UPS veteran Kate Gutmann to head up worldwide sales
UPS has promoted its 21-year veteran sales and marketing manager Kate Gutmann to head up its worldwide sales. Gutmann will assume her role as president of worldwide sales on April 1, taking over from Wayne C Herring as he retires after 38 years of service for the company.
The appointment is the latest step up for Gutmann in a career that started in 1989, when she joined as a marketing intern while earning a marketing degree at Siena College, in her home state of New York.
A series of roles at UPS had culminated in her current role as president of enterprise sales for the retail, professional services and government sectors, where she led a sales force responsible for some of the UPS’s largest global accounts.
Alan Gershenhorn, senior vice president and chief sales and marketing officer, said yesterday that Gutmann brought “tremendous experience and ability” to the new position.
He said: “Kate’s diverse global experience and knowledge of the UPS portfolio provide her a deep perspective on how to enhance the logistics solutions we provide our customers.”
Originally from Troy, New York, Gutmann held positions at UPS in the late 1990s including director of strategic sales for the southeast region of the US, director of sales and marketing for the South California District, and director of marketing for the entire Pacific region.
Early in 2003 she became vice president of sales for UPS’s southeast region, then took on the company’s Europe, Africa and Middle East region in 2006 as vice president of sales before assuming her current role in 2008.
Wayne C Herring
Herring retires after a career that took him over the course of three decades from being a UPS driver back in 1976 to directing worldwide sales in 2006 for a company active in 220 countries.
A native of Albany, in the US state of Georgia, Herring started out in a full-time management position at UPS in 1977 before advancing through leadership positions in the transportation, business development, labor, engineering, operations and sales fields.
His appointment as head of worldwide sales has seen him restructuring the division to an industry-based design, and instilling subject matter expertise in staff assigned to each area.
Gershenhorn said: “Over the course of his distinguished career, Wayne made innumerable contributions, most recently transforming the UPS sales force into the Best-in-Class organization that it is today.”
“He has integrated our teams to effectively represent the entire portfolio and enabled our sales force to demonstrate to our customers UPS’s broad logistics capabilities and how they can provide a competitive advantage,” added the UPS senior vice president and chief sales and marketing officer.
