Growing up in Little Rock, Bob Roberts dreamed of becoming a musician.
After receiving undergraduate and master’s degrees in music for trumpet performance, Roberts, 59, had plans to teach music to college students. To do that, though, he was going to have to return to school and earn a doctorate. And even if he did that, he still might not find an open teaching position.
“I knew people with doctorates in music who didn’t have jobs, and I decided, well, I’m going to do something more practical,” Roberts said.
He was always drawn to math and enjoyed accounting. “I decided, well, this is something where I know I can get a job,” he said.
So Roberts returned to college and received his master’s in accounting in 1981 from Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
The move paid off.
After graduating from Baylor, Roberts worked as a public accountant for large national accounting firms — Arthur Andersen LLP of Chicago and Peat Marwick International, which is now KPMG. He worked for their offices in Texas and Little Rock.
Roberts knew Allen Smith, who was Baptist Health’s chief financial officer, and Russell D. Harrington Jr., president and CEO of Baptist Health at the time, from Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, and they were looking to create a position at the hospital.
And they wanted Roberts.
“They were kind of intrigued by getting someone from outside of health care to kind of have a fresh look at some things,” Roberts said.
But Roberts wasn’t immediately sold on the job. He feared he would become bored “just doing the same thing, just working on hospitals.”
He took the job in 1988 as assistant vice president of finance. “I figured out pretty quick that health care was not going to be boring,” he said.
Baptist Health had its main hospital in Little Rock and three other hospitals at the time Roberts joined the nonprofit. It has grown to eight hospitals, and next year a hospital in Conway will open. Its revenue was $954.4 million in 2014, up 13.5 percent from the previous year. It also has about 7,700 employees.
Baptist Health promoted Roberts to chief financial officer in 2008. His responsibilities not only include finance and accounting, but human resources, supply chain management, information systems and the Baptist Health Foundation.
One of his proudest accomplishments at Baptist Health is the hospital system’s maintenance of an A+ bond rating with Standard & Poor’s for its strong balance sheet. Still, he said, throughout the nearly three decades he’s been at the hospital system, there have been ups and downs. “The financial crisis of 2008 took its toll on us like it did on many organizations,” he said. “We were able to pull through that well because of our strong balance sheet.”
Away from Baptist Health, Roberts serves on the board of the health insurance company Health Advantage, which is co-owned by Arkansas Blue Cross & Blue Shield and Baptist Health. He has recently joined the business school advisory board at Philander Smith College in Little Rock. He also plays trumpet in the Immanuel Brass & Orchestra and the Natural State Brass Band.
Roberts said he’s been successful because of the employees who worked with him and his hard work.
“I may not be the smartest accountant, but I’m a very hard-working one,” he said. “I believe that it pays off in the end. And it’s paid off for me.”