Ward Carter was named COO of QualTex Laboratories in February 2016. Carter had more than 31 years of experience in the laboratory diagnostics division with Abbott Laboratories, with a longtime emphasis on sales, sales management, product development, commercial operations and customer service.  He was responsible for implementing new commercial sales and marketing processes specific to customer contract and pricing development, along with ongoing customer contract and entitlement management.  Carter was also directly involved in development of commercial compliance initiatives, including customer reporting processes and new ethics and compliance guidelines specifically for the commercial organization.

At numerous points during his career with Abbott, Carter was directly involved in working with blood bank donor screening and safety testing customers, as well as with high-volume diagnostics testing laboratories. Prior to his retirement from Abbott Laboratories, Carter had general management responsibility for the US Transfusion business for Abbott Diagnostics Division.

Carter was the recipient of numerous sales, marketing, and operations awards during his tenure with Abbott, including receiving the Abbott Chairman’s Award, which was directly related to developing and negotiating a large national contract for blood donor testing.  The operations awards received recognized his ability to develop new procedures, and execute changes effectively, while maintaining and building customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

At QualTex, Carter has been instrumental in expanding the capacity footprint and introducing new products and services that expand the customer service offering, while at the same time ensuring that quality is core to everything the QualTex team delivers.

With facilities in San Antonio and Atlanta, QualTex Laboratories is one of the largest independent nonprofit biologic testing centers in the United States. It performs advanced testing services for blood, plasma and tissue donations, as well as testing to support cellular therapy and cell manufacturing, in addition to reference testing and clinical research.  As of January 2018, QualTex Atlanta is the first blood, tissue and plasma collection biologic safety testing laboratory to implement a fully automated sample management system.