A native of Illinois, Rust joined State Farm® in 1975 at the Dallas, Texas, regional office. He became president and chief executive officer in 1985 and was elected to the additional post of chairman of the board in 1987.

A graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Rust holds both juris doctor and master of business degrees from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. He serves on the boards of directors of Caterpillar, Inc., Peoria, Ill.; Helmerich and Payne, Inc., Tulsa, Okla.; and McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., New York.

Nationally recognized as a leader of the business community's efforts to improve the quality of education in the United States, he currently serves on the No Child Left Behind Commission, a bi-partisan, independent group established to make recommendations to Congress and the Bush Administration on how the federal law can be improved. He is former co-chairman of the Business Coalition for Excellence in Education and served on President Bush's Transition Advisory Team committee on education. He is former chairman of the Business Higher Education Forum, former chairman of The Business Roundtable's Education Initiative, a director of Achieve, Inc., a director of the National Center for Educational Accountability, and served on the National (Glenn) Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century.

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.