Inducted: 2010
A tireless advocate for rural and small-town America, Glenn English has spent his career championing the cooperative business model and fighting to improve the rural quality of life. While a member of Congress representing western Oklahoma's 6th Congressional District from 1975-94, he used his position on the U.S. House Agriculture Committee and later as chairman of the U.S. House Conservation, Credit, and Rural Development Subcommittee from 1989-94 to protect and improve electric cooperative financing programs, boost agriculture prices and access to farm loans, and eliminate market abuses in commodities futures trading. Since assuming the mantle as the fourth CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) in March 1994, English has vigorously defended the nation's electric cooperatives from assaults on federal Rural Utilities Service financing programs and federal power marketing administrations, as well as actively promoted the Cooperative Way as a solution to many of the nation's problems.