Delos M. Cosgrove

Delos M. Cosgrove was born in 1940 in Watertown, New York, 30 miles south of the Canadian border. Both of his parents grew up in Watertown, and during World War II, Cosgrove's father served there in the U.S. Coast Guard. "My parents were products of the Great Depression," says Cosgrove. "They had seen a lot of people lose their businesses in those years, and that influenced my father. He thought it was important to have a profession that couldn't be taken away from you. For him, your choices were lawyer, doctor, or spiritual leader. He chose to be a lawyer, and I chose to be a surgeon."

As a child, Cosgrove was ambitious and entrepreneurial. He remembers when he was five or six popping corn and putting it into small bags, which he loaded onto his Radio Flyer wagon. He tried selling his popcorn from the street corner, but he does not recall how successful he was in this small venture. When he was older, he did the usual childhood jobs of raking leaves and shoveling sidewalks. Cosgrove also collected old newspapers, once again putting his Radio Flyer to work by stacking the newspapers onto it. He sold the newspapers to a junk man, and he recalls one time earning $100 for his efforts. At the age of 10, he spent some of his savings to buy five shares of stock in the company that made LifeSavers candy. "I thought it was a good product and my choice of stock was savvy," he says. "But, of course, I never made any money off my small investment."

Cosgrove, who enjoyed sports, played baseball and basketball throughout his teen years. The academic side of school, however, was a struggle. He was obviously bright, but reading and writing were always challenging. He attended a high school in Watertown, where only 13 percent of graduates went on to college. Cosgrove then moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts, to attend Williams College, his father's alma mater. He remembers having to take a foreign language as an undergraduate requirement. When he registered for French, he was quickly put into a remedial class, which he attended five days a week starting at eight o'clock every morning; at night, he struggled with homework. For all his effort, he earned three D-minuses and one D.

Since the age of eight, when he saw a dramatic photo of a surgeon in an operating room, Cosgrove had wanted to be not only a doctor, but also a surgeon. He knew his average-to-poor grades would make it difficult to get into medical school. Nonetheless, he applied to 13 schools; only the University of Virginia accepted him. "That acceptance was a gift from heaven," he says. "It's a great school, and I felt extremely lucky to have been accepted. My college roommates knew about my poor grades, and they always asked me what I was going to do when I didn't get into any medical schools. I never had a backup plan. Becoming a surgeon was all I had ever wanted to be."

The start of medical school was no different for Cosgrove than any of his previous academic pursuits had been. It required a great deal of memorization, which he found challenging. "It wasn't new for me to have to work harder than anyone else and to get mediocre results for all the effort I was putting into my studies," says Cosgrove. "I just had to keep trying and persevere. But once I got to the clinical side of my coursework, I excelled. For the first time in my life, I was getting A's. When I was in medical school, cardiac surgery was just getting started. I would watch the surgeries and try to figure out what happened when something went wrong. We were the fighter pilots of the medical world. It was very exciting."

Cosgrove did his internship and a year of surgical residency training at the University of Rochester in New York, at which point his military deferment expired. He joined the U.S. Air Force as a captain and, after three weeks of basic training, was on his way to Da Nang, Vietnam. Cosgrove was put in charge of a 100-bed casualty staging facility, where patients went just before being shipped out of the country. As one of only two doctors there, Cosgrove was on duty every other day. During his one-year of service in Da Nang, 22,000 sick and wounded soldiers were evacuated.

"I learned a lot in Vietnam," says Cosgrove. "Of course, I learned how awful war is, but I also learned that a doctor doesn't have to do everything. The military has a way of moving patients to the right facility for the type of care needed at the time. We had nurses and corpsmen doing a lot of the prep work and tests, which allowed the doctors to practice at the height of their capabilities. I've installed some of the same methods of operation in my current position at Cleveland Clinic, and it's made a big difference in the quality of care."

On his days off, Cosgrove set up a free clinic for the local, civilian residents of Da Nang. "I just saw a need and wanted to do something about it," he says. After the war, he was given the Republic of Vietnam Commendation Medal in recognition of his efforts to treat citizens.

Cosgrove also spent his off-hours flying combat missions. "I wasn't there in any official capacity," he says. "I just wanted to see it all from the pilot's perspective. I flew on about 70 combat missions." Cosgrove won a Bronze Star for his medical services in Vietnam.

After completing his training at Massachusetts General, Cosgrove served as chief resident in pediatric surgery at Boston Children's Hospital, and he did more residency work at Brook General Hospital in London. At the age of 32, two years before completing his residency, a friendly teacher asked Cosgrove to read a newspaper article out loud to her. When he faltered at several words, having to spell them out to her, she told him he was dyslexic. Cosgrove had never before heard the term. Dyslexia, he learned, is a reading disorder. "Now I had a reason for all my trouble in school," he says. "But today I actually see the condition as a gift rather than a disability. It makes me think and problem solve differently. It has allowed me to invent things and change the course of cardiac surgery, and it has taught me to persevere. I'm actually very grateful for it."

After completing his medical residency, Cosgrove took six months off before accepting a surgical position. He used that time to write a book about the general care of children with heart disease. Since then, he has published nearly 450 journal articles and book chapters, as well as 17 training and continuing medical education films.

Cosgrove had only $3,000 in his bank account, which was all that remained from his earnings running the U.S. Air Force hospital in Vietnam, when he accepted a position at Cleveland Clinic as a heart surgeon, beginning a 30-year career there. In 1989, the hospital appointed him chairman of its Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Under his leadership, Cleveland Clinic's heart program was ranked number 1 in America for 10 years in a row. He performed more than 22,000 operations and earned an international reputation for expertise in all areas of cardiac surgery, especially valve repair. A pioneer and refiner of advanced surgical techniques, Cosgrove was a pacesetter in the development of minimally invasive valve surgery, and he performed the first minimally invasive mitral valve surgery over a worldwide video network in 1996. As an innovator, he has patented 30 medical and clinical products used in surgical environments.

In 2004, Cosgrove retired from active surgery and became president and CEO of Cleveland Clinic. Under his guidance, the nonprofit academic hospital became among the top three healthcare facilities in the country.

Looking back, Cosgrove says surgery was the best career he could have imagined for himself. "I was able to help a lot of people and invent procedures and tools that changed the course of cardiac surgery. I got a chance to write, travel, speak, and meet interesting people. Now as the head of Cleveland Clinic, I'm able to improve lives on a much larger scale than I could as a surgeon. I've gone from the operating room to the board room."

Cosgrove credits much of his success to persistence. "In college, I just had to gut it out," he says. "It was never easy for me with the dyslexia. A lot of people think that those who are successful are simply smart people, but I think success also comes to those who learn how to persist through difficulties. I have a plaque on my desk that says: '˜What can be conceived can be created.' I believe that."

Cosgrove received Cleveland Clinic's Master Clinician Award, the Innovator of the Year Award, and the Lerner Humanitarian Award. He was also inducted into the Cleveland Medical Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Business Hall of Fame. In 2007, Sales and Marketing Executives of Cleveland named him "Cleveland Business Executive of the Year," and Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. chose Cosgrove as "National Physician of the Year." He received the Woodrow Wilson Center Award for Public Service as well as Harvard Business School's Award from HBS Alumni in Cleveland. Recently, Modern Healthcare included Cosgrove in its list of "The 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare." In 2015, Columbia Business School awarded him the Deming Cup.

Cosgrove committed Cleveland Clinic to support local schools, hunger centers, and high school apprenticeship programs in nursing and the biological sciences. "I think it's important to try and leave the world a better place than you found it," he says, "and I can think of no better way to do that than through healthcare."