A Legacy of Innovation in Healthcare (ft. Tom Curtin)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Welcome to DGTL Voices, where healthcare and life science leaders explore the real work behind transformation. This podcast is about people, leadership, and the conversations that move healthcare forward. Now your host, Ed Marx.

**Ed Marx** (0:18)
Ed here and welcome to another edition of DGTL Voices. Thank you for listening. We know you have so many different choices, great podcasts out there, but you've chosen to spend time with Tom and I. We're really thankful and we're going to make this worth your while. So I am excited to have Tom Curtin. He's the CEO of Amtelco with us on DGTL Voices. Tom, welcome.

**Tom Curtin** (0:39)
Thank you very much, Ed, for having me. Appreciate it.

**Ed Marx** (0:42)
I'm really excited about this because it's a very American story. And I won't say more than that. I'll just let you tell us a little bit about Amtelco as the time comes. The first time we met in person was actually at the Amtelco annual, I don't think you call it a conference, but you call it a...

**Tom Curtin** (1:00)
Seminar. Yeah, seminar.

**Ed Marx** (1:02)
It was amazing. First, the people in Amtelco are amazing people. You've done...

**Tom Curtin** (1:08)
Thank you.

**Ed Marx** (1:09)
You and your team have done a great job of creating this culture and finding just the right talent. And then secondly, the customers I met were amazing and they were doing amazing things. And I just thought we need to get out there. We need to talk. We need to have you on Ed Talks. And then maybe the kicker was we actually did like a run early in the morning of a seminar. Who shows up to that? A lot of people showed up, at least for the photograph.

**Tom Curtin** (1:37)
That was fun. Very fun.

**Ed Marx** (1:38)
It was really cool. So I'm so happy you're with us. But Tom, the most important question I have during our time is what songs are on your playlist? What kind of music do you like to listen to?

**Tom Curtin** (1:48)
Well, that's a really great question. Let's see. It goes from Elton John to, let's say, Pink Floyd to even way back when, and while she's still around, Cher.

**Ed Marx** (2:01)
Yeah.

**Tom Curtin** (2:03)
And I did see Frank Sinatra way back when in concert, so I still love listening to Frank.

**Ed Marx** (2:09)
Man.

**Tom Curtin** (2:10)
So it goes all over the map. You know, I love music. I do love music.

**Ed Marx** (2:16)
I would have loved, I would have given anything to see Frank Sinatra back in the day. That was pretty awesome. Yeah. And Cher was still kicking it at the Grammys in 2020

**Tom Curtin** (2:26)
I know. That's pretty crazy.

**Ed Marx** (2:29)
You know, you're onto something special if you withstand the test of time. So tell us your story. Like, who are you? Where did you grow up? Just what was your life like?

**Tom Curtin** (2:39)
Okay.

**Ed Marx** (2:40)
Yeah.

**Tom Curtin** (2:41)
Great question. Madison, Wisconsin, for all my life, mom and dad had seven kids, four daughters, three sons. We lived a pretty darn good life in a nice house that my dad built with a couple of his buddies across from a big park. And it was a great neighborhood, lots of kids in it. So in the summer, all the kids in the neighborhood were kicked out of their houses and sent to the park to play all day long and don't come home until dinner.
In the winter, that park turned you into an ice skating rink. And we'd go over there after school, play hockey and play keep away. And that's sort of how I got into speed skating. One of the kids who was a speed skater told his dad about me, how good I was at being the last one on the ice to get caught. So I got into speed skating in a short track and long track for five years. And that was a lot of fun, very competitive, a lot of fun. Then in high school, I did football and quickly damaged the knee, so I couldn't do football any longer. So I settled into track. And not like you, Ed, I did very short distances. I just did the sprints and relays, but had a lot of fun doing it. Then in college, I fell back onto hockey and just did intramural sports and was a goaltender for our hockey team. And we won the championship a couple years. So it was great. Yeah. Had a lot of fun.

**Ed Marx** (4:17)
Well, that sounds like really the idealistic, you know, growing up. As you were sharing all that, I could picture that, including you going around on a short track speed skating. That sounds like so cool. What a great way to grow up.