MCC alumnus David Butler earns national recognition for rural health leadership
Numbers clicked. Baseball called. Meridian Junior College felt right.
David L. Butler wanted a college close to home, a smaller campus, and a chance to keep playing the sport he loved. He found all three at what is now Meridian Community College. More than four decades later, the foundation Butler built at Meridian Junior College, now Meridian Community College, has helped take him to the highest levels of health care finance.
Butler, chief financial officer of Ochsner Rush Health, has been named one of Becker’s Hospital Review’s “41 Rural Hospital and Health System CFOs to Know” for 2026, marking his fourth straight appearance on the national health care publication’s annual rural CFO list. He is also the only Mississippi-based CFO recognized on the 2026 list.
For Butler, 61, the honor is another milestone in a career that began close to home. A Meridian resident, Butler enrolled at Meridian Junior College after high school for the smaller setting and the chance to play baseball. The campus itself is what stuck with him.
“It seemed everyone knew everybody,” Butler said. “Instructors knew the students by name and spoke as they crossed paths on the campus.”
Butler studied general education courses along with accounting classes and labs before earning his associate degree in May 1985. Accounting already felt like a natural fit: his mother worked as a teller at a local bank and his father was a firefighter who also owned a small business, and Butler often helped with the bookkeeping.
Butler later learned that accounting was more about theory than simply working with numbers, but his interest only grew.
“I still fell in love with it,” he said.
After MCC, Butler continued his education at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he earned a bachelor of science in business administration with an emphasis in accounting. He became a certified public accountant and began building a career that would eventually center on health care.
Butler spent four years with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi before moving into public accounting. He later became a partner at HORNE LLP, where he spent nearly two decades providing health care consulting services across the Southeast.
Then came a chance to return home.
In 2018, Butler left public accounting to join one of his clients, Rush Health Systems, as chief financial officer. Today, he serves as CFO of Ochsner Rush Health, which includes seven hospitals across east central Mississippi and west Alabama and more than 30 Primary and Specialty clinics.
His role includes leadership and management of financial operations such as accounting, insurance, and financial systems.
Butler has also remained active in his profession. He is a member of the Mississippi Society of Certified Public Accountants and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. He is a fellow of the Healthcare Financial Management Association and has served as president of the organization’s Mississippi chapter.
Even after years of education, certifications, and professional experience, Butler still points to MCC as an important first step. It was a place that gave him a strong foundation in general education and accounting while allowing him to begin his college career in an environment that felt comfortable and personal.
Butler and his wife, Julia Jesuit, live in Meridian. Jesuit is a partner with Carr, Riggs & Ingram. Son Hayes, 28, lives in Austin, Texas, and works in sales, and, daughter Blake, 26, lives in Madison and works as a pediatric intensive care unit nurse.
From a baseball field and accounting classroom in the 1980s to the CFO’s office of a regional health system, Butler’s path has covered a lot of ground. But its starting point is easy to identify: MCC gave him room to learn, grow, and prepare for what’s next.
Visit meridiancc.edu for more information.