Business
When Derek O'Carroll joined Brightpearl three years ago, he took on the biggest risk any CEO can take - a turnaround. Since taking the helm as CEO, Derek has led the retail operations platform from stagnant growth to more than $12 million in revenue, nearly 1,400 customers worldwide, and managing more than $3 billion in orders. Shortlisted for CEO of the Year at the Digital Masters Awards in 2018, the father-of-two is now recognized globally as a retail expert. In the 90s, Derek left his career in chemistry to found Ireland’s first online advertising agency and he never looked back. After some painful lessons learned during a market crash that took his business from $9 million in revenue to $900K almost overnight, he moved on to leading Symantec as Senior VP of Norton in EMEA. At Symantec, Derek was responsible $1.7 billion of revenues and 200+ employees globally. There, he learned about value-based management from Jack Welch’s protégé Steve Bennett. Derek has taken all of the leadership lessons and playbooks he’s learned to date to take Brightpearl to an unprecedented growth rate and an increase in average deal size by 500%. His specialties include building exceptional teams and creating winning environments, simple messaging, zero ambiguity, and training for excellence.