INDIANAPOLIS (February 27, 2025) — Eli Lilly and Company’s Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President Timothy F. Coleman will be honored today as the Indiana tech sector’s 2025 Trailblazer by TechPoint, the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership’s industry-led growth initiative for Indiana’s digital innovation economy. 

Coleman, who moved to Indiana as a child, has spent his career at Lilly in Indianapolis. The award will be presented this evening at the 2025 Mira Awards gala, known as “The Oscars of Indiana Tech,” which celebrates the best of tech in Indiana each year, including recognizing outstanding people, products and companies.  

“Lilly has always been an innovator in the biomedical arena, and Tim Coleman helped us bring that spirit to embrace and adopt technology across many divisions, which enabled us to evolve and thrive in an era of unparalleled change,” said TechPoint President and CEO Ting Gootee. “His contributions have not been confined to his workplace. His engagement in STEM youth programming is multifaceted, spanning all educational levels from elementary school to college, and has impacted students and tech professionals in Indianapolis, as well as throughout the United States.” 

Coleman was the first freshman hired on Lilly’s summer internship program in 1987 and interned again in 1988. He joined the global company as a systems analyst in 1990 where he helped bring emerging tech to the Lilly sales force, a first in the industry. After earning his MBA, he returned to the company as a team leader.  

Colleagues highlight Coleman’s tech impact at Lilly, including early influence of Lilly’s first branded product websites, growth of the intranet portal, implementation of e-data capture for clinical trials, and the first AI and NLP solution at scale. 

Lilly Vice President for Research and Development IT, Shelley Ford, served as an intern at the company with Coleman. She described him as a calm and humble servant leader, who carries with him lessons from his youth as a pastor’s son and follows a philosophy rooted in the Scripture, “To whom much is given, much is required.”  

Terry Morris, Lilly’s associate vice president, clinical experience, who considers Coleman a mentor, said few people can match Coleman’s work ethic or preparation. At a time when there are few Black professional mentors, Morris said Coleman works to grow that pool. 

“He knows that’s the present, not the future,” Morris said. “He intentionally seeks to make the places and spaces he has been better, and I think our community and certainly our company is better for it.” 

The annual Trailblazer Award recognizes visionaries whose contributions have had lasting and significant impact on the state and its technology ecosystem. Trailblazers are among the tech ecosystem’s most inspiring and influential players. They are innovative risk-takers whose achievements and bold leadership are catalysts for growth and success.   

Coleman has held several positions at Lilly supporting research & development, US and global sales and marketing, manufacturing, Human Resources, and Sales & Marketing components, including P&L responsibility as District Sales Leader for the Lilly Osteoporosis Specialty Business Unit. In his present role, he directs a global tech portfolio recognized nationally for digital innovation, including the CIO100 Award and FutureEdge 50 Award as well as the Bio-IT World Best Practices Award in Clinical Research.  

Beyond his professional duties, Coleman champions STEM workforce development.  He serves on the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) Foundation Board of Directors, Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA) Indianapolis (co-founder), the Black Education technology Foundation and Purdue’s Krenicki Center . He has also served on computer science advisory boards for Howard University, North Carolina A&T State and the TechPoint Foundation for Youth Board. 

In 2023, Coleman’s impact was recognized with the IPS Inspiring Alumni Award, and he was inducted into the IPS Hall of Fame.