Kevin O'Brien served as President of the Global Consumer Products Division for the Bureau Veritas Group (BV). BV is a French multinational providing Quality, Health, Safety, and Environmental compliance and risk management services to the marine, industrial and consumer products/retail industries. Kevin created this new division for the BV Group and based its headquarters in Hong Kong, China. During his tenure the business grew from $40M with 750 people to over $500M with 8,000 people. Through a series of acquisitions and direct investment he established a global platform with laboratories and sales offices operating in 35 countries. During this period the business achieved benchmark level organic growth and profitability. He retired from BV in 2010.
Kevin also served as President of the International Publishing Group for the McGraw-Hill Companies. During his career with McGraw-Hill he also held the positions of Senior Vice President of Europe based in Maidenhead, England and Senior Vice President for Business Development based in New York City. While at McGraw-Hill Kevin served on the Board of McGraw-Hill/Ryerson a publicly traded company based in Toronto,Canada. Prior to joining McGraw-Hill Kevin worked for Digital Equipment spending 12 of his 16 years as an expatriate based in Dublin,Ireland and the European Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibilities included Group Manager for European Procurement and Global responsibility for Supply Chain Operations. He began his career with RCA Corporation and held various responsibilities in the divisional and corporate procurement function.