Class XLI April Speaker Bios April 16, 2020 Robert G. Riney President, Healthcare Operations and Chief Operating Officer Bob Riney was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Henry Ford Health System in 2003 and President, Healthcare Operations/Chief Operating Officer in 2017. In this role, Bob oversees all hospital and service operations for the six-hospital health system consisting of more than 60 clinical locations, 30,000 employees and annual revenues of $6 billion. In addition, Bob is responsible for Corporate Information Technology, Corporate Facilities & Security, International Strategies, and the System Chief Nursing Office. Bob, a graduate of Wayne State University, joined Henry Ford Health System in 1978 and has had the privilege throughout his career to work in almost every business unit in the System. As a result of this rare career track, he has a deep understanding of health system operations and organizational culture and its impact on operating performance. His relationship and negotiation skills, as well as his ability to translate complex challenges into actionable solutions, have served him and Henry Ford Health System well. Bob has held numerous Henry Ford Health System leadership positions, including: senior vice president and chief administrative officer (2002–2003); senior vice president and chief human resources officer (2000–2002); and vice president of organizational design and effectiveness (1998–2000). Bob is a passionate contributor to the overall quality of the community as well as his profession, and he is often sought out for input on major community strategic issues. His current board and community roles include: board member, Nemours Foundation – one of the country’s largest foundations; vice chair, National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL); board member, past- chair, Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA); board member, Detroit Zoological Society; board member, M1 Rail Transit Authority; board member, The Parade Company; and, board member, Hudson-Webber Foundation. Bob’s past board and community roles include: board president, Mosaic Youth Theater of Detroit; board member, Wayne State University School of Business Administration; board president/board member, Dominican Healthcare Board; board chair/board member, Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau; board member, ACCESS; president, American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration; chair, Leadership Detroit; and board member, American Hospital Association Commission on Workforce. Omari Rush, Executive Director, CultureSource Chairman of the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs Omari Rush has engaged the arts as both a passion and profession, and in each mode, he continues to enjoy discovery and deepening impacts. As executive director of CultureSource in Detroit and as the governor-appointed chairman of the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, he advances efforts to have creative and cultural expression thrive in diverse communities. Complementing that work, Omari is a board member of Arts Midwest in Minneapolis and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies in Washington, D.C. Omari earned degrees in music from Florida State University and the University of Michigan, and extended his love for learning by managing the K-12 education program of the University Musical Society (UMS), by serving on the John F. Kennedy Center's Partners in Education National Advisory Committee, and by serving as the chairman of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation. A lapsed clarinetist, Omari now uses his voice to co-host an arts-focused radio show on WEMU- FM and recite Robert Frost poetry. Rochelle Riley, Director of Arts and Culture for the city of Detroit. The author, essayist, blogger and arts advocate ended a nearly 20-year stint in 2019 as a columnist for the Detroit Free Press, where she was a leading voice for children, education, competent government and race. She is author of “The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery” (Wayne State University Press, 2018), which garnered rave reviews and remains one of the Top Ten sellers in Michigan’s independent bookstores. She travels the country hosting conversations about the burden that America still bears because it refuses to deal with the aftermath of American enslavement. She also is co-author of the upcoming “That They Lived,” a collection of essays and photographs about famous African Americans that all children should know (Wayne State University Press, 2021). She makes frequent television and radio appearances, including on National Public Radio and on WDIV-Local 4 and “Let It Rip,” with Huel Perkins on Fox2 Detroit. She worked previously at The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, The Dallas Morning News and The Washington Post. Rochelle has won numerous awards, including two National Headliner Awards (2019 and 2004), numerous NABJ Salute to Excellence Awards and awards from Associated Press-Managing Editors. When she was recruited to the Free Press in 2000, her debut column called for the city school district to be shut down. In 2010, just months after Detroit voted to elect council members by district for the first time in a century, Rochelle – working with a data thinktank and the newspaper’s design team – created seven proposed districts to show voters what their piece of the pie could be. She held town halls in each area to encourage residents to embrace their neighborhoods and the idea of improved accountability from council members. The city council later created seven council districts that looked very much like the ones she created. When the governor and legislature couldn’t balance the state budget without cutting education funding, she convened a kitchen cabinet of female financial experts, and they balanced the budget – in two days – without cutting education. And in 2015, she joined the campaign to raise funds to test rape kits that had been found abandoned in a police storage unit. She helped one women’s group raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for those tests. Rochelle received the 2017 Eugene C. Pulliam Editorial Fellowship from the Society of Professional Journalists to study how trauma impedes how children learn and the 2017 Ida B. Wells Award from the National Association of Black Journalists “for her outstanding efforts to make newsrooms and news coverage more accurately reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.” She received the Will Rogers Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists for community service, the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and the 2020 Daily Tar Heel Distinguished Alumnus award at UNC. Rochelle was a 2007-2008 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where she studied online communities and film. She was a 2016 inductee into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame and a 2019 inductee into the N.C. Media and Journalism Hall of Fame. (Watch her acceptance speech here). Rochelle is a co-founder of Letters to Black Girls, an initiative to give letters of advice and encouragement from women across the country to girls across the country. Rochelle lives near the banks of the Detroit River with her 16-year-old dog, Desi. But the world traveler never stays at home long. She has visited 28 countries and 33 states … and counting. .