Great Living Cincinnatians: Honorees

Lee Ault Carter’s commitment to civic leadership and a constant pursuit of perfection has creatively shaped Cincinnati over the last 40 years; and it will continue to shape Cincinnati for decades to come.

Carter began his career as a successful businessman at the Drackett Company and as founder of the Local Marketing Corporation. But over the last 40 years, he has devoted himself full time to community service. He has served as a trustee on dozens of boards, including the Cincinnati Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Center, WCET, Greater Cincinnati Foundation and Spring Grove Cemetery. He also has chaired the boards of institutions such as the Cincinnati Urban Design Review Board, the Fine Arts Fund, the Cincinnati Parks Foundation, the Thomas J. Emery Memorial Foundation and the Freestore Foodbank Foundation.

His reputation as a contributing member of not-for-profit boards is legendary. Betti Hinton, president of Families Forward, notes that his real ability is to “interact appropriately with members of the community” that allows a board to make “real progress” in meeting their objectives.

Carter has long recognized that the best way to shape the community’s future is to invest in its children. Inspired by the work of visionary leader Bill Strickland, Carter helped found the Cincinnati Arts and Technology Center in 2002, a local version of Pittsburgh’s Manchester Bidwell.

In many ways, Carter’s crowning achievement is his leadership as chair of the board of trustees of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Assuming the position in 1996, at the same time James Anderson became president and CEO, Carter helped lead the transformation of Cincinnati Children’s. Carter was central to the expansion of the traditional research arm of the hospital. It now is Cincinnati’s most important center of biotech and medical innovation.

And although Cincinnati Children’s has long been known as an outstanding children’s hospital, Carter, Anderson and key members of the staff refused to rest on its reputation. Utilizing an evidence-based best practices approach, the hospital embraced an uncompromising commitment to pursue perfection—a commitment that was recently documented as a case study at the Harvard Business School. In the study, Carter summarized the commitment of the hospital leadership by saying, “We will be the best at getting better.”