Contributed
The 2024 Class of Great Living Cincinnatians features four individuals who have left been named by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber for leaving an indelible mark on the Cincinnati area. They are servant leaders, mentors and friends. Regional Chamber leaders say they honored to recognize John F. Barrett, Sally Duffy, SC, Delores Hargrove-Young and Donna Salyers as Great Living Cincinnatians.
Join the Regional Chamber on February 29 for the Annual Dinner – Legacy & Promise: A Celebration of Leadership, our premier business event, is highlighted by the induction of the newest class of Great Living Cincinnatians, Making Black History and marks the changing-of-the-guard of the Chamber’s key volunteer leaders.
Meet the honorees:
Delores Hargrove-Youngis hardwired into helping other people. It is in her DNA. From the very beginning, the vice chairwoman of d.e. Foxx & Associates Inc. was modeled an example of offering assistance to those who needed it.
Her beginnings were humble; she grew up in Jacksonville, Florida – “we called it Southeast Georgia,” she said – with her brother and parents. Her mother was a homemaker, her father a blue-collar worker, but she was none the wiser about her economic status until visiting family told her otherwise.
“I thought, ‘How could we be poor when my parents were always helping other people?’” said Hargrove-Young.
Her parents had led by example, teaching that abundance wasn’t necessary for generosity – either of spirit and material – every time they offered a seat at their dinner table or a spot to sleep on their sofa to someone in need.
Eager to take on the world, Hargrove-Young’s first professional role was as an activities director for a geriatric program. It was here she learned even more deeply the value of generosity.
“I absolutely loved [it] because the senior citizens loved you unconditionally,” said Hargrove-Young. “They were always glad to see me. It’s a good feeling when you know that you’re helping people and they’re so glad to see you when you actually show up.”
Hargrove-Young’s next career move was to State Farm.
“I was on such a fast track,” said Hargrove-Young. “I had been there for seven years and had six promotions, and I really had decided what the next step was going to be for me at State Farm. I had some great mentors that were helping me to achieve that.”
But fate intervened. In 1986, her former husband took a job in Cincinnati, and the whole family, Hargrove-Young and her three children, followed suit – however reluctantly.
“Neither me nor our daughters were excited at the time about the move, for different reasons,” said Hargrove-Young. “I had mapped out my career at State Farm, and our daughters did not want to be uprooted from their friends. Our son, our middle child, had been in Cincinnati for two months with his dad before we arrived. He was the only one that was excited.”
Initially, her plan entailed continuing in the insurance business. Upon leaving State Farm as a senior claims representative, the company provided a glowing recommendation, and she was hired over the phone by a local insurance company and told to report to work on Monday.
“I showed up, in my blue suit, white blouse and little tie, because that was the appropriate attire back in the day for women, to find out the job had been filled,” said Hargrove-Young. “Imagine my surprise, since I spoke with the recruiter Friday afternoon. I later realized that no one knew I was Black.”
She didn’t let that dampen her spirits for long.
“What it taught me was that people can set barriers for you,” said Hargrove-Young. “However, God sometimes closes a door because He has something better for you. If I had taken that job, if it had worked out, I would have missed a major blessing.”
A conversation with Dave Foxx, founder of d.e. Foxx & Associates and formerly of Procter & Gamble, led to that blessing. That same year she moved to Cincinnati, she became president and COO of one of d.e. Foxx’s brands, XLC Services, a managed service provider. She started out in a 20,000 sq. foot office on Winton Road.
“I remember calling myself to make sure the phone worked,” said Hargrove-Young.
Over 30 years later, she has helped grow the outfit, now located on W. 9th Street, to its current roster of 1,800 employees. Under her leadership, XLC won a variety of prestigious awards, including the Eli Lilly & Company Supplier of the Year, two-time winner of the P&G Minority Supplier of the Year, Cincinnati USA Supplier Diversity Circle of Excellence, and the African American CHamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year.
“We have been able to grow our business based on the excellent service that we provide to our customer,” said Hargrove-Young. “We encourage our customers to give us the good, the bad, and the ugly. We provide a service and our motto is, ‘Improving all we touch.’”
She has applied that ethic to her own civic work in the Greater Cincinnati community. She is the immediate past chair of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation board; other past chair roles include with the American Red Cross Greater Cincinnati-Dayton Region, Go Red for Women, and the Cincinnati USA Convention & Visitors Bureau. She serves on several other boards, including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, 7 Principles Foundation, Inc., Lindner Executive Cabinet for the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, and Inspiring Service, and as secretary for the Sister Accord Foundation. She was co-chair of the MLB All Stars Game in 2015, and a past president of Advocates for Youth Education (AYE.) She belongs to the Queen City (OH) Chapter of The Links Incorporated. Awards bestowed upon Hargrove-Young include: the 2003 YWCA Career Woman of Achievement; 2012 United Way of Greater Cincinnati New Century Community Service Award for Strengthening Our Region; 2015 Girls Scouts of Western Ohio Women of Distinction Award; 2018 Boy Scouts of America Whitney M. Young, Jr. Service Award Honoree; and the 2019 Women’s Alliance Inc. Jewel of the Community and Metropolitan Award. In 2020, Hargrove-Young was named an Enquirer Woman of the Year. In 2022, she received the Northern Kentucky University Lincoln Award.
John F. Barrett is a dreamer. Sure, he’s also the Chairman, President and CEO of Fortune 500 company Western & Southern, member of a long-time Cincinnati family, and a pillar in the Greater Cincinnati community, but at the heart of his success, one simple credo can be found: he followed his dreams.
“I’ve always been a dreamer,” said Barrett. “I would think about stuff that other people just didn’t care to think about. I was learning. I was building. From your dreams you develop your vision. I want to be the best person or partner you ever dealt with.”
He graduated from St. Xavier High School and then from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in business administration. He is the only one of the six children that did not go to graduate school“The diversity of the financial services business is so exciting,” said Barrett.
After UC, Barrett intended to work two years in New York City and then go to a good business school, but after hitting Wall Street in 1971, he just loved it and stayed with the Bank of New York for 16 years. In 1983 he was asked to start a bank in Delaware under the Bank of New York umbrella, where he could continue to run their corporate business in the region and, more importantly, start a credit card business.
“I learned early on, if you work really hard, you can accomplish all kinds of good stuff,” said Barrett. “First in, last out every day. If you need something done, give it to me, and that really paid off.”
So in 1987, his father, Dr. Charles Barrett, who was named CEO of Western & Southern in 1973 and Chairman in 1984, became terminally ill with cancer. In 1987, his successor Bill Williams asked Barrett to come back, and he went.
“I saw a situation where we had a wonderful traditional company, but we needed a new strategic approach,” said Barrett. “I was given the opportunity here to spend two and a half years as CFO to learn Western & Southern inside and out. There were no promises that I would ever run it. I could see strengths and I could see weaknesses. Mr. Williams was pleased with my work and I was named president in 1989.”
Barrett was named CEO in 1994 and chairman in 2002. His clarity of vision led him to restructure the company (started, acquired or sold more than 25 businesses), opening the doors to bring a greater variety of skill sets to essential positions. He has often referred to Western & Southern as a “meritocracy,” something he feels passionate about.
When he joined the company, Western & Southern was not on the Fortune 500 list and assets totaled $3.6 billion. It has skyrocketed year after year up the charts, most recently leaping 58 spots in 2023 to land at 314. W&S now serves 6.5 million clients and its total assets have exceeded $100 billion for several years. It is one of the best performing companies in the life insurance world.
Barrett said, “His (father’s) family landed here in 1853, penniless, and they started a butcher shop. Over the years that turned into one of the largest meat packers in America (Kahn’s). My great-grandfather was head of the American Meat Packers Association in 1895.”
He has carried on the family tradition of leadership, serving on a number of corporate and nonprofit boards over the years.
When possible, Barrett guides Western & Southern towards altruistic pursuits in the city, too. Cincinnati needed to be more attractive and strategic to attract top talent to town. Working with Mario San Marco (who Barrett brought to Cincinnati from his days in NYC,) retired head of Eagle Realty, Western & Southern’s real estate wing, Barrett helped pioneer the Over-the-Rhine renaissance over 30 years ago by purchasing two of the toughest blocks south of Liberty (Walnut Street between 12th and 14th) to create affordable housing. Today, it’s thriving. Western & Southern was also instrumental in the founding of 3CDC, laying the groundwork for the Over-the-Rhine revitalization that has taken place over the last decade.
Barrett believed that a great city required great business location opportunities, and so conceived of the Queen City Square building, and the rejuvenation of the eastern part of Downtown Cincinnati.
Barrett navigated the path to keeping the Western & Southern Open tennis tournament, the oldest in the country, in the Greater Cincinnati region.
Sister Sally Duffy, SC, has 40-plus years of advocacy and service as a Sister of Charity of Cincinnati. “It’s not a career,” said Duffy. “It’s a ministry. Because you’re mutually doing what you and the Sisters of Charity Community feel like God is calling you to.”
The middle of nine children, as a young child, she knew she was Irish, Catholic, and a Democrat (her father John was a Franklin County Municipal and Appeals Court judge). And she was interested from the outset in helping others.
“My parents definitely put a focus on the common good and that’s the reason we’re here, is for love and justice,” said Duffy. “To make the world a better place for everyone.”
She began as a girls’ basketball coach while she was in high school herself, and then, while a sophomore at now Ohio Dominican University, helped found the girls athletic program at Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus. She graduated college in 1971 and then became the girls’ athletic director at Bishop Watterson, before moving onto coaching women’s basketball at Notre Dame University. Being called to religious life was not on her radar.
Duffy’s father passed away suddenly and young – just 52 – in 1969. Duffy was left grappling, working out her relationship with God.
“While at Notre Dame in 1976 a grace-moment from God helped me to conclude that God didn’t cause my father’s death,” said Duffy. “So it was more of resolving that his eternal life was better than the void, the emptiness and the loss I was experiencing.”
While at Notre Dame, she was taking doctoral classes in counseling psychology – she had received her master’s from Xavier University in guidance and counseling – with the hopes of getting a doctoral degree. As a student affairs staff member, she was also able to audit classes, and she began attending theology courses.
“One of the classes was called the Autobiography of God,” said Duffy. “The professor, John S. Dunne, was a Holy Cross priest, [and] had a quote from Pascal: ‘The heart has its reasons that reason does not know.’ It made me look at the pattern of my life, and the pattern seemed to be clear. I was always being pulled to a larger group of people, rather than just a particular person. I enjoyed time to serve and to pray.”
Religious life offered a synergy in the heart for Duffy. ‘;The circumstances seemed to be saying, ‘Go for it,’” said Duffy. “And then there’s this other part in my heart saying, ‘Let God lead and follow your heart.’”
So she did. In 1977, she left Notre Dame University and joined the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati. This Women’s Religious Community was founded by Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born saint and familiar to almost all American Catholics, and responsible for the advent of Catholic education in America.
It was a literal leap of faith.
“Anytime one of us embarks on a commitment, the unknown is there,” said Duffy. She was led to Colorado Springs and earning a master’s in public administration from the University of Colorado, and working for the Penrose-St. Francis Health System. In 1990 she was asked to serve at St. Mary-Corwin Regional Medical Center in Pueblo, Colorado and became president and CEO. While on sabbatical in Chicago, she also earned a master’s of divinity in 1998 and served as VP Student Affairs at Barat College.
In 2000, Duffy was asked by the late Sister Maryanna Coyle, then president of the SC Ministry Foundation in Cincinnati, if she would come to the foundation, as Sister Maryanna was looking to retire in a few years. Two of Duffy’s sisters were in Ohio, one with a special needs child and one recently diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
“Maryanna’s asking me to come, it just seemed…providential,” said Duffy. “Like God calling me.”
In one of those little twists of irony that can make even non-believers take a second glance, Duffy’s employer in Chicago, Barat College, was in the process of being merged into DePaul University, which wanted her to stay. “There was a tie there,” said Duffy. “Because the merger was finalized, it just needed to be implemented, and I had been part of the group that had been working on finalizing the merger, so it just seemed like, this is a good time to return to Ohio.”
Duffy found her master’s of divinity to be excellent preparation for the administration of her duties as eventually president of the SC Ministry Foundation, a public grant-making organization that promotes the mission and ministry of the Sisters of Charity.
“It was three years of studying theology, spirituality, and social justice, all of that intersects with what you’re trying to accomplish and fulfill in the mission of the SC Ministry Foundation,” said Duffy. “We put a real emphasis on advocating for comprehensive immigration reform, making sure immigrants had legalization services, ending the death penalty was a focus, looking at the systemic or root causes of poverty. Certainly providing programs that address poverty, but really, we are not going to program our way out of poverty. We must ask who is winning, losing and deciding in our society and who is deciding who is winning and losing in our society.”
Poverty was a cause that remained close to Duffy’s heart even after she retired from the Foundation in 2017. She was a co-chair of the Children’s Poverty Collaborative, an initiative established with the successful goal of reducing poverty locally for 5,000 adults and 10,000 children. She is serving or has served on several boards and as a founding board member of Price Hill Will.
Dona Salyers has a great story. She’s a self-made woman who makes things and makes a difference, a former newspaper columnist and TV show host, and current mogul of Fabulous-Furs, the world’s largest faux fur retailer.
“My family was from Northern Kentucky, and my grandma taught me how to sew,” said Salyers. “We were a blue-collar family, and I graduated from Dixie Heights High School. I began working in Covington when I was 13 at a store called Goldsmith’s, where Coppin’s now sits.”
Which is rather ironic because Salyers’ family now owns Hotel Covington, to which the restaurant Coppin’s belongs. Her fate has been tied to that corner of Covington; she didn’t know it at 13 but her future husband would also purchase the large former Woolworth’s building one-half block away and transform it into a banquet hall and facility. The success of the Madison Event Center lifted the neighborhood and surrounding real estate, leading to another transformation. Coppin’s, Kentucky’s first skyscraper and high-end department store, became home to Hotel Covington, the boutique hotel that solidified Covington’s business core revival.
“Life is a puzzle,” she said. “It’s ironic how the most dreadful events can become enormous blessings. ”
Salyers has a different word for the ironic sequence of events that led her life down the path it went: serendipity. Or, on the flip side of the same coin, divine intervention. Whatever you call it, it’s been an undercurrent throughout her life.
Neither of her parents finished high school, but her father taught himself how to be a stationary engineer through reading, and the tricks of the investment trade.
“They were very hard-working,” said Salyers. “They never asked, ‘Who’s going to come save me?’ You became very self-sufficient and very creative. That’s what it fosters.”
She worked right out of high school, and met husband of 57 years, Jim Salyers, during a three-day excursion to Indian Lake with a girlfriend. He was from Cincinnati, she was from Northern Kentucky, and they stayed in touch after the trip was over, and married within two years.
She continued to sew, a hobby made more essential in her home after having two children. She found herself occasionally turning to the Enquirer’s syndicated sewing column, which ran in the 1970s.
“At some point, I wrote a letter to the editor and said, ‘Your sewing column is so awful, even I could write a better one,’” said Salyers. “And they wrote back, saying, ‘Send us six samples. We agree, it’s horrible.’ They said, ‘These are pretty good. You’ve got a weekly column.’ And there I was. I was off to the races.”
Her sewing column success led to a television show, Sewing, Etc., which aired nationally on CBN, and eventually took her to New York City for a series of segments. On her first trip, she saw the denizens of the Big Apple decked out in full-length fur coats, mink and sable, and longed for something similar.
“Of course we didn’t have the money, but I had connections because I had been writing my sewing column,” said Salyers. “I found some really nice faux fur, made a coat, wore it to New York and it stopped traffic. It was absolutely gorgeous.”
Some five years later, in 1988, Salyers was financially prepared to purchase a real fur coat, when, in another stroke of serendipity, she happened to hear personality Paul Harvey on the car radio. He described how a toy manufacturer in London skinned cats alive to use their fur as mink teddy bears. She stopped in her tracks and decided to combine the money she’d saved to buy a coat and the accolades she’d received on that New York trip-past into a business proposition: Fabulous-Furs sewing kits for making fur coats.
Officially established in 1989, Fabulous-Furs took off, adapting to the demands of the market and evolving from a sewing kit company to finished goods over the course of a decade.
The Miss Universe Pageant in New York requested coats for 15 contestants. Salyers built a 12-year relationship with home shopping network Shop HQ. Oprah Winfrey included Fabulous-Furs in her Favorite Things lists. Fabulous-Fur products are repeatedly featured in the Neiman Marcus Christmas book.
She helped her husband transform his real estate purchase into the Madison Event Center. She has expanded the Fabulous-Furs empire to include Fabulous-Bridal. Fabulous-Furs products are available in 46 countries, through 4,000 wholesale accounts. The two brands are part of the Salyers Group portfolio, along with the Madison Event Center, Hotel Covington, and North by Hotel Covington.
Salyers was inducted into the Cincinnati Business Hall of Fame in 2018. and is a 2023 inductees into the Kentucky Entrepreneur Hall of Fame.