Seven prominent business leaders have been selected to serve in voluntary positions on the James Cancer Hospital Board.

The leaders will oversee “strategic initiatives, patient care services and financial performance of the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and the Richard J. Solove Research Institute,” according to an Ohio State University Medical Center news release.

The new members of the board include Robert J. Massie, Richard Butera, R. Guy Cole Jr., Barbara Kunz, Jordan A. Miller Jr., Alec Wightman and Sander Flaum.

Flaum is chief executive officer of Flaum Partners in New York, which is focused on renovating the ideas of pharmaceutical and biotech industries. He recently completed his second book, “Big Shoes: How Successful Leaders Grow into New Roles.”

The appointee already has ideas about what skills and resources he can use to continue the hospital’s rise in national prominence.

“Our consulting firm has worked with hospitals hand-in-hand,” Flaum said. “I think I can help the James by encouraging pharmaceutical companies to do clinical and oncology work with the James.”

Fellow board member Wightman is a partner with Baker Hostetler.

He has been named in The Best Lawyers in America since 1997, and has practiced law more than 30 years. Flaum and Wightman’s duties on the board will not include being lawyers for the James.

“I knew Dr. James, and he stressed the relational importance of the hospital environment and the patient,” Wightman said. “We can never be satisfied with our efforts, we must focus on the quality of service, eliminating mistakes and patient care.”

Wightman served on the James Foundation Board for 20 years and he likes the direction the James has taken.

“When you think of prestigious cancer hospitals, there is mention of MD Anderson and Sloan-Kettering,” Flaum said, “but there are new cancer drugs investigated at the James and Solove that you never hear about.

“Part of our job is just getting the name out there,” Flaum said.

“Students may not realize that the James has only been around for less than 20 years, and it’s been consistently at the top,” Wightman said. “I always say there are two crown jewels of OSU, the football team and the James.”

When a friend of Wightman contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, “the first place he went to was Kettering,” Wightman said, “it was almost as if he was following protocol going there to cure cancer.”

The James and Solove Research Institute is one of 40 Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the country designated by the National Cancer Institute. The James is the 180-bed adult patient-care component of the cancer program at OSU and is one of five centers in the United States approved by the cancer institute for conducting Phase I and Phase II clinical trials, according to the press release.

Phase I trials are the first stage of testing in human subjects, usually a small sample size of healthy adults. A larger sample size is used in Phase II if Phase I is completed safely.

More than $250,000 of grants, awards and other revenues were raised for research in 2006-07, the most recent annual report that the James has available. Last August, the James received about $4.5 million from the Pelotonia bike tour fundraiser.

The board’s first meeting is scheduled for Jan. 27.

Other members of the board and Dr. Michael Caligiuri, the James director, could not be reached for comment.