CINCINNATI — December 2, 2024 — The Cincinnati Regional Chamber is pleased to announce the 2025 class of Great Living Cincinnatians: James M. Anderson, Dolores J. Lindsay, Charles R. Scheper and Geraldine “Ginger” B. Warner. Inductees join a prestigious group of 172 awardees, all of whom have made lasting and significant contributions to the Cincinnati region in their respective fields.
“Being named a Great Living Cincinnatian is the highest honor an individual in our community can receive. On behalf of the Chamber’s Senior Council, I’m pleased to welcome this year’s extraordinary group – James M. Anderson, Dolores J. Lindsay, Charles R. Scheper and Geraldine “Ginger” B. Warner – who have made significant lasting contributions and who have exemplified a full life of service and good works to this community,” said Brendon Cull, CEO of the Cincinnati Regional Chamber.
Great Living Cincinnatians are recognized by the Cincinnati Regional Chamber for service to the community; business and civic attainment on a local, state, national or international level; leadership; awareness of the needs of others; and distinctive accomplishments that have brought favorable attention to their community, institution, or organization.
The 2025 honorees will be installed as Great Living Cincinnatians at the 2025 Cincinnati
Chamber Annual Dinner at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center, Thursday, February 27, 2025. Learn more about each leader below, and reserve early. Table and individual reservations are available via cincinnatichamber.com/annual-dinner or phone 513.579.3111.
What: Cincinnati Regional Chamber Annual Dinner
Legacy & Promise: A Celebration of Leadership
Where: Northern Kentucky Convention Center
When: Thursday, February 27, 2025
5 p.m. Cocktail Reception
6:30 p.m. Dinner & Program
Download photos of the 2025 Great Living Cincinnatians here. Please credit “Cincinnati Regional Chamber/Ross Van Pelt Photography”
Bios
James M. Anderson
That is how many messages are compiled in a black binder. All sent on the occasion of Jim Anderson’s retirement announcement on April 6, 2009, all preserved in individual plastic covers.
A sample:
- It will be difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a leader with more commitment to our entrepreneurial endeavor.
- I have passed you several times on my way to my floor and you have always had a smile and a ‘hello’ for me. I really appreciate that.
- Congratulations and welcome to the ‘Perspectives Club’. You should be quite proud.
- I just wanted you to know that you have made a difference in my life and I appreciate it.
When Anderson returned from service in Vietnam in 1968, a captain and decorated member of the 1st Infantry Division with three bronze stars, nothing directly foretold his future as an attorney or his celebrated tenure as CEO of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
But the experience was foundational.
“As I’ve reflected on [my service] over the years, I’ve really learned a lot,” said Anderson. “Being occasionally under fire and always under the threat of indiscriminate violence settles you down. You go through a period like that and what I’ve found, in later life, in the practice of law and being in adversarial, high intensity, high pressure situations, I’m pretty much always calm. I attribute that in part to having experienced a year’s exposure to random violence and survived it.”
Born in Chicago in 1941, Anderson moved to Cincinnati with his family when he was five. Dedicated attention from his sixth grade teacher Miss Niesch was a turning point in his life.
“When I took the Children’s job and it was broadly announced, she wrote me a note and said nice things,” said Anderson. “I wrote her a note back, thanking her for the turnaround that she orchestrated.”
He found a career role model in his high school girlfriend’s attorney father, eschewing the engineer pipeline many classmates were taking.
“I applied on a lark to Yale, and got in,” said Anderson. “The culture of the Yale environment was extraordinary and just dramatically different from anything I’d lived in.”
After graduating in 1963, he decided to broaden his horizons to the south, attending Vanderbilt Law School in Tennessee.
“That was a time when civil rights activism was prominent, and I wanted to get to know the south better, so I thought I’d go to a southern law school,” said Anderson.
Good thing he did. He met his future wife, Marge, at a party in March of 1965, and then asked her out to the law school dance.
“We spent the whole time talking outside about all of life’s fundamental realities, what our aspirations were,” said Anderson. “I remember coming back from that evening and I told my buddy who was driving that I was going to marry her.”
They married the following January. Anderson graduated in 1966 and began Army active duty in the fall and then was sent to Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. After his return, their first of four children was born, he joined Taft.
“Law firm life opened an unlimited number of doors and you could choose which ones you wanted to pursue, which ones quickened your pulse,” said Anderson.
He joined the board of the Cincinnati Stock Exchange (later National Stock Exchange) in the 1970s. He helped them develop an electronic trading system, simultaneously sparking an interest in technology and entrepreneurship. Anderson became Chairman of the National. Stock Exchange in 2007.
He has held many board positions, and served as the 2006 campaign chair for United Way. Jobs after Taft included as president of U.S. operations at Xomox Corporation and a role with Emerson. But it was a board position with Cincinnati Children’s that would lead to his most prominent chapter.
On the board since 1979, Anderson became chair in 1992. He led the development of a strategic vision for the hospital’s success, and led a search committee to replace outgoing CEO Dr. Bill Schubert. With no standout candidate in sight, and Anderson’s vision lying in wait, the answer was clear to everyone but him.
“They met without me and decided I should take the job,” said Anderson. “I did not expect that.”
After consulting with Marge, and encouragement from friend, mentor and fellow committee member Geoff Place, Anderson accepted.
“One of the themes that was important to me was to raise the level of excellence at Children’s of all the infrastructure equal to where the doctors were, and raise the level of performance substantially,” said Anderson.
Drawing on his layperson experience, he focused on systems and improvements. The Every Child Succeeds program debuted in 1999. While the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association chair, he got buy-in for a collective improvement of safety in children’s hospitals statewide which became national – Solutions for Patient Safety. Children’s was # 10 among U. S. News and World Report Best Children’s Hospitals in 1997 and rose to #1 in 2023. The James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence was created in 2010, a catalyst for continued improvement of children’s health. He is the director and former chair of CincyTech USA and many other boards.
“I’m uneasy with the status quo,” said Anderson. “I believe everything is improvable and so I want to enable people to be their best and do their best with the resources they have available and I want to supply them with resources to do even better.”
Dolores J. Lindsay
At 87, Dolores J. Lindsay still likes to drive through the part of Walnut Hills where she grew up.
“Whenever I’m in the community, I like to reflect on the warm family connections I formed not only with my blood family, but with my neighbors and my community,” said Lindsay.
In no small way, Lindsay has recreated that safety and caring atmosphere through the founding of the HealthCare Connection, where she devoted 53 years as a champion for equal access to health care.
Born in Cincinnati during the 1937 flood, Lindsay is the eldest of three children. Raised by her mother and grandmother, she worked at Friedman’s Dress Shop downtown after school. She often stopped for lunch at the nearby Orange Bar, where she met her future husband, Arthur.
They married after she graduated high school, moved to Lincoln Heights, and went on to have five children, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Lindsay is a devoted grandmother, and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren are the joys of her whole life. Arthur passed away in 2013, but family was and remains extremely vital to her.
“My grandchildren have all lived in general close proximity to us, so they got the benefit of cousins and those beautiful family relationships that I myself experienced in my youth in Walnut Hills,” said Lindsay. “That was a great blessing to me and my husband.”
While Arthur worked, Lindsay made a home for their children. During high school, she had considered pursuing nursing, but was discouraged when it was hinted that she wouldn’t be accepted in the profession as a Black woman. It wasn’t until 1967, pregnant with her fifth child, that she reengaged with the healthcare field.
“I was inspired by the collective activities during the Civil Rights movement to get involved,” said Lindsay. “There were no primary care physicians practicing in Lincoln Heights, and I wanted to help bring access to my community.”
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 established the Health Center Program as a way to improve health care among marginalized and underserved communities in the nation. The then-mayor of Lincoln Heights called a meeting of community agencies to join in the movement. Lindsay was vice chair of the St. Simon’s PTA, where her children attended, and she attended in lieu of the chair. This proved fortuitous.
“That meeting showed me that it was possible to make a difference and improve lives through equal access to health care, and I wanted to help make that happen,” said Lindsay.
St. Simon’s priest, Father James Francis, galvanized an ecumenical effort to create a local option to access primary health care, and they were off the races.
“Lincoln Heights could not have done this alone,” said Lindsay. “Not only did we receive an initial $10,000 grant from the city of Lincoln Heights, but Father Francis brought other local denominations – like Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and others – together for this unified goal that would change all of our lives. He also provided a four-room apartment to get us started.”
Initially called the Lincoln Heights Infirmary, this established Ohio’s first health care center. It was such a community effort that each church involved paid the rent, utilities and phone bills on a rotating basis. The group buy-in is what led to the HealthCare Connection name of today, underscoring the connections of what would grow to serve 23 political jurisdictions and 46 census tracts in northern Hamilton County.
“We discovered that not only were some Lincoln Heights residents in need of health services, but there were pockets of poverty and need outside of our city, and we were committed to serving them, too,” said Lindsay.
Doctors, nurses, and medical professionals staffed on a volunteer basis. Dental services in the basement were funded by Cincinnati Dental Association through Christ Church Cathedral.
Lindsay’s role transformed from front office volunteer to service coordinator to administrator.
“I had the opportunity to go back to school, at the University of Cincinnati, and studied health care administration,” said Lindsay. “I thought I needed a medical background, but I realized I didn’t. I learned how to manage and coordinate the efforts and activities of the organization, build relationships, and fundraise.”
She even went back to school a second time, continuing her education at the University of Southern California through a program called On the Job, On the Campus. Lindsay attended seven-day intensive semesters during the two-year program, earning her master’s in Public Administration.
Lindsay served on many boards, including the Cincinnati Community Action Agency, and received many awards and honors, among them Enquirer Woman of the Year in 1996. She is an Alpha Kappa Alpha Sigma Omega chapter member.
During her tenure, THCC expanded services to a center in Mount Healthy in 1987. They worked with the Head Start Program to establish children and family health services in Forest Park in 1996. They established a school-based health center in 2013 in the Princeton School District. Lindsay led THCC until her retirement in 2020.
“It was not a career for me, it was a ministry,” said Lindsay. “I loved every moment of it – the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Charles R. Scheper
Chuck Scheper is a grateful man. Perhaps that’s to be expected, 32 years after beating a devastating stage 4 cancer diagnosis. Every year since is part of a renewed lease on life. But it’s more than that.
“One of the things I promised myself afterwards was I always wanted to look back five years and say, ‘I wouldn’t change anything,’” said Scheper. “It’s caused me to make some pivots in my career to take on some of the challenges and opportunities that have arisen.”
Like being a self-proclaimed “accidental” mayor of Covington for 14 months. Or landing in the chairman’s seat at Bexion Pharmaceuticals, helping raise funds for an incredibly promising new cancer drug.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a resume,” said Scheper. “Because my jobs are all sort of serendipitous connections [or] opportunities that would arise.”
Not that he isn’t qualified. He graduated Thomas More College, with a degree in accounting, beginning his career as a staff accountant for Price Waterhouse in 1974. Scheper moved to client company Union Central, then to Manhattan National Life Insurance, followed by seven years at Pioneer Financial Services. He retired from Great American Financial Resources as chief operating officer, in 2010. Then came Bexion, and his swerve into mayorship.
But we’ll get to that in a minute.
Born in 1952 and raised in Edgewood, Scheper grew up in a large and loving Catholic family, the middle of nine siblings. He met his wife, Julie, and they married in 1977. They went in with friends to purchase a property at Fifth and Russell in Covington, gutting the place, spending several years and thousands of hours renovating.
“It kind of got our love for the city really [started],” said Scheper. “When we got married, I’m sure we were thinking, ‘We’ll work for a little while, start the family, move to the suburbs. But that wasn’t the plan that ultimately worked. But it’s still a pretty good plan.”
The Schepers spent ten years trying to have children. After two miscarriages and many fertility treatments, they decided to remain childfree. They turned their focus to mentorship, particularly through the Covington Partners Organization. (Which Julie, a school counselor, helped found,, now known as Partners for Change.) Julie mentored a teen named Lesley, and Chuck mentored her younger brother Chris. The four remain close to this day, 18 years later.
“The tagline they had was, ‘Mentor one student and change two lives,’ and it’s really true,” said Scheper. “
In 1992, they purchased their next fixer-upper, the former carriage house of the historic Carneal House in Covington. Scheper had been promoted to president of Manhattan National Life Insurance. Then he felt a lump on his neck.
“Within a couple weeks, [I] found out that I had stage 4 cancer, and the books said it wasn’t curable,” he said.
It was non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Scheper was 39. Looking for a second opinion, he found Dr. Lee Nadler at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He suggested a clinical trial, which included a bone marrow transplant.
“We all fear cancer, and I was no different,” said Scheper. “But there was something – and I can’t interpret it other than grace – that came upon me, that once I met Dr. Nadler and heard the aggressive approach he was going to take, with the best shot at curing the cancer, I had a calmness that came over me. I wasn’t fearful of dying. I knew that there was a good likelihood that I would die. But it’s hard to explain…I said, ‘Okay, I’m ready for the game. Buckle your chin strap and let’s go.’”
Scheper received chemotherapy for six months before the bone marrow transplant in Boston. He was in the hospital for 30 days. For two days, he had “mega” doses of chemo – about 1,000 times the magnitude of what he had in the prior six months – followed by three days of total body radiation.
“The nurses affectionately refer to it as a trip to Chernobyl,” said Scheper. “It is effectively the equivalent [of] standing in front of the reactor when it blew up.”
Today, he’s cancer-free. He’s still friends with Dr. Nadler, crediting him and Julie with saving his life.
And now, the mayor bit. In 1999, Scheper led a commission reviewing the city of Covington’s operations. The “Scheper Report” would save money but was largely unadopted. Fast forward to 2011. Scheper had retired. Two of Covington’s major employers were leaving. Union contracts were stalled. The then-mayor resigned and Scheper was asked to replace him. He said no – at first. But then he considered his own advice: Would he regret saying no, five years down the road?
“So I became the reluctant, accidental mayor of Covington, to fill out the mayor’s term of 14 months,” said Scheper.
Under his leadership, the Scheper Report was implemented, reducing the budget by ~$5 million. Scheper has held many board positions and was instrumental in the revitalization of Covington’s business district, particularly through the Catalytic Development Funding Corporation of Northern Kentucky. He invested early in Bexion, and became board chair, a position he holds to this day. Scheper continues to keep his promise to himself.
“It gives you license to change, if change is necessary,” he said. “Just to make sure you’re always doing things that are meaningful and significant.”
Geraldine “Ginger” B. Warner
Not long after Geraldine Warner turned four years old, her parents threw her a fifth birthday party. Two weeks later, she had a sixth birthday party. After three cakes in one month, she could confidently tell everyone she was six years old, and off she went to the first grade.
“I was so nervous,” said Warner, reflecting on a time nearly eight decades ago. “But there was something about me. I must have been taller. Or I looked older than I was.”
With red hair that her father described as “the color of the sunset,” Ginger Warner quickly adjusted. In first grade, she was mastering the second grade lessons. She was a promising golfer and was even recruited to play on the ladies’ tour. She was pretty good at Irish dancing, too.
The nuns who taught Ginger in high school were “the people who first inspired me how to live my life,” said Warner. According to them, she said, “there wasn’t anything that any of us couldn’t do.” Ninety-four year old Sister Mary Avila, a semi-cloistered nun who had a special dispensation to paint in the Metropolitan Museum of Art , taught Warner about pastels and oil paintings. The Mother Superior insisted Ginger, a glee club member, learn Mozart’s Mass in C Minor.
Art and music became her passion, and later in life she would dedicate her time to sharing that love with the people of Ohio and Cincinnati.
Warner went to Cornell, one of two Ivy League schools admitting women at the time, and studied economics. Law school at NYU followed, and Warner became a successful lawyer when just 1% of practicing attorneys were women.
She worked in New York, DC, and Paris. On top of a promising career in corporate law, her life was full of adventure, spending time in theaters, attending concerts, and meeting lifelong friends.
Her career took her to DC, where she joined a development company and eventually met her husband, David. In her new role, she found herself to be talented at advocacy. She relied on her legal skills and established relationships to handle complex issues. As she and her husband moved across the country, from DC to LA to NY to Indianapolis, and eventually, to Cincinnati, Ginger continued to work and manage various parts of the development business. In each city, she found time to volunteer and engage in the arts.
When Warner arrived in Cincinnati in the early eighties with her husband and two children, she continued a pattern of immersing herself in the local arts culture. She joined the board of the May Festival, one of her great passions. There, she met Louise Nippert, Cincinnati’s most prominent and generous arts benefactor, and 1995 Great Living Cincinnatian. “I admired her so much. She was lovely, quiet, and unassuming,” said Warner of the woman she still refers to respectfully as Mrs. Nippert.
Before long, there seemingly wasn’t an arts organization in Cincinnati that didn’t benefit from the generosity and enthusiasm of Ginger Warner. Over four decades, she served and supported generously the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Taft Museum of Art, Ensemble Theater, May Festival, and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
And her love for the arts extended across Ohio. In 1997, Governor George Voinovich appointed her to the Ohio Arts Council. She’s served continuously since then, reappointed by multiple Governors of both parties. She’s currently the organization’s Chair.
In that role, and with the “team,” as she refers to her colleagues at the Ohio Arts Council, Warner drew on lessons from early in her career. “I love the challenge of being persuasive with people,” said Warner. Persuasive is an understatement. When she started her work, Ohio funded the arts in 53 counties. Today, thanks to Warner’s advocacy, all 88 Ohio counties receive arts funding, ensuring Ohioans can access and enjoy arts no matter where they live.
An avid gardener and enthusiast for the natural world, Warner served on the Great Parks Board and joined local garden clubs. Thanks to an invitation from her friend Mrs. Nippert, she joined the board of Greenacres, an organization she still serves today.
Governor John Kasich called on Ginger to serve in 2012, asking her to join the board of the University of Cincinnati. As a Trustee, Ginger recalled her time at Cornell and her frustration at inequities between men’s and women’s sports. In a fitting tribute, Warner created the Women’s Excellence Fund to permanently support UC’s female athletes.
Still an active volunteer and leader in 2020, Warner was in a meeting when she felt a gentle pressure on her chest. Doctors soon realized she was having a heart attack. Weeks of intensive care went by, and after a few scary moments, Warner was released from The Christ Hospital. Her treatment led to a friendship with Christ Hospital CEO Deborah Hayes. Soon, Christ would recruit a new doctor specifically to lead women’s heart health efforts. Today, Dr. Odayme Quesada is the Ginger Warner Endowed Chair for Women’s Health, leading an institute that will do groundbreaking research and treatment for years to come.
Warner’s eclectic and fascinating life has been one the nuns at the Academy of the Holy Angels would have admired. She shared her passions with the world by generously supporting the arts and culture in Ohio, and she excelled in everything she tried. Through it all, Ginger Warner, a 2025 Great Living Cincinnatian, remained humble and graceful as she reflected on her life so well lived: “I had an angel on my shoulder my whole life, truly.”
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About the Cincinnati Regional Chamber
The Cincinnati Regional Chamber is the premier business and civic organization dedicated to growing the vibrancy and economic prosperity of the Cincinnati region. To achieve its vision that Cincinnati is a growing, thriving region where everyone belongs, the Chamber seeks to grow our economy, grow our population, and grow our cultural vibrancy — with the foundation of a strong business community — to foster a welcoming environment for all. The Chamber’s membership offerings, signature leadership programs, government and regional advocacy efforts, community events such as BLINK and Oktoberfest as well as key partnerships with organizations like Cincinnati Experience, Cincinnati Compass, Cincinnati Minority Business Accelerator, and the Workforce Innovation Center lead the way in making that vision a reality. For more information, visit cincinnatichamber.com.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Amy Fitzgibbons, Vice President of Marketing & Communications, Cincinnati Regional Chamber afitzgibbons@cincinnatichamber.com | 646.369.5406
