Class of 2010/11

Edward B. Rust Jr.

Edward B. Rust Jr., chairman of the board and chief executive officer of State Farm Mutual® and its principal affiliates, is nationally recognized as a leader of business community efforts to improve the quality of education in the United States. 

He is vice-chair of Business Roundtable and co-chairman of the Business Coalition for Student Achievement.  Rust serves on the boards of America’s Promise Alliance; the James B. Hunt, Jr., Institute for Educational Leadership; and Achieve, Inc.  He is former chairman of the Business-Higher Education Forum and Business Roundtable’s Education Initiative.  In addition, Rust served on the National (Glenn) Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century and on the No Child Left Behind Commission.

For more than seven years Rust was co-chair of Business Roundtable.  He is also past chairman of the American Enterprise Institute, The Financial Services Roundtable, the National Alliance of Business and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.  Rust currently serves as a trustee of The Conference Board and of Illinois Wesleyan University. 

He is also a member of the boards of directors of Caterpillar, Inc., Helmerich and Payne, Inc., and McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

A graduate of Illinois Wesleyan, Rust holds both juris doctor and master of business degrees from Southern Methodist University.  He joined State Farm in 1975 at the company’s Dallas, Texas, regional office.  In 1985 he became president and chief executive and was elected chairman of the board two years later.  He and his wife Sally have one son.