Carl Cook

Carl Cook is the son of William A. (Bill) Cook and Gayle Cook. In 1963 Bill Cook founded Cook Inc. in Bloomington, Indiana, with $1,500 in invested capital; he and his wife Gayle were its only employees.⁠[1][2]

Cook earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University in 1984 and an MBA from the University of Iowa, and joined Cook Group in 1988.⁠[3]

His first assignment at the company was setting up computers in its European sales offices.⁠[4]

He then worked as an engineer at Cook Vascular in Leechburg, Pennsylvania, on cardiac pacemakers and Doppler blood flow monitors, and in production at Cook Endoscopy in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, before returning to Bloomington.⁠[3][5]

He was involved in the restoration of the West Baden Springs Hotel and French Lick Resort in southern Indiana, a project led by his father; Bill Cook asked him to oversee it as a way to learn about governance.⁠[5][3]

Bill Cook said it took nearly 15 years to transfer company stock to Carl Cook so that estate taxes would not cripple the company.⁠[3]

Before becoming chief executive, Cook was president of the company’s Cook MyoSite division and vice chairman of the Cook board. Cook MyoSite is a life sciences division of the group developing a cell therapy for urinary incontinence.⁠[6][7]

Cook has been a trustee of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology since 2009 and received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the institute in 2015. He helped establish the William Alfred Cook Laboratory for Bioscience Research, a 1,350-square-foot facility dedicated on campus in 2012.⁠[5]

He served as vice chair of the board and in fall 2023 was elected chair, succeeding Niles L. Noblitt, whose term had ended.⁠[5]

Bill Cook died on April 15, 2011, at the age of 80. The same day the company announced that Carl Cook, then 49, had been named chief executive officer of Cook Group; Steve Ferguson remained chairman and Kem Hawkins remained president, and the company remained privately held with its global headquarters in Bloomington.⁠[1][6]

At the time Cook Group comprised 42 companies with more than 10,000 employees and facilities in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America; its 2010 global revenue was approximately $2 billion.⁠[1]

Company spokesman Dave McCarty said at the time that Cook was involved in the company but “doesn’t want to be the public face of the company.”⁠[3]

In September 2017 Cook Group announced the sale of its drug-development unit Cook Pharmica LLC to Catalent, a publicly traded New Jersey company, for $950 million. Cook Pharmica had revenue of $179 million for the 12 months ended June 30 and operated an 875,000-square-foot facility in Bloomington with 750 employees; Cook Group then had $2.2 billion in annual revenue and about 12,000 employees.⁠[8]

At the same time Cook Group bought the former GE refrigerator factory site in Bloomington to ease a space shortage at Cook Medical’s headquarters, and said it expected to add 500 jobs in Bloomington over the next 10 years.⁠[8]

Gayle Cook, a cofounder of Cook Group, died on August 17, 2025, at the age of 91.⁠[2]

As of November 4, 2026, Forbes estimated Cook’s real-time net worth at $9.3 billion, ranking him No. 396 in the world; Forbes gives his residence as Bloomington, Indiana.⁠[7]

Cook has served as board chair of the historic preservation organization Indiana Landmarks and as a member of the executive advisory council of the Sisters of Saint Benedict of Ferdinand, Indiana; in 2004 he co-chaired Harmony School’s building restoration campaign.⁠[4]

In 2013 Cook Group fully restored the Tivoli Theater in Spencer, Indiana, on behalf of its Cook Spencer employees; the group also supported an expansion of Ivy Tech’s Connie and Steve Ferguson Academic Building and restored the Lions Club office building in Newport, Indiana.⁠[4]

Indiana University presented him with the Presidents Circle Laurel Pin at the Fellow level in 2018 and at the Founder level in 2022, and awarded him its Bicentennial Medal in 2020 for distinguished service to the university.⁠[4]

Cook Medical: Official website: https://www.cookmedical.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]