Legacy Award: Jack Newman

I was privileged to spend most of my career over 40 years working in the health care industry and working with management teams and traditional leadership and governing boards. I find that this is one of the best I've ever had a chance to interact with, and it's because they’re not afraid to take on tough decisions and deal with those. We are very fortunate to be able to select board members based on skill sets.

And so what Jack brought to the table was a combination of a really strong financial acumen, real strong senior executive leadership, and strong health care knowledge. And so that was a pretty rare combination to bring together because sometimes you have to put that together with 2 or 3 people. Jack came, one package. He made the health system a priority in his life.

I mean, he was all in from the beginning. He had such an amazing background for this. He came from the Cerner Corporation and KPMG, and in both places he worked in the financial parts of some health care industry topics and some health care policy topics. He's humble. He's smart. He's a great leader. He wants us to be the best we can be.

He knows we’re a pretty great organization. He wants us to continue to be even better. I will tell you that he is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. But he is a competitor. And whether that's on the golf course or whether that's with the health system, his goal was to make sure we were the best. Jack's biggest passion was looking to the future.

And so he wanted to make sure that we had goals for the future, and that we were talking about strategic growth all the time, whether it was financing, personnel, whatever it is, you need to always be ready for that next step. Vision statement of the health system is to lead the nation in carrying, healing, teaching and discovering. And every one of those were important.

I don't take lightly the first three. I'm really interested to see what happens on the discovery part of things, and we're already doing much of that. But I can see us moving forward with new therapies, with new ways of preventing diseases. And that excites me. People trust Jack Newman. He is honest. He's respected and respectful. And I think he's developed trust with the individuals of the teams that he works with.

He's chaired multiple committees over the course of the time he was on the board, and he could jump into any situation because he asks questions. He has great questions. He's a leader in our community, and we're grateful that he's been a leader on our board with our health system. He advocated in many ways for the health system and was just like the face of the health system, I feel like, for some of those people. And also, I just think he befriended people so easily. He was a great board member, and I'll always value the time I got to work with him. There were many initiatives that took place, from Olathe integration to aligning with new entities in the metropolitan area and in the outstate area, to developing proton therapy to where we were going with immunotherapy and many other disciplines.

And it excites me because we're bringing to this metropolitan area, but also care and depth of experience that hadn't been here before and were able to reach and serve the needs of so many more people, both here and people that come from afar. Jack probably was on more committees of our board than anybody, ever, and he also was our board vice chair for years, and he thrived in every one of those places, whether he was the chair of the committee or whether he was just a member of that committee.

He was always a participant, always listening, always questioning, and by the end of the day, always supporting. He's also pretty funny. I mean, he's got a really great sense of humor. And once in a while, it's been perfectly timed for that sense of humor to come into a conversation when you're, maybe it's a little stressful, and then Jack will throw something in that just kind of lightens the atmosphere.

He's pretty good at that. The definition of the Legacy Award is dedicated long term service, and I think that speaks volumes about Jack. I mean, that's what he gave to the health system. Jack is so deserving of being a Legacy Award recipient in our Hall of Fame. He's been engaged in so many different activities, and he's always available and present and supportive.

I think he's a great legacy award recipient. Jack Newman has given a substantial portion of his life to this organization, and I hope tonight he realizes how much we appreciate and respect Jack Newman. I've attended most every hall of fame dinner since I've been on the board, and I know that beginning in 2011, we named some very significant, impactful leaders to receive the award, and that my name in any way associated with them is gratifying.

Let's just hope that my name being included doesn't tarnish the reputation for any of them.