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B Y A M AND A DEPERRO P h ot o cour t es y o f Ca r d in a l Hea l t h
To the Beat of His Own Cardinal Health CEO George Barrett still knows how to rock ‘n’ roll
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ook around the City of Dublin – George Barrett can be spotted everywhere from the Dublin Rec Center lap pool and the walking paths that run throughout the City to, of course, the halls of the Cardinal Health headquarters off of Emerald Parkway, where he is chairman and CEO.
Though Barrett is the CEO of a Fortune 500 health care company that boasts a huge number of employees – Cardinal Health employs close to 4,500 people in the Dublin area alone, by Barrett’s estimate – this was never his goal. As a college athlete, musician and son of a poet/teacher mother and a therapist/musician father, Barrett’s original dream was to become a professional soccer player or make it big in the music industry. After moving from his birthplace of Connecticut to New York for school and sustaining an injury that ended his soccer career, Barrett decided to pursue music full-time. He gravi10 • August/September 2016
tated to New York due to an opportunity in the opera world, but his interests lay more in club performances, singing and songwriting. Then, Barrett was offered a life-changing opportunity: move to Los Angeles and become a professional musician. “I loved the part of life with the singing and the writing and the recording,” says Barrett. “I didn’t like the other parts; having to deal with agents and the booking guys and the casting people and the business stuff, and also the lifestyle, which is hard to describe if you haven’t lived it.” Instead, Barrett declined the offer, citing his relationship with his now-wife, Debbie Neimeth, as a factor in the decision as well. Next, Barrett decided he’d go to law school, but after being pressed by Neimeth’s father, Dick, Barrett realwww.dublinlifemagazine.com