Mark Sheahan’s education in staying put

The complaint was about a purse. Graco had developed a portable, battery-powered sprayer. Its early prototypes met the technical requirements. Then customers tried it and objected to the way the power pack felt when they wore it. The engineers had solved the spraying problem. The people doing the spraying had another one.

Mark Sheahan likes this story enough to tell it as a lesson in running a company. The pack was redesigned to fit a tool belt. The product became QuickShot. A small indignity on a job site had supplied information that a specification sheet could not. For an executive whose career includes tax and treasury, it is a revealing choice of anecdote: the useful answer came from outside the spreadsheet.

Sheahan became Graco’s president and chief executive in June 2021, after joining the Minneapolis manufacturer in 1995. By the time he took charge, he had worked across corporate administration, operations and finance. His route to the top offers an unusually literal version of learning the business. He kept changing jobs without changing the name on the building.

Twenty-six years before the top job

His formal preparation combined two disciplines with a healthy respect for detail. At the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Business with an accounting concentration. He then graduated from William Mitchell College of Law with a juris doctorate. Before Graco, he worked as a senior tax manager at KPMG.

That is an education in consequences. A misplaced number or a loose definition can travel a long way. Industrial equipment has its own version of the problem: a material must arrive in the right amount, under the right conditions, at the right place. Finance and manufacturing may use different tools, but both punish an approximation that somebody has mistaken for an answer.

Sheahan entered Graco in September 1995. His early responsibilities in treasury services concerned strategic and financial activities. He became treasurer in December 1996, vice president and treasurer in December 1998, and chief administrative officer in September 2005. These were successive views of the same enterprise: how it financed itself, organized itself and decided what to do next.

A decade on the operating side

In February 2008, his responsibilities changed substantially. He became vice president and general manager of the Applied Fluid Technologies division, a position he held until June 2018. A decade running a division gave the future CEO experience beyond the corporate functions in which he had first advanced.

The distinction mattered when Graco announced its succession decision in February 2021. Board chairman Lee Mitau specifically pointed to Sheahan’s experience leading a large, complex division alongside his corporate roles. His appointment followed a succession process; it also followed years in which the board could watch him do different kinds of work.

He had returned to finance as CFO and treasurer in June 2018. Three years later, he succeeded Patrick McHale, who had been CEO since 2007. The change became effective on June 10, 2021, when Sheahan also joined Graco’s board. McHale remained employed for a transition period. For a company accustomed to long careers, the handover had a familiar tempo.

There is a temptation to compress such a career into a ladder. The more interesting shape is a circuit: financial oversight, administrative responsibility, divisional management, financial oversight again. By the time Sheahan reached the chief executive’s office, he had encountered the company from several directions. Each move had given him a different set of questions to ask.

The company picnic had a helicopter

The public executive can sound measured. His recollection of a company celebration has rather more rotor noise. In a LinkedIn post, Sheahan remembered Minnesota governor Arne Carlson arriving by helicopter at Graco’s Koch Center for a ribbon-cutting. Carlson spoke about the company’s history, proclaimed “Graco Day” in Minnesota and stayed briefly for the company picnic.

Sheahan’s verdict was affectionate: “Great memories, great company”. It is a small glimpse of how a long tenure accumulates. Alongside promotions and financial statements sit buildings opening, colleagues gathering and a governor making an entrance that would be difficult for the next picnic committee to improve upon.

The memory also places him inside a business that was expanding during his early years there. Graco’s account of the 1990s includes new facilities and a European headquarters in Belgium. To remain at one company for decades can mean watching a familiar place change repeatedly. The address on a career history conceals a considerable amount of movement.

Staying put, moving around

Asked in a 2024 conversation why he had stayed so long, Sheahan did not produce a single career-defining revelation. He talked about the chance to try different things. Manufacturing, in his telling, contains many careers under one roof: sales, engineering, marketing, procurement, legal work, customer service and finance.

His own history gives the argument some weight. Staying at Graco had allowed him to cross functions and eventually run a division. He described a culture that moves people into other areas when their interests and skills fit. The proposition is appealingly practical: professional variety need not always require a farewell email.

He also spoke about working hard without letting work consume everything, and about time with family outside the business. These are his stated reasons for remaining, rather than a theory imposed on his career afterward. Opportunity and belonging appear together in his explanation. A company can keep someone by continuing to give that person somewhere else to go.

“There’s really something for everyone.”

Mark Sheahan, on careers in manufacturing, 2024

The factory floor is part of the itinerary

His public travel notes bring the career argument down to ground level. In November 2025, COROB described a visit by Sheahan to its India factory in Nandigram. The visit included manufacturing operations, quality and sustainability initiatives, conversations with employees, and a discussion with the local management team about capabilities and growth.

Sheahan’s own accompanying message was brief and enthusiastic, ending with “GO GRACO!!” The double exclamation marks are a modest departure from the language of an earnings release. The factory’s account is more formal, but the activities are concrete: looking at production, meeting people and discussing what the operation could do next.

In another post, he described time with colleagues in Maasmechelen, Belgium, and customers and distributors in Germany. He said those interactions helped shape the company’s focus. This is a recurring feature of his public account of leadership: the business becomes more legible through conversations with the people making, selling and using its equipment.

Another board, familiar questions

In May 2024, Tennant Company appointed Sheahan to its board. The Minnesota-based cleaning-equipment manufacturer was seeking experience that crossed financial strategy, global manufacturing, acquisitions and product development. Tennant CEO Dave Huml emphasized that combination when welcoming him.

The connection makes industrial sense. A cleaning machine and a fluid-handling system belong to different product lines, but their makers share questions about reliability, service and the economics of a customer’s working day. Sheahan’s current Tennant biography lists him on the audit and executive committees. His Graco biography also identifies a role on Fernweh Group’s board of managers.

These connections broaden the picture of an executive often described through one employer. His long Graco tenure sits within a wider manufacturing network. Experience built in one organization becomes useful in another room, where the machinery differs and the questions about investment, execution and customers remain recognizable.

A centennial with work still to do

Graco reached its hundredth year in 2026. For Sheahan, the anniversary coincided with decisions about the company’s next markets. On August 31, it completed the acquisition of Valco Melton, a supplier of adhesive-application and quality-assurance systems used in packaging and other industrial production. The announcement put the cash transaction at $447 million.

Then, on October 21, Graco’s Electric Torque Machines subsidiary announced a licensing agreement with ABB for motor technology in data-center cooling towers and heat-rejection systems. The partners were targeting first installations by the end of 2029. That date matters: this was a development and commercialization program, with work ahead before an installation could demonstrate the promise.

The same day’s quarterly results supplied a less ceremonial view of the business. Third-quarter sales reached $586.4 million, up 8% from a year earlier. Reported net earnings fell 12% to $121.6 million, while adjusted net earnings rose 2%. A centennial does not excuse a chief executive from explaining the difference between selling more and earning more.

That is where Sheahan’s varied apprenticeship seems particularly relevant. The operating executive must judge what customers will use. The former CFO must judge what the company can afford and what an acquisition or investment delivers. The chief executive has to hold those questions together while the quarterly numbers keep arriving.

His story has room for a helicopter and a pair of exclamation marks. Most of it takes place in the less theatrical territory between a customer’s complaint and a working response. A power pack feels awkward. A factory has capabilities to discuss. A new application needs development. After three decades at Graco, Sheahan is still making the rounds.