneered at Case. “We are really filling an unmet need in pain treatment for a non-opioid, non-surgical solution,” Bennett said.
Maria Bennett’s company, based on her master’s thesis, is one of the fastest growing in Northeast Ohio.
LEARNING TO INNOVATE
Her knack for innovation started with a love of math and science while growing up in Carmel, Indiana, the daughter of a civil engineer. Bennett said that passion prompted her to enter a new degree program in engineering management at Miami University of Ohio, near Cincinnati, in 1991.
She brought to campus curiosity and a performer’s zeal. Growing up, Bennett took years of tap, jazz, and ballet lessons. She was a member of her high school’s drill team as well as the marching band that won the Indiana State Marching Band Championship her senior year. Today, Zumba workouts help quench her thirst to dance.
At Miami, Bennett worked on a wheelchair mobility project that piqued her interest in biomedical engineering. She said she chose Case for her graduate studies because of “its reputation as a top-tier program.”
Though one of only a few women in her classes, Bennett said she found a fertile environment of support, innovation, and collaboration. At Case, she learned “how to research, how to ask a question, and be able to study it and get a good, data-supported solution,” she said.
Her academic advisor was P. Hunter Peckham, MS ’68, PhD ’72, a renowned professor of biomedical engineering who was instrumental in rallying local medical centers behind the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center, which studies the application of electrical currents to generate or suppress nerve activity.
The Case Alumni Association honored Peckham with its Gold Medal at Homecoming 2025.
"Maria, like many people at Case, had the opportunity to meet people like us who aspired to change the world."
“She was very committed, worked hard and wasn’t afraid of problems,” Peckham recalled of his former student. “I knew she was going to do well in whatever field she chose. She’s an absolutely incredible leader.”
Peckham connected Bennett with her research advisors, Dr. Ronald Triolo and Dr. John Chae. Triolo, then an associate professor at CWRU, today is executive director of the Advanced Platform Technology Center at the Cleveland VA Medical Center. Chae, then a professor at the CWRU School of Medicine, is now executive vice president of MetroHealth Medical Center.
When Bennett began working with Chae, he was exploring peripheral electrical nerve stimulation to reduce shoulder dislocation in stroke survivors. He and Bennett discovered that the treatment also relieved pain—a lot. That work became the foundation of her master’s thesis.
“Maria, like many people at Case, had the opportunity to meet people like us who aspired to change the world,” Chae said.
SPR has been recognized by its employees as a Top Workplace in Northeast Ohio four years in a row.
SHAPED BY CASE
As a graduate student, Bennett lived off-campus and remembered her life in University Circle as “always very studious, yet supportive. I had some graduate school friends and we’d study together and go out and have fun. They were very diverse, very eclectic folks from all over the country.”
She also appreciates “some very caring professors” and believes the experience of being one of the few women in engineering classrooms prepared her for being one of the few female CEOs in the medical device industry.
While a student, Bennett interned at NeuroControl Corp., which was making an implantable device developed at Case for restoring hand function to people with spinal cord injuries.
There, she met Robert Strother ’73, who would become her chief engineer at SPR.
After her graduation in 1998 and a few years at Neuro- Control, Bennett went to Minneapolis to work with a medical manufacturer. It was not long before she was lured back to Cleveland by Geoffrey Thrope ’79, who’d met her at Neuro- Control and formed his own company.
Bringing Bennett aboard “was one of THE smartest things I have accomplished professionally,” said Thrope, who is currently chairman of SPR. “Early on, when I was first getting to know Maria, I told my colleagues that someday we would all be working for her. She is a tough, smart, tireless, and focused leader, ready to dive into the details of any aspect of a commercial company.”
In 2010, Thrope offered Bennett the chance to lead a spin-off of his company, SPR Therapeutics.
“Geoff said my biggest challenge would be attracting a leadership team and a board of directors because of my age, 36 at that point, and being female,” Bennett recalled. “I told him, ‘Geoff I can’t do anything about either one, but hopefully I can create a product and company that people believe in.’
“I also asked him, ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, make it work.’”
And she did
A MEDTECH ODYSSEY
Initially there were several years of research and studies, converting her thesis to a marketable product and gaining FDA approval of the SPRINT PNS System, which was groundbreaking. The Food and Drug Administration approved the first generation of the technology in 2016. The current version received approval in 2018.
Peckham said Bennett faced daunting challenges.
“The idea of doing these directed stimulations on the periphery was not at all accepted,” he said. “She had a lot of reasons to be confident that it would work, but she had to make it work as a business. That’s a big, big deal, and she’s done it first class.”
Most entrepreneurs face a valley of death, the financial abyss that looms after a product is launched but is not yet making money. This was especially true for SPR, which faced a longer path for regulatory approval because of the novelty of its device.
“There were definitely times during that pre-commercial phase of our journey when I didn’t know if we would make it,” Bennet said. “But through relationships, hard work and perseverance, we achieved that commercial clearance milestone.”
Use of the product began slowly but gained momentum as word of the results spread. Toward the end of 2025, SPR was on track to have treated more than 50,000 patients nationally, primarily through pain practices in hospitals and surgery centers. Cost is reimbursed by Medicare and some private insurers.
Maria Bennett looks on as Jeff Waterman, a senior electrical engineer at SPR, tests a circuit board on one of the SPRINT systems.
Maria Bennett with sons Luke, 21, Kyle, 18, and husband Carl on a family vacation in Newfoundland in July 2025.
HOW IT WORKS
In the procedure, the SPRINT PNS system’s Microlead (wire) is placed near a target nerve via a minimally invasive, ultrasound-guided procedure, sending tiny electrical impulses designed to interrupt pain signals to the brain. Patients may feel a slight tingling, pulsing, vibration, or pressure around the area of pain.
Over time, the system is believed to “help reset the brain to get positive feedback,” instead of pain signals, a change that can persist beyond the 60-day treatment, according to Bennett. Clinical studies have shown that greater than 70% of patients enjoy significant and sustained pain relief, with skin irritation the most commonly-cited side effect.
One of the many success stories is Tim Hepner, 67, of Northwood, Ohio. Two years ago, Hepner injured his shoulder in a fall. The lingering pain prompted his doctor to suggest using the SPRINT system. He recalled that the device produced a slight tingling whenever he dialed up the intensity but that the pain then immediately went away. After a two-month treatment, the pain vanished for good.
“It worked out fantastic. I recommend that (Sprint) to anybody,” Hepner said. “Having my doctor do that took away so much pain. My wife said ‘You’re smiling, you’re laughing,’ and I never did that before (the treatment).”
Guided by the motto “Solutions for pain – Inspired by life,” SPR is on a growth trajectory. It employs about 100 people at its headquarters in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood and another 200 in satellite offices in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Minneapolis, and in sales territories around the country.
Bennett said the firm has had a 38% compound annual growth rate over the past three years, and recently secured $85 million from investors for more expansion.
Meanwhile, the accolades are pouring in. Named as an inventor on 88 patents, Bennett is seen as a leading innovator and influencer in a male-dominated field. In 2021, Healthcare Technology Report named her one of the Top 25 Women Leaders in Medical Devices while Ernst & Young honored her as a regional Entrepreneur of the Year.
FAMILY FIRST
As she grew a company, Bennett raised a family with her husband of 23 years, Carl, who is semi-retired from hotel management. The couple enjoys hiking, traveling, music, and dancing while keeping up with their two boys, Luke and Kyle, both of whom are in college.
“When I’m with the family I try to be as present as possible. Both boys are active in sports and I made it a priority to be at all their games and activities,” said Bennett, who also served four years on the Board of Education for Beachwood Schools.
“She’s always been able to strike a balance between work and home life,” Carl observed. “That’s always been important to her. Family is always first.”
They met in Cincinnati, through mutual friends, and lived apart while she attended Case. On his visits to Cleveland, they would sit on the stoop of her Euclid Avenue apartment listening to jazz and talking about her studies. Even then, he said, he was struck by her sense of compassion.
“She cares about people and their quality of life,” he said. “That’s kind-of how she got into pain therapy. What she does helps people.”
He’s not surprised by her success. “She had the drive and initiative to do it,” said Carl. “Case has been a big part of her life. It made her who she is today.”
A number of fellow CWRU alumni are now top officers at SPR. That includes Dr. Josh Boggs, the chief scientific officer and senior vice president of research and development at SPR’s office in North Carolina.
“A majority of the world’s experts and pioneers in neuromodulation can trace their educational lineage and connections back to CWRU, and Maria and I were both fortunate to have been able to train with several of them,” Boggs said. “The university has a longstanding tradition of professionals who drive meaningful change, and Maria is a prime example of that.”
In the future, the top priority for the firm is continued growth, Bennett says. Because that will only enhance what she calls “the best part of the
Brian Albrecht, a Cleveland freelance writer, was an award-winning reporter for The Plain Dealer. To comment on this story please email casealum@casealum.org.
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