University News

ADM's Ekena Named WIU Executive in Residence

March 27, 2012

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MACOMB, IL – Archers Daniels Midland (ADM) leader and Western Illinois University alumnus Kim Ekena will serve as the Spring 2012 Executive in Residence April 2-5 for Western's College of Business and Technology.

Ekena, a 1980 finance graduate, has also been vice president of marketing for the American River Transportation Company (ARTCO) in Decatur for the past eight years.

While on the Macomb campus, Ekena will talk to students in a variety of CBT classes, including management, business communication, supply chain management, construction safety, agricultural marketing and economics, sales management and professional selling.

At ADM, Ekena oversees ARTCO's marketing and trading business, ADM Grain river terminal operations and ADM Terminal Services. During his 27 years of employment with ADM, Ekena has been involved with developing and growing the company's river terminal business.

Since 1990, Ekena has been a member of the National Grain and Feed Association's Trade Rules Committee, serving as chairperson of the Waterborne Commerce Committee from 2006 – 2008. He has also been a WIU Campus Champion since 2010 and has worked with ADM to provide scholarship money to the WIU Supply Chain Management (SCM) program.

WIU SCM Professor Bart Jennings called Ekena "one of those industrial experts that every program needs."

"His experience is universal, covering all of the areas of the field, as well as internationally. He loves nothing more than talking with a student or a faculty member about the strategies that he uses and the experiences that he has," Jennings said. "Kim is also deeply interested in the future of the field. He never hesitates to pop into a classroom and encourage students to learn the tricks used in the real world. He has been instrumental in the supply chain management curriculum development process and in making WIU the key institution for logistics hiring at ADM."

The WIU CBT Executive in Residence program was started in 2005 by two former professors, Jim and Carolyn Tripp. Executives visit the WIU campus to speak about their careers and share insight with students.

For more information on participating in the program, contact Becky Paulsen, CBT director of development, at (309) 298-2442 or B-Paulsen@wiu.edu.

Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
Office of University Communications & Marketing