Dr. Tom Brady began his career at Owens-Illinois, Inc. in 1972, just as the carbonated soft drink companies began asking their suppliers to create and offer family-size carbonated beverage containers, which required an industry-wide conversion from glass and aluminum to plastic. As a fledging Senior Scientist, Tom, along with his O-I colleagues and along with other industry plastic package suppliers, accepted the challenge and, over a short 10-year period, created an entirely new industry to supply sustainable PET packaging to the beverage, food, and personal care product industries.

During that same 10-year dynamic technology and business development era at O-I and as O-I decided to refocus on its fundamental glass container business, many of O-I ‘s talented technology and business professionals who had helped diversify O-I’s business portfolio, left O-I to either start or operate other major businesses.

“The Impact of Owens-Illinois on the World” is Tom’s effort to capture the stories of 29 of those former O-I employees who, without competing with O-I, employed their talents and O-I backgrounds, to create or nurture many dynamic and successful business enterprises.

Many of Tom’s colleagues who are mentioned in this book are no longer with us so there was little background information to draw upon and there are undoubtedly additional former O-I employees who have started companies but are not included in this history. However, it is Tom’s wish that this compilation will begin to recognize the significant contributions that former O-I employees have made to society, in addition to what they contributed during their careers at O-I.