JACKSON, Tenn. — Feb. 13, 2026 — At age 32, Mark Whitacre was the fourth-highest ranking executive at Archer Daniels Midland. In the 1990s, he would become a whistleblower in the largest price-fixing scandal in American history.
Whitacre, who spent eight years in prison for criminal misconduct during his time at ADM, shared about his involvement with the price-fixing scheme and his testimony of restoration during Union University’s Faith in the Marketplace luncheon Feb. 10.
Having earned a doctorate from Cornell in biochemistry, Whitacre entered the corporate world and eventually landed as the president of the BioProducts Division at ADM. As a young executive with just two years of experience at ADM, Whitacre followed the lead of the senior executives, and when they announced their plan to mentor him so he could advance in the company, he decided to fall in line.
“Show me your mentor, and I’ll show you your future,” Whitacre said.
ADM leaders revealed their 12-year history of price-fixing and told Whitacre that he needed to learn about this secret side of their business.
With promise of a larger paycheck, Whitacre went along.
“I was hooked,” Whitacre said. “I was hooked on the world. It was like being addicted to crack. I was outright addicted and didn’t have God in my life.”
During this time, Whitacre’s wife, Ginger, became a Christian. It was a shock to Whitacre who, although having grown up in a Christian home, didn’t believe in God.
“I thought it was ridiculous. I thought it was witchery. I thought it was voodoo. I just couldn’t imagine that my wife was engaged with this,” he said.
Ginger told him that she’d be praying for him.
“She became addicted to following Jesus, and I got more addicted to the world,” Whitacre said.
After numerous, admittedly bad decisions, Whitacre found himself at a crossroads. Lies and fraud caught up to him. It was Ginger who urged him to inform the FBI about his and ADM’s involvement with price fixing.
The next three years of Whitacre’s life involved wearing a wire for the FBI to document and build a case against ADM.
Working as an informant -- living through the FBI’s raid on ADM and the ensuing court case -- became more than he could handle. Whitacre tried to take his own life.
But God intervened. Their groundskeeper, who regularly showed up for work at 8:30 a.m., felt a tug on his heart, and for the first time in eight years came to work two hours earlier instead. He found Whitacre passed out in his garage but not yet dead.
Having survived, Whitacre was then sentenced and served more than eight years in prison. But this time, he had a different mentor.
Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, visited Whitacre and began to share about scientists who believed in God. Three months into his sentence, he came to the realization that God was real and that Jesus was his Son.
Whitacre repeated, “Show me your mentor, and I’ll show you your future.”
He asked the Lord to use his time in prison, so he began helping other inmates with GEDs, correspondence courses and language learning.
“For the first time in my life,” Whitacre said, “I was helping someone besides myself. I’d never experienced servant leadership until I went to prison. And it was the most rewarding thing.”
After his release from prison, Whitacre began working at faith-based businesses and became involved with the “faith at work” movement. Today, Whitacre is vice president of culture and care at Coca-Cola Consolidated, where for eight years he has led faith-based initiatives in the workplace. He and his wife Ginger have been married for 46 years.