People in Business - Mike O’Flynn, Vice President, Boston Scientific, Galway

‘It was funny to find myself in familiar but strange surroundings when I came back to Ballybrit to join Boston Scientific in 2005, 20 years after I first started here,’ he says.

‘It was an interesting but largely unplanned journey on the way.

Mike left Digital in 1993 just as hardware manufacturing was closing in Galway – to be replaced by Boston Scientific the following year.

He joined Northern Telecom as a project manager before moving on to MSL in Athlone a couple of years later and ending up in Shannon with a start-up multi-national called Bay Networks by 1997.

‘That was one of the big decisions in my business life,’ says Mike.

‘There was a risk joining a relatively unknown company – I was employee number three – and I also had to relocate my family from Galway to Limerick.

In one of those curious circles within a circle, Bay Networks was acquired by Nortel in 1998 and Mike moved back to Galway later that year.

‘The Nortel I re-joined after three years was quite different to the one I left in 1995,’ says Mike.

‘It had grown to almost 1,000 staff with a significant R&D capability as well as manufacturing, distribution and customer service.

‘It was a very professional company and in my seven years there I learned an awful lot.

‘I acquired leadership skills, worked overseas and undertook a variety of roles. It rounded me out as a business leader.

By 2001 Mike was VP of Operations in Nortel Galway just as the telecoms industry bubble was bursting.

Within a year Mike was faced with the challenge of shutting down manufacturing operations in Galway – another echo of the past, this time his Digital experience.

‘This was most difficult thing I had to do in business,’ he says.

He relocated to Ottawa for a year and returned to Galway as VP of European Operations in 2004.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.