TURNING TRAGEDY INTO PASSION AND PURPOSE.
You can often tell a lot about people from their LinkedIn page. Take Buckhead couple John Rice and Cammie Wolf Rice, for example. Their respective profiles are filled with a lengthy list of achievements and activities from which you’ll likely gather how generous and hardworking they are. You might also conclude that given their accomplishments they’d be a bit puffed up, but in reality, the pair are as humble and modest as can be.
John spent 40 years working his way up the ranks at General Electric, most recently as the vice chair before retiring in 2018. “I had a lot of hair when I started there,” he jokes. “But you have to think about what’s next for the organization. If I had put my own interests above the organization’s, maybe I would have hung around for a few more years, but I didn’t see the value in that.” Plus, he was traveling a whopping 80% of the time. “It was arduous,” he says. “I was in 50 countries a year, many of them more than once. So it was time.”
But life after the C-suite doesn’t mean John is just kicking back and relaxing. “He’s rewired, not retired,” Cammie says. These days, his time is spent, in part, serving on the board of directors of the Fortune 500 companies AIG and Baker Hughes. He’s also a trustee of Emory University, chairs the Emory Healthcare Board, and is a life trustee of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, his alma mater. But perhaps his most meaningful work is with his wife’s nonprofit.
Her organization, the CWC Alliance, was founded in 2018 after the loss of her son, Christopher, to an opioid addiction. “He had an operation and went home with 90 oxycontin pills,” Cammie says of her oldest child from a previous marriage. “This was right when oxycontin came out, and doctors didn’t know it was addictive. It literally changed the trajectory of his life.” Christopher fought the addiction for 14-plus years and still managed to graduate from college, but he eventually lost his battle in 2016.
“I didn’t say anything about his death for two years because of the stigma around addiction and the shock,” Cammie says. “And then, basically, God said, ‘You’ve got to get up and find a purpose in this and save lives.’ And that’s what CWC is: It’s Christopher’s legacy.”
Part of Cammie’s mission at CWC is to work with policymakers to improve pain management practices and reduce opioid misuse in hospital settings. She also pioneered a new position in health care called a Life Care Specialist, who helps patients and their families deal with pain in hospitals and other health care facilities while reducing the risk of addiction. “Veterinarians get more pain management training than physicians do,” Cammie says. “So I just felt this was a missing piece of the health care team. We started it at Grady Hospital, but we’re now at Emory and in multiple rural hospitals in Georgia. My North Star is to have them in hospitals across the nation.”
To spread the word even further about opioid addiction, Cammie penned a memoir in 2022 called The Flight that shares the story of her losing her son. “I didn’t feel I was getting the message out there enough and wanted to cast a wider net,” she says. Proceeds from the sale of the book go to the CWC Alliance.
Cammie and John’s charitable efforts extend far beyond the CWC. For one, they’re both involved with the Cambodian Children’s Fund, John as the chair of the organization’s global board and Cammie as a member of its U.S. board. “We’ve got kids who at the age of 4 were living in a house on stilts over basically sewage and who hadn’t had clean water or a bath in weeks,” John says, of the organization, “and now they’re wearing a uniform and going to school every day, preparing for work after they graduate. It’s quite remarkable.” The couple is also involved with singer Usher’s New Look Foundation, an organization providing meaningful programming for teens. “John met Usher at an event once in D.C., and now he’s like part of the family,” Cammie says.
The pair, who met on a blind date and married back in 2007, are powerhouses, but they aren’t at all comfortable with the term “power couple.” “If anything, I’d rather be called an influential couple,” John says. “For us, it’s about spreading awareness. We can do a lot, but we can’t do it alone.”
PHOTO: Erik Meadows
