David A. Jones co-founded Humana Inc. in 1961 and served as chief executive officer for 37 years and board chair for 44 years prior to retiring in 2005. He served as founding board chairman of Hospira, NYSE (HSP) until his retirement in 2007. He is a retired director of Abbott Laboratories and several other companies.
Mr. Jones was a member of The Business Roundtable and co-founder and past chair of the Healthcare Leadership Council, a group of about 50 CEOs of the nation’s largest health care organizations.
Mr. Jones, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, and his wife Betty have five children and eleven grandchildren. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisville in 1954, where he won the outstanding senior award. He also became a Certified Public Accountant that year. After three years of Navy service he entered Yale University, earning a law degree (JD) in 1960, while also serving on the economics faculty from 1958 to 1960. He received the Yale Law School Medal in 1990 and the Yale Medal in 1992.
In 2003, he received Romania’s highest civilian award, the Order of Merit, for his role from 1990-2006 in rebuilding that nation’s devastated health care system. He holds honorary doctorates from the Chicago Medical School, the Claremont Graduate School, the University of Louisville, Middlebury College, Transylvania University and Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania. At the request of Mr. Peter Drucker, Mr. Jones served as the founding board chairman of the Peter Drucker Graduate Management Center, Claremont Graduate School, California. He is founding board chairman of Endeavor Louisville.