Howard Barnett began his career in 1975 as a business lawyer in Tulsa, specializing in securities offerings and corporate transactions primarily for the growing number of entrepreneurial oil and gas companies.
In 1985, he joined Tribune Swab-Fox Companies Inc. as its executive vice president and COO of its daily newspaper subsidiary, Tulsa Tribune Company, eventually becoming chairman and CEO of the parent company.
Barnett entered state government in 1998 as secretary of commerce for Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating and as the director of the Oklahoma Department of Commerce. In 1999, he became Governor Keating’s chief of staff, serving until the end of Keating’s term in January 2003.
He was named OSU-Tulsa President in 2009 and became President Emeritus in 2019.
In Howard’s oral history interview, he talks about the closing of the Tulsa Tribune, his work in state government, and his work in Tulsa’s new form of city government, on the oral history podcast and website of VoicesOfOklahoma.com.