30 Years
Now And Into The Future
Written By: Larry Stevens
In 2011 when we commemorated our 20-year anniversary as a company, I chose to begin my commemorative article as follows:
“Brent and I have known each other since 1965: 46 years. We have worked together on and off since 1978. Other than my family, I have probably spent more time in the past twenty years with Brent Allen than any other person. I have loved and appreciated him for his passion, his good judgment, and his integrity. He has always been an aggressive advocate of the things that Med One stands for and an eloquent and effective spokesman for our company. We are first friends and second business partners.”
Here we are in 2021, and I still feel the same way. For our partnership to have endured for this long says a lot about what a great person Brent is and how lucky I am to have him as a friend and partner.
In 2011 when we were celebrating 20 years, we were looking forward to watching the next generation of leaders emerge who would make the hard decisions and lead Med One. We were also really wondering what would happen to the company in response to so many unique challenges and amazing opportunities that lay before us. Without hesitation, I can confidently state that Med One is a much different and much better company than it was 10 years ago.
In 2011, we did not contemplate that we would have a full-service rental organization with 12 offices serving over 2,500 peak-need rental customers throughout the United States. Nor that we would have more than 150 employees with over half of them working in our field offices.
In 2011, we had no plans to build a sales organization in our equipment leasing division that would locate our account managers across the country, away from our home office, and closer to our customers.
In 2011, we had not even thought about what Med One would or could become organizationally. We had not yet contemplated establishing an independent board of directors, nor had we identified the senior managers who would be tasked with leading the company during the coming years.
As I think about what it means to lead a 30-year-old company that has reached a high degree of maturity and stability, my thoughts turn automatically to the outstanding team we have in place at Med One to make the next 30-year journey. These outstanding individuals have been chosen to serve on our Senior Management Council in addition to the full-time work they do in managing their own specific areas within the company. I am very proud of the work they do individually, and I am even more proud of the work they do as a council and the wonderful counsel that they give to us. Rather than just refer to them as a homogeneous group, I’d like to introduce them individually and let you know how they serve our company.
Robb Stevens is Senior Vice President and Chairman of our Executive Committee. He also serves on the Finance and Risk Committee and the Forward Planning and Growth Committee, in addition to his role as the leader of our leasing sales division. Robb has distinguished himself with the many relationships he has established with leasing customers and vendors. He manages the relationship with one of our major vendor partners, which directs over $50 million in lease opportunities to us annually. He also manages our leasing sales organization and has been the driving force in the establishment of our field sales organization. Robb was a member of the very first class of sales reps hired at Med One as we were trying to expand our leasing sales function. He has been on board at Med One for over 19 years now.
Robb and his wife Lori are parents of four children – ranging from teenagers to elementary schoolers. Their lives are very busily tied up with their family. However, Robb enjoys golf, skiing, basketball, and biking with whatever spare time he can find.
GRADY BROWN is Vice President of Human Resources and oversees all HR issues throughout the company. He is also Co-Chairman of our Executive Committee and serves on our Human Capital and Leadership Development Committee. Grady is a relatively new addition to our team, having joined Med One in 2017. He has been a major driving force in negotiating and implementing many cost savings in our Employee Benefits offerings. Grady is highly trained for his stewardship over Human Resources, having earned his Ph.D. from LaSalle University in 2000. Grady also brings excellent outside experience to Med One, focused on distribution and transportation. We have told Grady that he has stewardship for Med One’s most important asset class – our employees.
Grady and his wife Bronwyn have two daughters, four sons, and five grandchildren. They reside in Lehi, Utah, and he enjoys all the outside recreational opportunities that Utah has to offer, including camping, dirt biking, etc. He even recently got bitten by the golf bug. In addition, he is a world-class woodworker. He is focused on everything that involves his family.
JEFF EASTON is Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. He oversees all of our finance and accounting functions at Med One and has stewardship over our second most important class of assets. Together with Bryce Ray, he is instrumental in maintaining the outstanding relationships that we enjoy with our banking partners. Jeff has been at the forefront of helping to drive Med One to the levels of prosperity that we now enjoy. Jeff’s vision established the annual financial audit that is done by an outside CPA firm. He expertly guides that process to a successful conclusion each year. In addition to these heavy responsibilities, he serves as chairman of our Utilization and Operational Efficiency Committee as well as serving on the Finance and Risk and Executive Committees.
Jeff’s smartest decision ever was to marry his wife, Camille. Together they have six children because Camille blessed him with a set of twins along the way. Jeff was an all-state tennis champion in high school and played on the varsity tennis team at BYU. His major activity outside of Med One is watching his children in their sports and other extracurricular activities. In 2018, Jeff took his family on an African safari, and he has never been the same since.
BRYCE RAY is Senior Vice President and Med One’s Chief Credit Officer and is responsible for every decision that we make to deploy Med One resources to a customer’s use. He is also responsible for seeing that we have adequate capital available to do all the leases that we do at Med One. Bryce created and now manages the relationship of a strategic group of banking partners who provide capital for our leasing activities. In addition, he serves as chairman of the Finance and Risk Committee and serves on the Forward Planning and Growth Committee as well as the Executive Committee. Bryce brings valuable industry experience and outside perspective to the table for Med One. He understands our industry and has helped Med One to become a significant and well-recognized leader in that industry. To say that Bryce has been a difference-maker at Med One would be an understatement indeed.
Bryce and his wife Suzanne have three very accomplished, award-winning children – two sons and one daughter – each of whom have excelled scholastically and distinguished themselves as peer leaders. Bryce enjoys what he does at Med One so much that he basically brings the same analytical skills that he excels in at work to his outside interests. That is except for his golf game, which is driven by pure power and athletic prowess.
CARTER ALLEN is Senior Vice President in our leasing sales division. He is chairman of our Forward Planning and Growth Committee and serves as a member of the Executive Committee, Human Capital, and Marketing Committees. Carter is also a survivor of our very first class of Med One sales reps and has been at Med One for 19 years. He has developed and manages one of our primary vendor relationships, which is responsible for directing over $20 million worth of very profitable business to Med One. Carter has done an outstanding job in developing and managing this key relationship for all the time he has been at Med One.
Carter is married to Jenn, and their family has four active and talented children – two sons and two daughters. All of them are very active in athletics and other pursuits and take up most of Carter and Jenn’s free time. Although, Carter seems to find time to still be a world-class golfer. He is usually the first one chosen when we are choosing teams for a golf tournament.
MARK Stevens is Senior Vice President of Operations. He is responsible for the successful collection of all monies owed to Med One. In other words, he is responsible for turning all of Bryce Ray’s decisions into cash. Mark manages the operation of our lease portfolio and negotiates for the purchase or return of our equipment on all expiring lease contracts. Additionally, Mark chairs the Human Capital and Leadership Development Committees as well as serving on the Executive Committee, the Finance and Risk Committee, and the Utilization and Operational Efficiency Committee.
Mark and his wife Lindsi spend most of their spare time (if there is any) trying to keep up with their three beautiful daughters. They are a very active family that is constantly on the go. Mark willingly serves as a very skilled and successful coach for his daughter Hannah’s soccer team. Occasionally, Mark sneaks some time for himself on the golf course playing a game at which he excels. He has distinguished himself as one of the golf pros at Med One.
TROY TAIT is Senior Vice President of Customer Care at Med One. We are not saying Troy is old, but the only two people that have been at Med One longer are Brent and Larry. He has, for all the years that he has been with Med One, been a pioneer of sorts. When he started, he was heading up the sales effort of a medical testing device that we were developing in the 1990s. That business was subsequently sold. After the sale, Troy pioneered the establishment of what is today our marketing department. He not only had to strategize its development, but he also had to keep the owners convinced that we needed an internal marketing capability. He proved that case years ago, and under Troy’s direction, our marketing team has been a major factor in keeping Med One at the head of the pack.
Concurrently, Troy conceived and developed our company’s technology platform and capability. He was told back then that “it would be okay to establish a company email address if he would be sure to check at least once a week to see if we had received any emails.” Not surprisingly, Troy was the only one who had a vision of what our technology requirements might be in the future. It is impossible to quantify the technical advancements that have occurred under Troy’s leadership, but today he has to check the email more than once a week because there are over 75,000 email conversations going on each month. We probably receive over 1,000 hacking and phishing attacks per day. We have a dedicated department with several employees and outside programmers focused on keeping our technology safe, secure, and “cutting edge.”
In addition to his heavy operating responsibilities, Troy serves as chairman of the Marketing Committee as well as a member of the Technology and Innovation Committee and the Executive Committee.
In Troy’s real life, he is a proud husband to Sheri, and together they have raised five outstanding children. They now have welcomed their first two grandchildren, with one more expected soon. Troy is a wonderful Grandpa, but he is also very active in participating with his children in their dreams and objectives – whether it be music, sports, or the arts.
BRAD JOHNSON is Senior Vice President and General Manager of our rental division. Brad has been with us for almost as long as Troy. He first joined us to help out in our accounting department. When we first started to offer rentals to manage our off-leased equipment, we tasked Brad with overseeing the process. Back then, it was an incidental tool for us to manage our leases. Brad has been instrumental in acquiring over $70 million worth of assets for our rental inventory and creating a division that today employs more than 90 people, which is over 60% of our total workforce.
Brad met his wife Shannon when he was a missionary in Florida many years ago, and they have been inseparable ever since. They have raised a remarkable family of two daughters and one son. They are anxiously awaiting an opportunity to be grandparents if their two married daughters will just cooperate. Brad loves to hunt pheasants with his dogs, brothers, and father - but he is also the dean of our golf school faculty and is easily able to dominate all comers on the golf course.
DOUG GREEN is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and serves as chairman of our Technology and Innovation Committee as well as being a member of the Executive Committee and the Forward Planning and Growth Committee. Doug is also a member of the initial class of sales reps and has been with us for over 19 years. His primary responsibilities include finding and developing new opportunities for Med One as well as interfacing with GPO’s, IDN’s, and other group opportunities that can advance the interests of Med One.
Doug is married to Caroline, and they have one son, Jack, who is now a teenager and right at the point where Doug and Caroline are learning to draw upon all the parenting skills that they never thought they would need. Doug is a history buff and is often able to relate important instructive illustrations that draw a parallel between what we are trying to do at Med One and historical events from the past.
So, this is the group whom we have chosen to lead Med One on a day-to-day basis and who are responsible for ensuring that the Med One culture is taught and implanted within our entire organization. We have a great deal of confidence in them individually and as a group. They are a unified group of people, and they are supported by countless others who are carrying the burden of keeping the Med One legacy strong, healthy, and vibrant.
"We are very grateful that we have been able to identify the next generation of Med One leadership."
Indeed, the view in the rear-view mirror is very pleasant and personally rewarding. It is fun to think back and reflect on the journey we have taken in the past 30 years. The view through the windshield, however, is not always quite so comfortable. It is exciting to be sure, but given what we see all around us these days, there are some daunting hazards in the road ahead. We are very grateful that we have been able to identify the next generation of Med One leadership.
We want to fight every day to ensure that what we do for our customers NEVER becomes a commodity. We must bring a freshness and a uniqueness to our marketplace every day that sets us apart from every other company. Our successes in the past 30 years tend to create a profound confidence that we will be able to continue the course for the next 30. With courage that finds its roots in accomplishment, I look forward with enthusiastic anticipation to what may lie ahead for us. And I am excited to learn where our new generation of leaders decides to take us.