Tom O'Brien
Lake Mary, Florida in the U.S.A.
Tom O’Brien and his wife, Nancy, are the proud parents of 4 adult children: Alexis, is a Professional Photographer specializing in portraits of Families and Children. She and her husband, Dave, a Packaging Enginee at SupplyONE, along with their two children, Juliana age 8 and Cooper, age 6 live outside Philadelphia; Jeff, a Sales Rep for St. Jude Medical, Inc., and his wife Laura live in Wilmington, North Carolina with their daughter, Ella and son- Dylan; our twins- a son, Chris, an Attorney in Orlando, is married to the former Lisa Pizzichillo.and have a one year old daughter, Cassidy; - finally our youngest by just 19 minutes, Chris’ twin sister, Erin, an Electrical Engineer and MBA, is a Field Clinical Engineer for St. Jude Medical Inc. Erin, and her husband, Brian, a PhD in Pharmacology, along with their 4 dogs, live in Lexington, Kentucky.
Tom and Nancy both grew up and raised their family in New Jersey. Tom, who holds a Master of Arts degree was teaching while a PhD candidate in Linguistics at New York University when he withdrew from Academic Life to begin a sales career with Pfizer in Manhattan and subsequently, Medtronic. In 1980 Tom founded a Medical Device Distribution Company. Twenty years later, Arrhythmia Control Systems, LLC had become the largest independent distributor of Cardiac Devices in the United States and was purchased by St. Jude Medical, Inc., a “Fortune 500 Company”. Shortly thereafter, St. Jude offered Tom the opportunity to become the Vice President of Sales for the ten states of the Midwest. Now “empty nesters”, Nancy who holds a BS in Business but now “retired” from raising their four children (if one can ever “retire” from raising children!), and Tom viewed this opportunity as a new page in their lives and an “adventure”, and moved to the picturesque and charismatic village of Lake Forest, Illinois on the north shore of Lake Michigan.
In 2004, having acquired the reputation within St. Jude of being an Executive excelling as an agent of change, the Company again asked Tom to relocate to assume the position of Vice President of Sales for Florida, Southern Georgia, and Alabama; a market where for years St. Jude sales had languished. During Tom’s tenure as the Vice President for this geography, sales grew to$200 MM annually and was twice St. Jude's top U. S. sales Area.