Ingram's May 2024

Gary Forsee From Gary Forsee’s perspective, there are no self-made leaders. The experiences and influences of a Missouri up bringing, fraternity leadership in college, and mentors in the professional world all produced qualities central to his own leadership. He’s certainly had plenty of opportunities to test that thesis during the course of his career. His own brand of leadership bears a distinctly Missouri flavor, having been raised in multiple locations around the state, including Moberly, Mexico, the family farm near Fulton, close to grandparents in Cape Girardeau. Rather than a test of his youthful resiliency and ability to adapt, he says, he was able to draw something from experiences in each. “It was great growing up in that environment,” he says. “Boy Scouts, church, paper routes and all we did as kids, becomes part of who you are.” The same goes, he says, with lessons from his days at what is now Mis souri University of Science & Technology, where he earned his engineering degree before embarking on a telecommunica tions career that took him to the zenith of that sector in the U.S. From Southwestern Bell, AT&T and Global One to the CEO’s desk at Sprint, Forsee forged a reputation for navigating organizational challenges with an engineer’s cool composure, studied analysis and relentless focus on collaborations that drove quality and best practices. His work history with various companies exposed him to other successful leaders, including Ron LeMay and Bill Esry at Sprint. Learning from them, Forsee says, “was a very big deal. They had an operating mindset to pay attention to details and ask people to get engaged in everything grounded in the business. It’s very important, with the way business is divided today between sales, service or manufacturing, to learn how the business works.” After being part of a task force working to implement the federal mandate that the Bell telephone system be broken up in the early 1980s, Forsee saw an opportunity to come back home in 1990 with a growing phone company based in Kansas City. Part of that ap peal, he says, involved “the entrepreneurial little guy taking on the big guys and taking some risk there. I wanted to help make something work a bit better.” He had plenty of opportunities in that regard, with the industry roiled by advances in fiber optics, consolidations and spinoffs in a constant search for im proved efficiencies. “There were half a dozen inflection points and decisions I was involved with where I hope I can look back and say I contributed something there,” he says.

Rich Hastings If you think the hire of a single person in a large health care organization represents just another cog in the wheel, you probably don’t know about Rich Hastings. Nearly 50 years ago, Saint Luke’s Hospital welcomed him as a new administrative as sistant. It would prove to be an organization-changing addition. A decorated Air Force veteran—he earned a Bronze Star in the Vietnam War era—Hastings worked his way up the health-care chain of command, serving as COO at the hospital and eventual ly CEO, before taking the reins of the parent health-care system in 1996. On his watch, Saint Luke’s was transformed from a mother-ship hospital near the Country Club Plaza into a metro wide provider of acute-care services, with new hospital facilities built in Johnson County, Lee’s Summit and the Northland. But the system wasn’t just expanding its reach during his tenure; conditions within the system demonstrably improved. In 2003, the main hospital received the prestigious Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award—the first organization in Kansas City to have earned that distinction. In recognition of his track record as a leader, Modern Healthcare i ncluded Hastings on its list of that sector’s 100 Most Powerful People for three years running, 2004-2007. “I’m blessed to have served with many wonder ful people throughout our health system,” Hastings said when news of his retirement was announced in 2011. “It’s truly been a dream job, and for that, I’m very grateful.” Hastings was an ar dent believer that the long-standing challenges with U.S. health outcomes could be better addressed with a focus on wellness and prevention rather than care after the fact. A contributing cause of the nation’s obesity epidemic—which was already becoming evident 15 years ago—was the move by public school systems to scale back requirements for physical education instruction. By the time he retired, Saint Luke’s accounted for 11 hospitals, with additional clinics and facilities serving 67 counties in northwest Missouri and northeast Kansas, and it had annual revenues of more than $2.9 billion. Hastings’ impact extended well beyond the C-suite at Saint Luke’s; his logbook of community service in cluded time on the boards of the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, the board for what is now MRIGlobal, the Harry J. Lloyd Charitable Trust, Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, the Missouri Hospital Association, and the Health Alliance of Mid-America. In 2001, the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Com mittee honored him with its Human Relations Award.

24 I ng r am ’ s

May 2024

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