THOMAS F. O’NEIL III
THOMAS F. O’Neil III is a highly respected corporate director with broad private and public sector experience, including leadership roles in the boardrooms and C-suites of companies in the healthcare, financial services, and consumer sectors.
O’Neil partners effectively with financial sponsors and operating teams to drive ethical and sustainable growth through disruptive innovation fueled by a mission-driven culture that embraces diversity and inclusiveness, integrity, accountability, and operational transparency. An adept communicator, O’Neil thrives in high-growth, turnaround, restructuring, and crisis settings.
During a distinguished career spanning several decades, he has developed an exceptional track record of accelerating cultural transformation and restoring trust with regulators, enforcement officials, and investors. O’Neil currently serves as the chair of the Brown Advisory Funds Board of Trustees. He has chaired the Audit and Risk Oversight; Ethics, Compliance and Quality; and Nominating and Governance Committees of for-profit boards in the healthcare, financial services, and consumer discretionary industries.
In September 2021, O’Neil joined Berkeley Research Group (BRG) as a managing director. In this role, he advises boards of directors and senior leaders on, among other things, the development and successful execution of strategies to transform organizational cultures and restore trust with key stakeholders including customers, patients, investors, regulators, and enforcement agencies.
Previously, O’Neil was the global chief compliance officer of Cigna Corporation, a leading health service company with over 70,000 employees and approximately $160 billion in top-line revenue. He has held a number of positions in public companies, including executive vice chairman, general counsel and secretary of WellCare Health Plans, Inc. and senior vice president and general counsel of the MCI Group.
O’Neil has also been a partner at two global law firms, DLA Piper LLP (U.S.) and Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells U.S. LLP). During his tenure at DLA Piper, he was a Joint Global Practice Group leader and he chaired the U.S. Government Affairs Practice Group.
From 2010 through 2016, O’Neil was the founder and president of the Saranac Group LLC, a strategic consulting firm that provided healthcare governance and compliance advice to boards of directors, senior management teams, and private equity firms. Saranac is now an affiliate of BRG.
Earlier in his career, O’Neil served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the District of Maryland, a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Alexander Harvey II, and a legislative assistant to former Congressman Stewart B. McKinney.
O’Neil received an AB, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College and a JD from Georgetown University.
As an adjunct professor of law, O’Neil has taught corporate governance at Georgetown University. He is a former member of the school’s Board of Regents, the Board of Visitors of the Georgetown University Law Center, and the Board of Trustees of the Walters Art Museum. He also served as co-chair of the Advisory Board of the Georgetown Corporate Counsel Institute. O’Neil is a member of the President’s Council of Pathfinder International, a not-for-profit organization committed to reproductive health rights and equity.
O’Neil’s paternal grandfather came from Co. Tyrone. He and his wife, Nancy, whose family is from Co. Sligo, live in Baltimore.