John Abele

American businessman John Abele is the retired Chair and co-founder of the Boston Scientific Corporation, a medical devices and technology firm specializing in less-invasive innovations in medicine.

Abele’s multi-billion-dollar company now owns over 2000 patents, the first of which was the steerable catheter, and employs over 13,000 people worldwide. In 2001 Abele purchased the Kingbridge Conference Centre and Institute in Ontario, Canada. Kingbridge works with the MaRS Centre on initiatives to improve conferencing, including education, problem solving, strategic planning and conflict resolution. Partly inspired by his successful globally collaborative mission to recover the World War II submarine in which his father was killed, Abele has researched the question of how collective intelligence can lead to collective capability.

Abele is a graduate of Amherst College, where he has also served as trustee, and sits on the board of a number of charitable foundations.