THOMAS “TOM” MCKEE UNDERSTANDS THE COMPONENTS OF SUCCESS, SUCH AS HARD WORK, GOAL SETTING, ORGANIZATION, PATIENCE, PERSEVERANCE.
Those aside, the one component that best defines his exceptional ability to succeed is that he hates to lose. “If I am going to do something competitive in sports or in business, I am going to try and win,” he says. “I’m a gracious loser but know that my aim is to win.”
Tom has been a gifted athlete all his life. As a teenager, he excelled on the basketball court, the running trails and the rugby pitch. As a young father, he took up martial arts with his two boys eventually competing on a national level. Today, he’s a fixture at the TCC gym, six days a week with a group of mates he calls “the morning crew.” He’s also an avid cyclist whose competitive nature is so keen that even the electric bikes bring out his boyish energy. “That part of me just won’t stop,” he says. “If I’m out for a ride and someone passes me, well, it’s game on.”
Tom grew up in West Point Grey. After high school, he went to UBC, where he graduated as a CPA-CGA. “I didn’t practice long as a CPA. I just figured an accounting designation would open lots of doors in business.”
In the mid-1980s, Tom began work at Rampion Enterprises as the Chief Financial Officer, eventually becoming CEO of the Richmond-based national sporting goods company. His work for Rampion included the revolutionary idea of cross-branding between sports. More specifically he struck an agreement with the NHL to put team logos and colours on a wide range of golf bags and accessories. “That type of co-branding at the time was unheard of, now it’s commonplace.”
In the late 1990s, Tom was offered an ownership share of Rampion but decided instead to leave the business and purchase his father’s company Vancouver Prosthetics. “People thought I was nuts leaving Rampion. I had a great job. Business was booming. I just felt the time was right to change. If it meant I had to start answering the phones and getting my own coffee, I was okay with that.”
Tom’s father was an amputee who had built Vancouver Prosthetics into a thriving little medical company. Taking the torch from his dad meant a lot.
It didn’t take long for Tom to quickly transform Vancouver Prosthetics into something much bigger. He purchased three complimentary companies and renamed his business Vancouver Orthopedic Group. Today, VOG is the major player in British Columbia making custom orthopedic devices.
“Rampion was a great company — the work was fun and exciting. I gave up a lot of perks, but it’s an amazing feeling to be genuinely helping people — helping people walk again.” Tom tells the story of a professional photographer who was having so much trouble rehabilitating a severe ankle injury that amputation looked like his only option. After custom fitting a complex orthosis, three days later he was climbing the Grouse Grind.
In 2018, Vancouver Coastal Health put out a “request for proposal” to orthopedic companies in B.C. to take over prosthetic and orthotic services at the GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre.
“I knew we’d have an excellent chance to win the contract and we put together a strong proposal. We won the bid in 2019 and started the negotiation process with VCH. This was the first public-private partnership of its kind for VCH and there were a lot of details to work out. The contract was completed in January 2020 and everything was set for an April 2020 opening after major renovations were completed. Then the pandemic hit. A global pandemic was the only thing we did not plan for in our risk assessment. The grand opening turned into a soft opening six months later.
“There were some blessings to a soft opening. We were able to iron out a lot of the bugs without disrupting service all that much; it also gave us time to build relationships with all the stakeholders at GF Strong.” One year after opening, the new clinic is thriving.
