Douglas OCoyneJr

Douglas O’Coyne Jr. graduated from Gonzaga Preparatory High School in 1999 and went on to study at Eastern, where he was a business major. On nine occasions, he made it onto the dean's list.

Douglas O’Coyne Jr. has been awarded the George C. Marshall Award for being the most outstanding cadet from Eastern Washington University. The name of the award is taken from that of the famous World War II general who served as the Army Chief of Staff and introduced mass maneuvers in which soldiers gain experience under conditions that resemble those of actual combat. George C. Marshall organized the Army into units whose members had specialized training in desert, jungle and mountain fighting.

After Douglas O'Coyne Jr. graduated, he continued his business studies and received an MBA. He is now a small business consultant and an authorized agent of AFLAC, the largest supplemental insurance provider in the United States. He has several influential people working under him, including an action coach and an IT consultant. He has grown very knowledgeable in the field of business, understanding why so many entities fail and what can be done to avoid it. Some of the guidelines that he has come up with involve eliminating waste. Unfortunately, businesses of all sizes, from large to small, often incur an unbelievable amount of wastage and in many cases have no idea where all of that wasted material is going. However, the employees most certainly do, and employers can ask them what is going on and what they think could be done better; and they should be rewarded for their ideas. Carefully deciding whether each new purchase is really absolutely necessary for the successful operation of the business is another good business strategy for preventing wasteful expenditures.

Before he entered the business world, O'Coyne was with the army, beginning with Fort Polk, Louisiana, in 2004, where he was an executive officer. The next year he shifted to logistics with the brigade.

Douglas O'Coyne Jr. has been working in the private sector for six years now. In 2007 he began to supervise networks operations for Qwest Communications, Inc., a large telecommunications carrier. During this period he was responsible for training a team of seventeen people and overseeing their performance and safety. Safety was a high priority for him, and Douglas O’Coyne Jr. ensured that no major safety incident occurred during the time he was in that position. Qwest operated in fourteen U.S. states.

Training is another strong point for Douglas O'Coyne Jr., who put in a new instructional plan that cut the amount of time spent on installing Qwest products. At the same time, O'Coyne helped to increase productivity in that area—installation of telephone and broadband increased by 14 and 16 percent respectively, in a period of just six months. The team had also been underperforming; O'Coyne turned them around into one of the most highly performing teams, particularly with regard to telephone service metrics and digital subscription lines.

At Qwest, Douglas O'Coyne Jr. also made major improvements to improve sales and customer satisfaction. Qwest began making more money and also received more referrals as new strategies were implemented for targeting specific customers. Technical support crews began performing more efficiently to aid these improvements.

After two years with Qwest, Douglas O'Coyne Jr. shifted companies and began to work for AFLAC (American Family Life Assurance Company). There, he became an authorized agent and had a string of duties and accomplishments, including:

● Setting up new accounts
● Educating employees with regard to insurance policies
● Filing claims
● Managing more than twenty existing accounts and landing in excess of thirty payroll accounts—Douglas O'Coyne Jr. gained recognition as the top account opener in his region

For five quarters in a row, Douglas O'Coyne Jr. was recognized as the top producing rookie associate for the Boise region. Within a year of joining AFLAC, he was promoted to the level of certified trainer. In addition, he won the Norco/Gases Plus account. Over 1,200 employees and over 55 store locations in a number of states joined the program, which had a participation rate of 35 percent and brought in annual premiums that exceeded $157,000.

After two years with AFLAC, Douglas O'Coyne Jr. left to continue his accomplishments elsewhere. He was soon hired by Myriad Genetics, a Utah-based molecular diagnostics company, which made him an account executive. In his new position he brings in samples from patients who are suffering from various diseases, many of them so rare as to be virtually unheard of. Two of these ailments are Lynch syndrome and polyposis syndrome.

Lynch syndrome—also known as hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer—is a genetic condition that carries with it a high risk of various types of cancer, including those of the colon, small intestine, stomach, ovaries, brain, skin, upper urinary tract, hepatobiliary tract and other organs. It was not diagnosed until 1966, by the doctor for whom it was named, and the name itself was coined eighteen years later. Lynch syndrome can be divided into two types—type 1, familial colon cancer, and type 2, the kind that is associated with other classes of cancer.

The lifetime risk for colon cancer in individuals who have Lynch syndrome is 85 percent. In two-thirds of the cases where it strikes, the affected area is the proximal colon. The average age for people with the syndrome who contract gastric cancer is 56. The inherited mutations that are responsible for Lynch syndrome make DNA mismatch repair—the system by which errors in the sequence of bases on the DNA ladder—impossible.

A set of criteria collectively known as Amsterdam have been compiled for the purpose of identifying those who are at the highest risk of developing Lynch syndrome. These include:

● Having three or more family members who have been confirmed to have the condition
● Being part of a family in which at least two successive generations have been affected
● Having been diagnosed with colon cancer at least once while under the age of 50
● If it is known for certain that the condition from which the patient is suffering cannot possibly be familial adenomatous polyposis, another inherited condition that can lead to colon cancer

There are a number of inherited conditions that fall under the umbrella term of polyposis syndrome. A polyp is a type of abnormal tissue growth that forms on the mucous membrane. It is most likely to develop on the colon or stomach but can occur virtually anywhere in the body. One form of the condition is juvenile polyposis syndrome, in which young polyps appear in the gastrointestinal tract. It is the polyps themselves that are juvenile; the name does not imply that juveniles are the most likely to have the syndrome. Diarrhea, anemia, rectal bleeding and abdominal pain can occur in individuals who are afflicted with polyposis syndrome. In a majority of cases, the polyp growths are benign, but sometimes they can be malignant. Nor is the risk of developing gastric cancer very high: The risk of incidence is only 9 to 50 percent.

Juvenile polyposis syndrome can be inherited, but it can also crop up in the family sporadically. Theories about what causes the condition have changed considerably in recent years—at one time it was believed that mutations in the gene PTEN was responsible, but scientists now think that such was actually the cause of a similar, but distinct, syndrome.

Other diseases for which O'Coyne gathers samples include cancers of the ovaries and the breasts. Helping find cures for potentially deadly diseases is the calling of Douglas O'Coyne Jr.

Douglas O'Coyne Jr. has a productive past behind him, which includes working in a wide range of careers in an equally wide range of places, stretching from work in the U.S. army to communications to medicine. In all of the places that have been fortunate enough to have him on their team, Douglas O'Coyne Jr. has made a large positive impact. Patients who otherwise would not have a chance of survival have benefited from the services that O’Coyne Jr. has provided and will continue to provide. His future, in other words, consists in large part of ensuring that others have a future.

Douglas O’Coyne Jr. will continue to work to further perfect his skills as an executive and help improve business strategies as he did for Qwest. There is no shortage of need for the services and experiences that he has built throughout his professional career.