Justin Tighe-Umbers has been named as the new CEO for National Road Carriers Association.
Tighe-Umbers was executive director at the Board of Airlines Representatives NZ (BARNZ), and held several senior and management roles over seven years at Chorus NZ.
He moves into the role on Monday 15 August.
John Baillie, NRC chair, said Tighe-Umbers’ ability to meet membership and commercial strategic imperatives put him in good stead for the role.
“Recently, we have made significant changes to both the strategy and the structure of the organisation and finding the right CEO to take NRC forward is critical to delivering on this strategy for our members,” said Baillie.
“We believe Justin has a great mix of expertise to meet this challenge.”
Baillie said the new NRC strategy has sharpened the focus on working with members. Listening and understanding their real-life issues, concerns, and frustrations, with a view to providing the services and solutions that meet their needs both now and in the long-term, is front of mind, as is continuing to expand NRC’s role in Wellington around policy and regulation, engaging actively in the legislation submission process.
“Justin’s recent experience in the airline industry and telecommunications means he has been working in highly regulated environments undergoing significant change, not unlike the challenges facing the transport industry,” he said.
“I am excited to be taking on the role of CEO for NRC at a time when awareness of the criticality of freight and supply chains, especially land transport, has never been higher,” said Tighe-Umbers.
“My focus will be on leveraging this awareness to ensure that it translates into policies that successfully set road transport and logistics operators up to thrive.
“The NRC team is well positioned to do this – and is highly regarded by members and key industry stakeholders and because the organisation is member-driven NRC has a unique ability to share the real impact of infrastructure decisions with officials and ministers,” he said.
“Through strong collaboration we are well positioned to positively influence change for the future.”
He added, “In my role at the BARNZ, I worked to build consensus across the highly competitive commercial aviation industry.
“Our aim was to drive policy to successfully keep our air-freight links open while our borders were closed. Like aviation, the transport industry sometimes has competing collective and individual needs, stakeholders’ commercial drivers may vary, but I think collectively we can all agree on one thing – we want to have an efficient, cost-effective, low emissions, sustainable supply chain so that New Zealanders can access the products they need when they need them.
“NRC’s role is to work across the industry to affect positive change – I am really looking forward to joining this team of passionate individuals to make this happen.”
