Mohapatro Is Next CEO Of Quest Diagnostics Inc.
nkdatta8839
Indian to head Fortune 500 firm
WASHINGTON: As an electrical engineering graduate from Orissa's
Sambalpur University, Surya Mohapatra never imagined he would
gravitate one day to the area of medical diagnostics, much less head
the Fortune 500 leader in the field.
Admitted to a London hospital in 1972 when he was doing his Masters,
he saw the heart-wrenching sight of a toddler undergoing a painful
catheterization - and invasive procedure -- to determine an oxygen
leak in the heart.
"I didn't like hospitals and I don't like children crying. That was
the day I decided to work on non-invasive diagnostic tools and
techniques," Dr Mohapatra told TNN in an interview on Monday, hours
after he had been penciled in as the next CEO of the $4.5 billion
Quest Diagnostics Incorporated, the world's leading provider of
medical diagnostics.
The change-over, announced by outgoing CEO Kenneth Freeman, will see
Mohapatra take charge next May of a company ranked 391 in the Fortune
500 and 48 in the BusinessWeek 50. He will be one of the very few
India-born top executives of a Fortune 500 company, an honour he says
he never really expected when he began life as one of seven children
of an Orissa government employee.
It all began, he says, when Mohapatra Sr. returned to India after a MS
in public health engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1949. He
was a contemporary of Susheela Nayar and he wanted to return to India
and work on providing clean water to the people. The Family learning
pedigree and commitment ethos saw the first three Mohapatra siblings
achieve academic excellence - one of his brothers is a senior
scientist at Orissa's Rice Research Institute and another is a
mathematics professor at Central Florida University.
Following a masters in medical electronics and a doctorate in medical
physics from London, Surya Mohapatra joined Leigh Instruments, a firm
that specialized in making avionics black boxes. It was the kind of
company where if they made three perfect black boxes out of 100 (97
were discarded), everyone was happy because failure is not an option
in such instrumentation, he says. That gave him the grounding in
standards. Expertise in cardiac pacemakers, defibrillators and
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) followed.
By the time he had worked his way through Britain's GEC and Picker
International (now part of Phillips), he had a host of papers and
patents that marked him to be one of the top authorities in
non-invasive cardiovascular tools and techniques.
He joined Quest in 1999 and went on to become its President and Chief
Operating Officer before the board of directors made him the
CEO-designate.
In his time at Quest, the company has turned around from touch near
junk bond status to creating a $6 billion shareholder value. It has
gone on to become America's leading provider of diagnostics, serving
approximately half of the physicians and hospitals in the US,
performing more than a million tests every business day.
"It is an exciting time in an exciting field because today 70 per cent
of medical decisions are based on diagnostics," says Mohapatra. "In
times to come I believe knowledge of our genetic pre-disposition
combined with diagnostic images will change the way we live."
Mohapatra believes medical diagnostics is still very scattered and
disorganized in India, although it has improved in recent times.
Quest, he says, has no plans just yet for India because the company is
at the moment focused very much on the US and "business models that
work in the US may not work in India."
David Starr
article below and you will see that at every instance it is spelled
Mahapatra not Mahapatro.
Thanks everyone.
Dave
"nkdatta8839" <nkdat...@bigmailbox.net> wrote in message
news:c62ede76.03111...@posting.google.com...
Gandu
> Muslim wannabe bangali idiot, it is Mahapatra not Mahapatro. Read the
> article below and you will see that at every instance it is spelled
> Mahapatra not Mahapatro.
Idiot yourself - he is NOT from Bengal - but Orissa. I have Oriya friends
with surname Mahapatro - again - NOT Mahapatra. 'Mahapatra' is how a stupid
Jat bum would pronounce it - but then who can blame them?
nkdatta8839
> "David Starr" <sdi...@india.com> wrote in message news:<bov2u2$1infij$2...@ID-119373.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> > Muslim wannabe bangali idiot, it is Mahapatra not Mahapatro. Read the
> > article below and you will see that at every instance it is spelled
> > Mahapatra not Mahapatro.
The news report spells the CEO's name as Mohapatra.
>
> Idiot yourself - he is NOT from Bengal - but Orissa. I have Oriya friends
> with surname Mahapatro - again - NOT Mahapatra. 'Mahapatra' is how a stupid
> Jat bum would pronounce it - but then who can blame them?
>
> >
> > Thanks everyone.
> >
> > Dave
David Starr
"Gandu" <cpptut...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3c7c9804.03111...@posting.google.com...
> "David Starr" <sdi...@india.com> wrote in message
news:<bov2u2$1infij$2...@ID-119373.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> > Muslim wannabe bangali idiot, it is Mahapatra not Mahapatro. Read the
> > article below and you will see that at every instance it is spelled
> > Mahapatra not Mahapatro.
>
> Idiot yourself - he is NOT from Bengal - but Orissa. I have Oriya
friends
> with surname Mahapatro - again - NOT Mahapatra. 'Mahapatra' is how a
stupid
> Jat bum would pronounce it - but then who can blame them?
Gandu, you have a reading problem. I was telling NKDatta to be muslim
wannabe bangali idiot because he is bangali and he is muslim. Mahapatra is a
graduate from Sambalpur University in Orissa and his name is Mahapatra and
NOT Mahapatra as some of you muslim wannabe bangalis or hindi speakers would
spell or pronounce. NKDatta, the bangli muslim wannabe has spealled
'mahapatro' in the subject even though everywhere in the article, it is
spelled 'mahapatra'.
Gandu, your gandu friends in Orissa may have 'mahapatro' surname, but they
are not CEO like the Mahapatra described in the article NKDatta has posted.
Thanks everyone.
Dave