January 2021 Member Spotlight - Tom Brandt

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Member Spotlight: Tom Brandt

Title: Board Member and Investor
 
Boards: Maryland State Retirement and Pension System, Maryland Supplemental Retirement Plans, the YMCA in Central Maryland, Maryland Center for History and Culture, and others
 
Length of time you’ve been a FEI member: 39 years
 
FEI leadership involvement (past and present): I was the Baltimore chapter auditor for a couple of years in the ‘80s and led a delegation to the national conference in Marco Island, Florida in 1984.
 
Work email: [email protected]
 
Work phone number: 443-223-0120
 
Tell us a little bit about your career, educational/professional background and how you got to where you are today.
 
After graduating from Duke with my undergraduate degree, I was an auditor at Price Waterhouse in Baltimore for nine years. I then moved on to serve as controller of Easco Corporation – a Baltimore-based Fortune 500 industrial company – for four years --until the Rales brothers completed a hostile takeover, and I unwisely declined an offer to be CFO of Danaher Corporation.
 
I earned an MBA from The Wharton School in 1987, while working for UNC, Inc. in Annapolis and then moved my family to Pittsburgh upon accepting an offer to be CFO of U.S. Steel’s distribution company, acquired through a leveraged buyout. After four years of acquisitions, the company was over-leveraged in a recession and we declared Chapter 11. I helped with the workout for a year, then Price Waterhouse hired me back in the Washington office.
 
After three years there, I was recruited by a venture-backed internet service provider, Digex, Inc., and helped guide its 1996 IPO. In 1997, I joined TeleCommunication Systems, Inc., an MBE based in Annapolis, and in 2000 we took it public. We grew the company to annual revenue of about $400M, sold it in 2016 and I retired. 
 
I’ve served on four public company boards, including Osiris Therapeutics in Columbia, MD, where I chaired a special committee to deal with securities compliance issues that predated my appointment to the board. Since retiring, the governor appointed me to two state retirement plan boards managing about $50B of assets. My nonprofit engagement includes the YMCA in Central Maryland, the Maryland Historical Society (now the Maryland Center for History and Culture), church-based endowments and work with Baltimore City youth. I co-invest with a venture fund and with my son.
 
Have you ever done anything out of the ordinary to apply for and/or get a job? 
 
I interviewed for an entry-level position at all eight of the Big 8 accounting firms – back when there was a Big 8. And the FEI national office worked with me in the ‘80s after my Pittsburgh leveraged buyout (LBO) employer went bankrupt, and introduced me to several opportunities.
 
What is one piece of information you wish someone had told you when you first started your finance career? 
 
Ask advice of more senior-level executives with a broader perspective on markets and careers before making big changes.
 
What do you love most about working as a financial executive? 
 
We learn how to assemble decision support information, to handle it with healthy skepticism, and influence enterprise governance.
 
Do you think it takes a certain kind of personality to thrive in finance? What traits are most important? 
 
The best folks I have worked with are effective communicators. They are succinct, and prepare thoughtfully crafted presentations of quantitative data compared fairly to benchmarks that can effectively enable good decisions.