Top leadership changes at Reynolds and Reynolds continued on Thursday with the company finalizing its revamped executive team.
The provider of dealership forms and software announced that Chris Walsh, formerly the executive vice president of sales and marketing, has been named president of Reynolds and Reynolds, and that Willie Daughters, the executive vice president of operations, has been named chief operating officer.
According to a news release, both promotions are effective immediately.
Walsh succeeds Tommy Barras, who will continue serving as company chairman and chief executive officer, a position he gained when former CEO Bob Brockman stepped down in November 2020 after being indicted in one of the largest tax evasion schemes ever to be prosecuted by the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service.
In making Thursday’s announcement, Barras said, “Chris and Willie are two of our most accomplished and respected leaders. Both have broad experience leading all facets of large, complex functions at Reynolds, and they lead with great clarity and a focus on customers.”
Walsh has been with Reynolds for more than 35 years, holding various leadership roles in business development, operations, quality control, sales, marketing and support.
“Chris is a proven leader who has delivered consistently excellent results throughout his career,” Barras continued in the news release. “He keeps one eye on the future of our industry and understands the challenges and the opportunities facing automotive retailing today.
“His passion for helping our customers succeed, as well as his knowledge and expertise in various areas of the company, will help drive our growth,” Barras added.
In accepting the promotion, Walsh said, “Moving forward, we will be more focused than ever on expanding our footprint in retail automotive, making it easier to do business with us, and helping our customers achieve new levels of profitability.
“Reynolds is uniquely positioned to help dealers. That means equipping them to retail anywhere, without sacrificing anything,” Walsh went on to say.
Daughters has been with the company for more than 30 years. Previous leadership roles have included working directly with OEMs, directing the Canadian and European support organizations, overseeing product quality assurance and testing and leading the technical assistance teams.
“Willie and his team are uniquely suited to help our customers gain the most possible benefit from our products and services,” Barras said. “Reynolds has long received high marks for our service and support, and we continue to push for new ways to help dealerships capture more profit. Willie has played a critical leadership role in that legacy – he has always had the success of our customers as his first priority.
“His passion and drive will help our customers execute at levels far beyond their expectations,” Barras went on to say.
The company indicated these promotions round out the Reynolds C-level executive team.
Earlier this month, Barras named Sheri Robinson, the senior vice president of accounting, as the company’s chief financial officer.
Barras also previously named Eric Edwards, the executive vice president of technology, as the company’s chief technology officer.
NuVinAir Global now is firmly entrenched in the Tar Heel State.
The company that offers a suite of patented and proprietary products aimed at safely creating healthy vehicle interiors announced the expansion of its franchise program to North Carolina. According to a news release distributed on Tuesday, Brad Scott, who joins from Avis Budget Group where he worked for more than two decades, is the company’s newest franchisee, growing the company’s footprint to include Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh.
“Over the past 26 years, I have dedicated my career to the automotive industry, during which I have come across some of the most innovative products available,” said Scott, who resides in the greater Raleigh area.
“Since being introduced to NuVinAir, I can undeniably say that their products work better than anything I've ever seen. I'm very impressed with the company's focus on boosting the customer experience and streamlining products for their clients,” Scott continued.
As a former Avis Budget Group executive who has held a dozen managerial positions over the past 24 years, NuVinAir highlighted that Scott has demonstrated his leadership of the Raleigh-Durham International Airport location, as well as district manager for the entire state of North Carolina.
A Durham native, Scott honed his expertise in process improvement, which he will leverage to help local airports elevate NuVinAir’s customer experience, while streamlining the company’s offerings.
The company said Scott owns the exclusive rights to his territories and will implement NuVinAir’s line of products and national account programs across the region. His team will support a wide range of enterprise opportunities in the transportation space, including car rental companies, automotive dealerships, car washes, detail shops, RVs, trucking fleets, mobility companies, and other automotive businesses.
“Our franchisees are a dynamic powerhouse of talent, and Brad’s experience in the rental-car sector is going to be an incredible addition to our NuVinAir family,”, NuVinAir Global chief executive officer and founder Kyle Bailey said in the news release.
“Last year, our organization doubled in size and generated over 400% year-on-year growth. The secret to our success is the team we are building through our franchise network,” Bailey continued.
Among NuVinAir’s product offerings is its autonomous Cyclone treatment, which can dispel a dry, hygienic vapor throughout the vehicle’s ventilation system to reduce pollutants and contaminants quickly.
The company’s newest product, ReKlenz-X, is an EPA-approved, eco-friendly disinfectant that is designed to kill 99.9% of germs, bacteria, and viruses without compromising a vehicle’s interior or the safety of those applying it.
Rounding out its product portfolio, ReNuSurface is an eco-friendly, safe, all-in-one cleaner that can replace multiple products and save on supply costs.
AutoWeb has announced a new chief financial officer as well as a new controller.
Succeeding Michael Sadowski as CFO is former Cox Automotive executive Carlton Hamer, whose appointment to the role of executive vice president and CFO became effective Monday.
Josh Barsetti will become AutoWeb’s VP, controller and principal accounting officer this coming Monday.
To help in the transition, Sadowski will remain with the company until at least March.
“As AutoWeb remains focused on operational efficiencies and continuing our growth initiatives, Carlton’s impressive financial acumen and strong industry experience will undoubtedly strengthen our executive leadership team’s capabilities,” AutoWeb president and chief executive officer Jared Rowe said in a news release.
“The addition of Josh and his diverse compliance background further supports our focus on enhancing performance results, and we look forward to incorporating their expertise as we execute on our 2022 objectives and beyond.”
Hamer spent 15 years at Cox. Among his roles there was senior director of finance/controller at Autotrader. Rowe served as president of the Media Solutions Group during his time at Cox Automotive, where he was responsible for leading the Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, Dealer.com and Haystack businesses.
“During our time at Cox Automotive, several members of AutoWeb’s senior leadership team had the privilege of working with Carlton, and we look forward to the opportunity to work with him again in this important role,” said Rowe.
Barsetti was most recently senior director of internal audit at Zovio.
“As we welcome Carlton and Josh to AutoWeb, I want to thank Michael for his invaluable contributions as our CFO,” said Rowe. “His leadership has been a pivotal part of our organization’s evolution and he has set the table for Carlton and Josh to follow through on our business transformation. We wish Michael much success in his future endeavors.”
On Wednesday, Dent Wizard International announced of executive promotions that were effective Jan. 1.
One of the largest vehicle reconditioning service providers in North America, Dent Wizard elevated Carl Lekebusch to be senior vice president, as well as Dan Bowers to regional vice president for Florida and Tim Forloine II to regional vice president for the Chesapeake area.
According to a news release, Lekebusch joins Michael Fedorowich as a second senior vice president serving the U.S. in a newly created position. Lekebusch will lead the South and West regions, while Fedorowich will oversee the North and East.
In his new role, Dent Wizard said Lekebusch will continue to report to president and chief operating officer Addison Thomas and also will join the company’s senior leadership team.
Lekebusch began his career with Dent Wizard in 1994 as a route PDR technician servicing dealerships in Massachusetts. He advanced in the company, serving in various management positions including district manager in New York and most recently as Dent Wizard’s regional vice president for the Florida region.
Bowers replaces Lekebusch as regional VP of Florida. Bowers’ previous positions at Dent Wizard include regional auction manager, regional operations director and most recently as VP of operations.
Now regional VP of Chesapeake, Forloine started with Dent Wizard in 2000 as a PDR tech and has since served in various roles including regional technical trainer, sales manager and for the last 12 years district manager over the Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware markets.
“The promotions of Carl, Dan and Tim, plus the more focused designations of our service territories, are examples of how we’re supporting our customers with more boots on the ground,” Thomas said in the news release. “They have market experience and knowledge that will bring significant value to our customers.”
With intentions of aggressively expanding its team and plans to nearly double its employee base in the coming year at its corporate offices in Kansas City, Mo., and Bettendorf, Iowa, ProMax filled a pair of top executive positions on Monday.
After previously announcing Mike Dullea as chief executive officer, and coupled with additional investments, ProMax chose Don Favero to be its chief revenue officer and Greg Becker to serve as chief technology officer.
According to a news release, Favero comes to ProMax with more than 15 years of experience building and scaling high-powered sales organizations within the automotive retail SaaS space, including time with VinSolutions and most recently, AutoAlert.
ProMax highlighted that Becker brings 10 years of automotive SaaS experience across multiple companies including VinSolutions and most recently as vice president of product at AutoAlert. Prior to that stop, Becker worked in retail automotive at a dealership group, giving him valuable insight into designing products for dealers.
“The added firepower to our leadership team with these new hires will help us continue to scale our solutions to meet the growing demand,” Dullea said in the news release.
“Each one of these new executives brings a breadth and depth of experience that will help energize our entire organization to sustain our momentum and keep pace with our continued growth in the market,” he continued.
Meanwhile, the company said Shane Born will continue as chief operating officer. Born has been with ProMax for 18 years after time spent working in retail automotive dealerships, becoming a partner in 2016 and continuing as COO after the acquisition by SNH in 2018.
ProMax’s Automotive CXM platform is designed to simplify and speed up the retail sales and service experience for both dealers and their customers.
And the company has lofty goals.
“Growing the ProMax team is part of a broader plan to enable automotive dealerships to find, sell, and keep their customers in a more modern way,” Dullea said.
“The need for additional leaders, engineers, developers, sales, and marketing staff is in response to a projected record year, new customers and investments and will help ProMax bring our cutting edge CXM platform to the masses,” he went on to say.
Carmigo recently appointed a new chief operating officer whose previous experience includes work with firms such as Orbee, Cox Automotive and Bain & Co.
The online vehicle marketplace for individuals to sell their cars welcomed Daniel Kim as COO.
According to a news release, Kim brings more than 10 years of technology experience in the automotive industry. He oversaw the post-merger integration of Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, vAuto, VinSolutions and HomeNet into Cox Automotive as management consultant at Bain & Co.
Kim also helped improve and standardize digital marketing for more than 1,500 automotive dealerships as the founder and chief executive officer of Orbee, a leading marketing cloud company designed exclusively for the automotive industry.
As COO at Carmigo, Kim will be working to help further create scalable processes in customer acquisition, refine Carmigo’s business model and find the right investment and strategic partners to help Carmigo achieve accelerated growth in the coming years.
The company said Kim’s unique and extensive experience in building technology companies and understanding of the automotive industry will aid in helping build Carmigo into a scalable company with the proper product-market fit.
“Andrew and the team at Carmigo have built an amazing industry-first consumer-to-dealership (C2D) auction platform to help consumers get the most for their vehicle while providing access to quality inventory to automotive dealerships,” Kim said in the news release. “I’m excited to join this team to help Carmigo realize its vision in revolutionizing the way consumers sell their vehicles and the way dealerships source their inventory."
The company went on to note that Kim joins Carmigo at a critical moment in the automotive industry when inventory shortages have created a need for dealerships to find non-traditional sources to procure vehicles and a need for consumers to find the best price for selling the vehicle in a price-volatile market.
“We are very excited to welcome Daniel to Carmigo. Daniel brings extensive industry and tech company building experience which will help provide guidance for our young and fast-growing company,” said Andrew Warmath, chief executive officer and founder of Carmigo.
“We have learned so much in our first full year and I am excited to be working alongside Daniel to grow exponentially in the coming years,” Warmath went on to say.
Risk Point, a full-service program manager and provider of insurance underwriting and claims expertise to the dealership sector, recently named two new vice presidents for underwriting as well as sales and marketing.
Taking on the role as VP of sales and marketing is Pepper Snider, who will be will be responsible for driving profitable growth and delivering customer excellence through independent agents across Risk Point’s programs for dealer open lot and garage package for auto, motorcycle, RV and heavy truck dealerships.
“I have admired what Risk Point has done in the automotive dealership insurance industry, so I am very excited to join the Risk Point team. I look forward to helping provide world class insurance solutions to dealerships across the country through our independent agent network,” Snider said in a news release.
Snider’s background in these industries and niche specialization comes from 24 years of experience at Zurich/Universal Underwriters Group as a regional sales manager, Pearl Insurance as vice president/general manager of sales for the Western region and most recently as a producer for a regional retail insurance agency.
In another news release, Risk Point announced Corissa Pate has been named vice president of underwriting in garage operations
Pate’s background in the dealership insurance industry stems from more than 16 years of experience. Pate was a senior underwriter with Amynta before joining Risk Point.
“Risk Point is the leader in auto dealership insurance solutions, and I am honored to be added as a member of their team,” Pate said. “I am excited to help propel the Risk Point team toward further growth as we provide intelligent insurance solutions and superior client services to auto dealerships nationwide.”
DealerOn began 2022 by welcoming a new chief sales officer.
Bringing 25 years of experience driving revenue, profitability and performance as a leader in the automotive industry, the digital marketing technologies provider for manufacturers and dealerships hired Bill Wittenmyer for this position.
As a former partner at ELEAD and vice president of sales at CDK Global, DealerOn highlighted that Wittenmyer has a proven track record of delivering data-driven strategies that have helped dealers grow their businesses.
“I could not be more excited to have Bill join the DealerOn team,”DealerOn chief executive officer Ali Amirrezvani said in a news release. “Bill is an absolute rainmaker in this industry. He is a sought-after automotive retail expert and a proven sales leader who understands dealership retail operations inside and out.”
While at ELEAD, the news release mentioned Wittenmyer helped grow ELEAD’s sales 25% year-over-year, servicing more than 6,000 dealerships and making it one of the leading CRM providers in the automotive space.
“I have known Bill for a very long time, and I can’t imagine a better marriage of talent and company,” Amirrezvani said. “He is uniquely qualified to help achieve DealerOn’s long-term vision.”
The company added that Wittenmyer will be overseeing all sales operations at DealerOn, including the growth of the new Cosmos platform set to be released this year.
An executive whose professional background includes time in the remarketing world now is in a leading role for a subsidiary of JM Family Enterprises.
According to a company news release distributed on Wednesday, Brent Sergot has been named president of Southeast Toyota Distributors.
In addition to leading the company’s daily operations, the announcement indicated Sergot also now holds the title of executive vice president of JM Family and is a member of the parent company’s executive management team, which oversees the development and implementation of the company’s long-range planning and strategies for future growth.
A JM Family associate since 2001, Sergot has held various leadership positions within the organization and its subsidiaries, including:
— Director of national remarketing for World Omni Financial Corp.
— President of DataScan
— Group vice president of originations for Southeast Toyota Finance
Most recently, Sergot served as senior vice president and assistant general manager of Southeast Toyota Distributors, where he worked closely with partners at Toyota Motor North America while being mentored by outgoing president, Ed Sheehy, in preparation for this new role.
“After years of learning our businesses and embracing our culture, Brent is prepared for this next step and will continue the innovative, dealer-driven work that has propelled Southeast Toyota Distributors for more than 50 years,” said Brent Burns, president and chief executive officer of JM Family.
Prior to joining JM Family, the company said Sergot was already an established automotive thought-leader, having made his mark at various industry organizations focusing on wholesale, remarketing, fleet and retail.
JM Family recapped that Sheehy, who joined Southeast Toyota Distributors in 1999 as vice president of marketing and had been at the helm since 2008, retired following an impactful 22-year tenure with the company.
“Ed has been respected and admired for his unmatched understanding of the automotive industry, his dedication to our partners at Toyota and our dealer network, and to their success. His strong leadership and his steadfast commitment to our culture and to all of us have helped us grow and succeed,” Burns said.
“While few could fill the void left by Ed, we are confident in Brent’s ability to write our next chapter and lead us into the future of the automotive industry,” Burns went on to say.
Vroom will begin a new year with a new executive filling a newly created leadership position to oversee key functions such as vehicle acquisition and reconditioning.
Late on Thursday, the online used-vehicle retailer announced the appointment of Thomas Shortt as chief operating officer, effective Jan. 3.
Since 2018, Shortt has served as senior vice president at Walmart, where he developed a comprehensive ecommerce supply chain strategy and led improvements through advanced analytics, processes, and systems.
Prior to his time at Walmart, Vroom highlighted that Shortt held senior leadership roles overseeing supply chain, fulfillment and logistics, with an emphasis on change management and business transformation, at Home Depot, ACCO Brands, Unisource, Fisher Scientific and Office Depot.
As COO, the company said Shortt will report to Vroom chief executive officer Paul Hennessy and lead key supply chain and cross-functional operations, including acquisitions, reconditioning, logistics, sales-support, customer experience and growth operations.
“Tom is a transformational leader and proven change agent with deep experience in supply chain and logistics management,” Hennessy said in a news release. “As an innovative and seasoned executive who relies on data and analytics to drive execution, I am confident Tom will be a tremendous asset as we continue to manage our growth, scale our operations, execute our strategic plan, and pursue our path to profitability. I am delighted to welcome Tom to the Vroom team.”
Shortt added, “I am excited to join the Vroom team as COO and look forward to using my experience in supply chain management and business transformation to help Vroom build on its success, execute its growth plan and drive operational improvements across the organization.”
The creation of the COO post rounds out Vroom’s active year, which included hiring of a new chief financial officer in September, the acquisition of United Auto Credit in October as well as the opening of hubs in Houston and Phoenix.
