Never Daunted

Former business executive and government official Randall Tobias wrote this volume with a select group in mind - future generations of his own family. It preserves tales from Tobias’s life, along with those of family, dating all the way back to their home country of Wales. Never Daunted speaks of matters both great and small, both public and deeply personal. From an eyewitness account of the last days of the world’s largest corporation to what it was like to grow up in a tiny Indiana town in the 1950s. From helping to save millions of lives during the darkest days of the AIDS pandemic to coping with the tragic, untimely deaths of a wife and son. This book, the product of years of painstaking research, summarizes a life that spans some of the most turbulent and controversial eras in American history. The changes wrought during those times taught Tobias a lesson that serves not just as the through line of this volume, but of his own existence. Namely, that change is unavoidable, and the only way to thrive is to face it squarely. The future belongs to those who are never daunted.

Randall Tobias has built a professional legacy that ranges from government service to business leadership to philanthropy. He served as chairman, president and CEO of Eli Lilly and Company and chariman and CEO of AT&T International. In 2003, at the request of President George W. Bush, he launched the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), now credited with saving more than 25 million lives. Later, was named the first United States Director of Foreign Assistance and Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He was instrumental in the 2004 founding of the Tobias Leadership Center at his alma mater, Indiana University. Tobias lives in Carmel, Indiana, with his wife, Deborah.