Local success, global impact
Major: Electrical Engineering
Class: 1982
MSOE Regent, Vice President of Technology and Chief Technology Officer, GE Healthcare
Michael Barber finds managing time is not so much a balancing act as a jigsaw puzzle. "I don't think of my time as work time, family time, free time; it all has to fit in."
The demands on his time are considerable with a family, volunteer work and a challenging career with GE Healthcare, a $17 billion company with 45,000 employees, which puts Barber on another part of the globe monthly.
Nonetheless, his family - wife, Jackie Herd-Barber '84, daughter Lauren, 17, and son Justin, 15 - doesn't take a backseat. "I get phone updates for events when I'm gone. If I'm home, I'm there. I schedule it in like a meeting."
He and his wife are both Milwaukee natives and they now live in Mequon, Wis. Barber's career with GE Healthcare has spanned three decades - starting with an internship while attending MSOE.
"I was interning in a lab and I was able to be proficient, more so than the interns from other schools, and I directly contribute that to doing labs at MSOE. Not just the theory, but the practical application."
Over the years, Barber has seized opportunity to move in directions that offered him new challenges and the ability to, as he put it, "add to his tool box." He volunteered early in his career to move from hardware - what he was hired to do - to software.
"Any time I look at a move, I'm looking at what I can bring to the organization, but I'm looking at what I can learn from it as well," he said. Barber also has had the opportunity to hire MSOE graduates and, in fact, MSOE graduates occupy offices next to his. "MSOE is a university that in terms of the graduates and how they transition into the workplace, we know they can hit the ground running."
Offering a caveat to recent graduates, Barber added: "Once you graduate from school - I know you may not want to hear it - but the learning has really just begun." He explained that the application of what you've learned in college is a lifetime worth of activities.
One of Barber's passionate activities is combating healthcare disparities in the United States. "Studies have shown that minorities have a disproportionately worse outcome in regards to certain diseases," he said. Among those diseases are diabetes, breast cancer, stroke, cardiovascular disease and HIV/AIDS.
Barber and his company are also looking at healthcare worldwide to reduce the disparity between developed and underdeveloped areas. The GE Africa project, a $20 million grant aimed at improved access to healthcare products, clean water, electricity for operating rooms and refrigeration for vaccines, currently focuses on Ghana, Africa, with plans to spread to 10 additional countries.
"What you get in Beijing and Chicago can be very similar, and what you need in the Appalachian Mountains and rural China or Latin America can be very different," he said.
Both Barbers, Michael and Jackie, were inducted into MSOE's Alumni Wall of Fame, which Barber called an unexpected honor. "From an MSOE perspective, from an African-American perspective and a female perspective, for my wife, it's important to show that people can stay local, do things at different companies and do well."
In 2012, Mike Barber received an Honorary Doctor of Engineering degree at Spring Commencement (see video above and story from the MSOE newsroom).