Cincinnati Business Leader Adds Doctorate To Accolades

Tim Clarke, a lifelong Cincinnati resident, is a leader within the region’s manufacturing industry and a zealous contributor to the city’s quality of life. For more than twenty-five years he has led the Netherland Rubber Company as Chairman and CEO. In his words, the company has grown from an organization of great people to an organization of great people with a system and a plan. In the 1980s, when historic Cincinnati manufacturing industries were closing their doors, Netherland Rubber Company invested in a state-of-the-art distribution center and new manufacturing facility. Tim Clarke acknowledges that his greatest pride is effectively preparing his corporation for rapid and constant change.

As a business leader, Tim Clarke has contributed to national and regional associations within the wholesale distribution sector and also to Cincinnati’s Chamber of Commerce.  Under the auspices of the Chamber, Tim helped create the Institute for Small Enterprise in 1986. In 1984, he was named chair of “Young Executives,” a national organization of CEOs of $10,000,000 companies who are under 40 years of age. In mid-career, he was a 10-year member of “The Executive Committee,” a Cincinnati-based CEO professional development group. 

Throughout his professional career, from his Evening College courses in blueprint reading at Cincinnati’s Ohio Mechanics Institute to his training in finance and accounting at the Wharton School, Tim Clarke has continued to learn and grow in order to bring others along with him.

Equally noteworthy is Tim Clarke’s record of hands-on service to the community, especially his devotion to education. Currently, he mentors three elementary and high school boys within the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative, and he serves on advisory boards of the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music and College of Applied Science. Two educational organizations he helped to found in the 1980s continue to benefit from his leadership. Tim’s work with Catholic Inner-City Schools Education Fund (CISE) has sustained parochial schools in the city’s urban core, and his support of international exchanges for Irish teenagers within the Ulster Project has brought more than 200 Irish students into local households. The Clarke family has personally hosted six visitors.

The Council on World Affairs and WCET have benefited from Tim Clarke’s leadership and volunteerism since the 1970s, while a recent new initiative is an oral history project within the Irish Heritage Foundation to capture the personal stories of Cincinnati’s Irish immigrants.  No doubt, Tim Clarke’s gifts to his community will only grow in value.