Kevin W. Leary founded VPNE Parking Solutions in 1990 and currently serves as the company’s chairman and chief executive officer. VPNE provides parking services to healthcare facilities and office buildings and provides shuttles and buses to a variety of businesses, ranging from Brigham and Woman’s Hospital to the Mandarin Hotel and the Prudential Center in Boston.

Born in Boston and raised in Milton, Mass., Kevin is a third-generation Irish American. Both his father, Joseph F. Leary, and his mother, Mary F. Leary (neé Nolan) have ancestry in County Cork. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Boston College and spent the next several years in the U.S. Navy, serving two tours before embarking on a 25-year career in the investment banking business and eventually founding VPNE.

“For a country as small in area as Ireland, it is extraordinary that its people have had the impact on the U.S.A. and the world itself,” he says. Kevin and his wife Mary Kelleher (whose parents were both born in Co. Clare) have six children, Nora, Kevin, Matthew, Tim, Erica, and Theresa, and, “the joy of my life,” 14 grandchildren.