Pat Tiberi was voted by peer CEOs as CEO of the Year in the small nonprofit category for 2019. Pat Tiberi’s story couldn’t be much more American. The son of a steelworker, he grew up in an Italian immigrant family that took its Catholicism seriously. His first job was at McDonald’s when he was 16.

He loved playing the trumpet and sports while he was going to Northland High School, and ran for class president on a lark—and won. But it wasn’t until a political science class with Herb Asher at Ohio State University, where Tiberi had gone to play in the marching band and get a journalism degree, that he really clicked with politics.