Hilton Worldwide's Mary Nell Billings has been named the 2014 winner of the Employee Benefit Research Institute' Lillywhite Award, which recognizes outstanding lifetime contributions to Americans' economic security.
Billings is director of Global Retirement Programs for Hilton Worldwide, specializing in the Americas but also with responsibilities for the company's global retirement plans.
She has more than 25 years of experience in human resources and finance, from both a plan sponsor and a third-party administrator perspective, including tax-qualified and nonqualified retirement and health and welfare benefits, compensation, training, and communications.
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She was formerly manager of employee benefits for FedEx Express, and prior to that, manager of strategic planning and governance, retirement plans, for Fed Ex Corp.
In those positions, she managed FedEx's defined contribution plans and defined benefit plans covering about 200,000 domestic employees, and recently managed the health and welfare plans covering 300,000 participants.
Billings has also served a three-year term on the U.S. Department of Labor ERISA Advisory Council, and has focused on promoting retirement security among women and minorities.
She was vice chair for the Phased Retirement study in 2008 and chair in 2010 for the Disparity in Retirement Security for Women and Minorities study. As part of her efforts to educate women about investment, she partnered with T. Rowe Price in 2012 to create an educational series, Women and Finance, which focuses on investment for retirement.
She is currently on the board of the Plan Sponsor Council of America, the Bloomberg BNA Pension & Benefits Publications Advisory Board, the T. Rowe Price Client Advisory Board, and the DCIIA Plan Sponsor Advisory Committee.
In 2012 she was elected and accepted into the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization made up of the nation's leading experts on social insurance. She holds both bachelor's and master's of business administration degrees in accounting and finance from the University of Memphis.
The Lillywhite Award, which has been sponsored by the EBRI since 1992, is named for Ray Lillywhite, a pioneer in the pension field with Alliance Capital, who for decades guided state employee pension plans.
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