The Butler University Board of Trustees has welcomed two new members: Joshua L. Smiley of Indianapolis, senior vice president of finance at Eli Lilly and Co., and Ronald N. Langston of Des Moines, Iowa, principal of Langston Global Enterprises LLC.

Both will serve three-year renewable terms as trustees.

Joshua L. Smiley
Smiley is senior vice president of finance at Eli Lilly and Company and the corporate controller and chief financial officer for Lilly Research Laboratories.

The finance function at Lilly is centralized with approximately 1,000 employees globally.

As controller, Smiley has responsibility for all the financial operations for the company’s business units and business functions. In his CFO capacity for Lilly Research Laboratories, he oversees an annual research and development budget of $5 billion.

Previously, he was employed by Lilly as a deployment leader for Six Sigma (2004‐2007); director of U.S. business‐to‐government operations (2002‐2004); and director of U.S. business‐to‐business strategic marketing (2000‐2002).

Prior to his work with Lilly, Smiley served as a financial advisor at Putnam Associates and Prudential Securities. He was also a board member for CGI Pharmaceuticals, a genomics-based drug discovery company, until its acquisition by Gilead Sciences.”

Smiley was named in Treasury & Risk Magazine’s “40 Under 40” list of the country’s up‐and‐coming young finance executives in 2005.

He earned a bachelor of arts degree in history from Harvard University in 1993.

He is a past member of the board of Aspire Indiana, which offers mental health services, finds meaningful employment or affordable housing or those in need, offers an HIV/AIDS care program, and provides services for the deaf community.

His personal interests include reading, football, and spending time with his three children.

Ronald N. Langston
Langston is the principal of Langston Global Enterprises LLC, an entrepreneurial and business innovations consulting firm based in Des Moines, Iowa. The firm supports business-to-business relations in the United States, Africa, South America, the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, and China.

He has served two U.S. presidents, Ronald W. Reagan and George W. Bush. As national director of the U.S. Minority Business Development Agency, Langston led an agency reorganization and transformation that resulted in the MBDA receiving a Gold Medal Award for entrepreneurial leadership from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Under his leadership, the agency achieved more than $3 billion in procurement and financial transactions on behalf of business entrepreneurs.

His prior career included administrative positions with EMCO Manufacturing, the Institute for Social and Economic Development, Principal Financial Group, the Greater Des Moines Chamber of Commerce Federation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Senate, and Iowa General Assembly.

Langston is a senior fellow for Global Entrepreneurship Initiative of the United Negro College Fund Special Program Corporation, and serves on the Villanova School of Business Dean’s Advisory Council.

He is a past chairman of the Iowa Commission on the Status of African Americans, and state commissioner for the Iowa Department of Transportation. He has received the prestigious Iowa Literary Award; the Ronald H. Brown Economic Development Prism Award from Minorities Magazine; the Asian Business Strategic Thinker Award; and the National Diversity Gala Best Practice’s Government Leader Award.

Langston holds degrees from the University of Iowa, City University of New York, and Harvard University. He is a member of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and a fraternal member of Omega Psi Phi and Sigma Pi Phi. He is married to Inga Bumbary-Langston, Esq. of Washington, D.C.

He officially introduced his friend James M. Danko during Danko’s inauguration as Butler University’s 21st president on Nov. 17, 2011.

Media contact: Mary Ellen Stephenson
(317) 940-6944
mestephe@butler.edu