Chief Executive Officer Of State Farm Insurance

My topic is on the Chief Executive Officer of State Farm Insurance, Edward B. Rust Jr.

Like his grandfather and father before him, Edward B. Rust Jr. became the chairman and chief executive officer of State Farm Insurance Companies. Having been associated with the company his entire life, Rust was well rounded in the mutual insurer's corporate culture, which placed a great deal of emphasis on serving policyholders, who were the legal owners of the company, and avoiding spending money unnecessarily. However, despite a lifelong association with State Farm, Rust maintained that growing up in the Midwest and learning rural values provided a moral foundation that would become more important to his achieving success as a chief executive. One of those values was respect for education. Rust, who held advanced degrees in business administration and law, became devoted to the advancement of education in America and instrumental in State Farm's contributions in this area, in terms of both money and the time of its employees.

Nationally recognized as a leader of the business community’s efforts to improve the quality of education in the United States, he mostly recently served on the No Child Left Behind Commission, a bi-partisan, independent group that made recommendations to Congress and the Bush Administration on how the federal law can be improved.

He is co-chairman of the Business Coalition for Student Achievement and served on President Bush’s Transition Advisory Team committee on education. He is former chairman of the Business-Higher Education Forum and of The Business Roundtable’s Education Initiative. He served on the National (Glenn) Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century. He is a director of Achieve, Inc., of the National Center for Educational Accountability, of the James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership, and of America’s Promise Alliance.

He is co-chair of The Business Roundtable, chairman emeritus of the Illinois Business Roundtable, and a member of The Business Council. He is former chairman of several other organizations, including the American Enterprise Institute, The Financial Services Roundtable, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Alliance of Business. He serves on the Board of Trustees of The Conference Board and is a former member of the board of directors of the American Council of Life Insurance.

He is a trustee of Illinois Wesleyan University and former member of the advisory council of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

He is a former trustee of The American Institute for Property and Liability Underwriters and a former member of the board of overseers of The Institute for Civil Justice. Rust is a member of the Texas and Illinois bar associations.

According to Edward Rust Jr., his goal while growing up was not one day to work for State Farm. Rust told Best's Review in a December 1996 article that going to work at State Farm was not on his mind while completing his education: "It was not until I got out of law school, and, frankly, had a couple good offers from law firms, that I decided to give State Farm a try."

While conservative business practices and a devotion to keeping a tight rein on policyholders' money were core values that Rust had essentially inherited from his forebears at State Farm, his devotion to advancing education was very much his contribution to the company's culture. Starting in 1995 State Farm offered its more than 75,000 employees one paid day off each year to offer help at a school, whether that