103. 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.”
Three Questions with Jim Anderson
What advice do you have for the next generation of Cincinnatians/Covingtonians?
Be bold, pursue excellence, start before you are ready but above all start. Cincinnati is a great place to build a world’s-best enterprise, whether it’s family, industry or service.
Do you have a motto or creed by which you live your life?
From my father – “A job worth doing is worth doing well.”
Who has been an inspirational figure in your life?
Many, but Geoff Place, a retired P&G Executive, stands out.
