CEO Carol Tomé was an outsider hired to whip UPS into shape for the age of e-commerce. Some insiders and lifers worry she’s killing what made the company great in the process. - Trade Moneta
Carol B. Tomé took the helm at UPS just as the pandemic supercharged e-commerce. Some insiders say her efforts to increase profits are generating anxiety among drivers. Tomé’s leaner, faster style is ditching tradition and creating a UPS some veterans don’t recognize.
When Carol B. Tomé took over as the chief executive of United Parcel Service on June 1, 2020, the headline wasn’t that she was the first woman to lead the shipping giant. It was that she was the first outsider to helm the 114-year-old company.
While her predecessor began his career unloading UPS trucks in the 1970s, Tomé was a banker by training who sat on the UPS board but had spent 25 years at Home Depot, most of them as CFO. That was no fluke. Big Brown needed someone unbound by sentiment, who could make the changes that might revive its flatlining stock price at a time of industry upheaval and increasingly fierce competition.
Carol B. Tomé took the helm at UPS just as the pandemic supercharged e-commerce. Some insiders say her efforts to increase profits are generating anxiety among drivers. Tomé’s leaner, faster style is ditching tradition and creating a UPS some veterans don’t recognize.
When Carol B. Tomé took over as the chief executive of United Parcel Service on June 1, 2020, the headline wasn’t that she was the first woman to lead the shipping giant. It was that she was the first outsider to helm the 114-year-old company.
While her predecessor began his career unloading UPS trucks in the 1970s, Tomé was a banker by training who sat on the UPS board but had spent 25 years at Home Depot, most of them as CFO. That was no fluke. Big Brown needed someone unbound by sentiment, who could make the changes that might revive its flatlining stock price at a time of industry upheaval and increasingly fierce competition.
