Digital freight-forwarder Forto lures executive talent from J.P. Morgan and Lyft

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21.05.2021

Digitized freight forwarding and supply chain solutions Forto has announced two executive appointments in the shape of Guillaume Petit-Perrin, who joins as Chief Financial Officer, and Kamil B. Rodoper, who shall become Executive Vice President of Product as of next month.

Guillaume Petit-Perrin, who joins from J.P. Morgan, has more than 18 years of corporate finance experience working in international markets including London, New York and Paris. Most recently, Guillaume served as Managing Director in J.P. Morgan’s TMT Investment Banking group.

Over the years, Guillaume has advised clients on over $100bn of M&A transactions, and led multiple equity and debt issuances. Forto says Guillaume’s extensive track record across sectors, geographies and products, as well as his experience delivering organic and inorganic growth strategies, brings valuable knowledge to support the company’s growth.

“Coming from a different industry enables me to look at Forto with a fresh perspective and to put the right tools in the right place. Forto is on an impressive growth trajectory, and I look forward to the many years of successes ahead”, says Guillaume.

Kamil B. Rodoper has been appointed as Executive Vice President of Product at Forto, and will be responsible for the strategic direction for the Forto product ecosystem. Kamil joins Forto from Lyft, where he most recently served as VP of Product and General Manager of Express Drive and previously served as Head of Product, Fleet Technologies.

Therefore, Kamil is no stranger to the design and development of massively-scaled platforms that handle sophisticated supply and demand fluctuations, and experience that Forto says will be invaluable in further building the company’s supply chain offering. He previously held positions as Sr. Director of Product Management for Glassdoor, and Group Product Manager for Microsoft.

These new appointments add to the Forto leadership team currently led by Michael Wax (CEO), Erik Muttersbach (Co – Founder and CTO) and Dr Michael Ardelt (COO).

In the second half of 2020, Forto had already strengthened its executive ranks with the addition of new appointments from the technology sector with significant experience in hyper-scaling business. Recent hires include Kenneth de Spiegeleire (Dropbox, Cisco and Vodafone) as CRO, Barzel Segal (Workday, Mindjet) as SVP of Engineering and Christopher North (Amazon, Shutterfly) as Strategic Advisor and Board Observer.

“The logistics and transport industry is still in the early days of digitization,” explains Forto CEO Michael Wax. “There is massive potential for automation, which can in turn deliver more reliable, more transparent customer experiences. Our strategy continues to focus on bringing together our operational excellence in freight forwarding and our SaaS platform investments. Our expanded leadership team has the right combination of business, industry and technical expertise to help us realize this vision.”

The current market turbulence has revealed weaknesses in most companies’ supply chains, with 73% encountering problems in their supplier base and a whopping 85% struggling with inefficient digital technologies. It shows how innovation can be challenging in a volatile market, which is why Forto says it has invested heavily in the development of its digital service offering and its expansion into Asia to help over 2,500 customers with their global shipments and their readiness to capitalize on future growth – despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, sea freight market volatility or most recently the Suez Canal blockade.

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