Leadership Team
Kimberly K. (Kim) Ryan has served as a director and President and CEO of Hillenbrand since December 2021. Prior to becoming CEO, Ms. Ryan was the Company’s Executive Vice President and named incoming CEO for a transition that began in June 2021.
Prior to that role, she served as SVP, Hillenbrand and President of the Company’s Coperion business from 2015-2021, also overseeing Hillenbrand’s Rotex business during part of that period.
She previously served as President of the Company’s historical Batesville reportable operating segment (death care) beginning in April 2011, at which time she was also named a Senior Vice President of Hillenbrand. Ms. Ryan began her career with Batesville in 1989. She held positions of increasing responsibility within Batesville and the Company’s former parent, Hill-Rom, Inc. in finance, strategy, operations, logistics, information technology and commercial division leadership.
Ms. Ryan was elected to the Board of Directors of The Timken Company (NYSE: TKR) in January 2025 and serves as a member of that Board’s Compensation and Audit committees. She previously served on the Board of Directors of Kimball International, Inc. as a member of the Audit Committee from 2014 to 2023 and held one term as Board Chair during her tenure.
Ms. Ryan serves on the Board of Directors of the National Manufacturers Association and is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council at Iowa State University’s Ivy School of Business.
Megan Walke has been interim Chief Financial Officer at Hillenbrand since June 2025. She holds this role in addition to serving as Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer, a role which she has held since May 2022.
Megan has been with Hillenbrand for 14 years, holding key positions including Director of Financial Reporting and Director of Internal Audit. She brings deep expertise in financial compliance, reporting accuracy, and internal controls. Prior to joining Hillenbrand, Megan spent nearly a decade in public accounting at Ernst & Young LLP.
She served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Oldenburg Academy, a private high school in Indiana, from 2013 to 2024. Ms. Walke also has served on the board of the Ripley County Community Foundation since February 2023 and was appointed Treasurer of the Ripley County Community Foundation in January 2025.
Ulrich Bartel is Senior Vice President of Hillenbrand, a position he has held as well as serving as President of Coperion since 2021. He is Group President, overseeing Coperion’s Performance Materials division, Rotex, and Coperion’s Aftermarket division. Before leading Coperion, Mr. Bartel had been President of Coperion’s former Polymer division and is currently a member of Coperion’s Executive Board.
Prior to his role as Division President, Mr. Bartel held several positions within Coperion. From 2013 to 2020, he was Vice President of Compounding Machines. Before that, from 2009 to 2013, Mr. Bartel was President and CEO of a Coperion subsidiary in Ramsey, New Jersey, focused on sales and manufacturing, with responsibility for Coperion locations in Wytheville, Virginia and Houston, Texas. During his tenure at Coperion, Mr. Bartel completed several other international assignments, including in Singapore, Japan, and Nanjing, China, where he was responsible for the integration of Keya, a manufacturer of twin-screw extruders, following its acquisition by Coperion. He began his career with Coperion in 1990 as a process engineer.
Tammi Morytko is Senior Vice President of Hillenbrand and Group President, overseeing the Coperion Food, Health & Nutrition Division and the Mold-Masters and DME businesses. She joined Hillenbrand in September 2023.
Ms. Morytko has more than two decades of leadership in regional and global business operations and driving supply chain improvements. She served most recently as President of the Pumps Division at Flowserve Corporation from 2020 to 2023. Prior to that role, she held various senior leadership roles at Norsk Titanium from 2018 to 2020, Baker Hughes from 2010 to 2017, including international assignments as President of APAC region, and Pratt & Whitney from 1996 to 2010. She began her career as an auditor at Arthur Andersen LLP. She currently serves on the EnerSys Board of Directors and the Harpswell Foundation Board of Trustees.
Nicholas (Nick) Farrell is Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of Hillenbrand. Mr. Farrell began his career with the Company in 2011 and served in various roles in the Company’s Legal Department until being named General Counsel in 2015. He also served as the Company's Chief Compliance Officer from 2016 to 2023.
Prior to joining Hillenbrand, Mr. Farrell was in private practice for six years with global law firm Troutman Sanders.
Mr. Farrell is also Chair of the Board of Cure SMA, an international not-for-profit organization committed to developing a cure for spinal muscular atrophy, the number one genetic cause of death in infants.
J. Michael (Mike) Whitted has been Hillenbrand’s Senior Vice President Corporate Development since June 2018. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Whitted served as Vice President, Corporate Development for SPX Corporation and SPX Flow, Inc. from 2001 to 2015. Prior to that, he served as a Vice President for Bear Stearns from 1998 to 2001, where he led corporate finance and M&A advisory transactions.
Mr. Whitted’s experience prior to Bear Stearns included corporate finance and M&A advisory roles at CIBC World Markets, Bankers Trust, and First Chicago NBD.
Aneesha Arora has served as the Company’s Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer since January 2022. Ms. Arora brings two decades of strategic human resource experience, serving most recently as Vice President of Global HR Services for Honeywell International Inc. (“Honeywell”), a diversified technology and manufacturing company, from October 2019 through December 2021.
Prior to that, she served as Vice President, Global Human Resources and Communications Safety and Productivity Solutions for Honeywell from November 2016 to October 2019. Ms. Arora began her career at Honeywell in 2002, serving in various diverse and global human resources roles of increasing responsibility across multiple industry segments with a focus on talent to increase customer and shareholder value.
Bhavik Soni serves as the Company's Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer. He held the role of Vice President, Chief Information Officer since May 2017, and was promoted to the Company’s Executive Management Team in May 2019. Mr. Soni joined the Company from Honda Aircraft Company, where he served as Chief Information Officer – IT & Engineering Systems Division from 2015 to 2017.
Prior to that, he served as Chief Information Officer for Artificial Lift, GE Oil & Gas at General Electric Company (“GE”) from 2013 to 2015, preceded by fifteen years in other information technology-related roles of increasing responsibility at GE. Mr. Soni’s experience prior to GE included software engineering roles at Rockwell Collins, Inc. and General Dynamics Corporation.
Carole Phillips was named Senior Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer in January 2023. She joined Hillenbrand in September 2022.
Carole is responsible for driving strategy and initiatives related to Global Supply Management, including center-led procurement activities, and helping identify and achieve savings across the organization.
Prior to joining Hillenbrand, Carole served as the Vice President of Global Supply Management at Stanley Black & Decker, where she helped establish dedicated sourcing and procurement workstreams to support all due diligence and acquisitions and de-risk dependencies in key regions. Prior to joining Stanley Black & Decker, Ms. Phillips held various leadership positions at Eaton and Lionel LLC.
Tory Flynn was named Hillenbrand’s first Chief Sustainability Officer in March 2021. Flynn was most recently the VP of Corporate Communications at Athene, where she helped steer corporate responsibility.
She first joined Hillenbrand in 2015, where she led the implementation of the company’s global corporate responsibility strategy and served on the Milacron integration team. She was instrumental in taking the company through its ESG materiality assessment, which culminated in the signing of the United Nations Global Compact in 2019. In 2022, she was recognized as one of the top 50 Women in Sustainability by SustainabilityX Magazine.
She serves on the board of Indiana University’s Center for Rural Engagement, the Sustainability Board of Directors for the Plastics Association, and is on the National Advisory Council for Drake University's Jay N. Darling Institute.
Prior to joining Hillenbrand, she was the spokesperson and head of communications for the Indiana House of Representatives and served in a variety of government affairs roles in Washington, D.C.