Rotary International President-elect Barry Rassin - An Insight

When Barry Rassin arrived at Rotary headquarters in Evanston at 4 a.m. for his first full day as president-elect, his security card wouldn’t work in the elevator. Just the day before, in a whirlwind process, he’d been nominated to fill the vacancy of Sam F. Owori, who had died unexpectedly in July. Now Rassin, a member of the Rotary Club of East Nassau, Bahamas, didn’t have the right credentials for all-hours access to the building. “I had to explain the situation to the security guard, who of course didn’t have a clue who I was,” he says.

Not much can stop Rassin when he wants to get something done. After making it up to the 18th floor of One Rotary Center, he set about compressing five days of orientation into a day and a half, planning the International Assembly, and coming up with his presidential theme: Be the Inspiration. “My personality is such that I want to hear all the options, make a decision, and go on to the next thing,” he says. “So we moved through the process fairly rapidly.”

Before becoming president-elect, Rassin was best known for leading Rotary’s relief and recovery efforts after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which included 105 separate projects funded by Rotarians. “I had a spreadsheet with 132 pages and every detail of every project,” he says. “People look at it and say, ‘How do you do this?’ But I enjoyed that.”

Rassin’s leadership abilities served him well in his professional life as a hospital administrator. The first fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives in the Bahamas, he recently retired after 37 years as president of Doctors Hospital Health System, where he still serves as an adviser.

Rassin has been a Rotarian since 1980 and received Rotary’s highest honor, the Service Above Self Award, for his work. He and his wife, Esther, are Major Donors and Benefactors of The Rotary Foundation.