Internal CHEP leadership appointments reinforce customer-focused strategy.
ATLANTA, Feb 4, 2025 – CHEP, a Brambles company and global leader in pallet rental solutions, continues to reinforce its customer-focused efforts by appointing experienced internal talent to key executive positions.
In July 2024, David Cuenca, formerly the CEO of CHEP Europe, transitioned to the role of CEO of CHEP North America. Since then, the company has made additional appointments, including Frank Bozzo as Senior Vice President & General Manager of CHEP Canada and Pallecon North America & Europe, and Chad Connors as Vice President of Operations for the North Region, CHEP U.S.
These strategic appointments underscore the company’s dedication to leveraging seasoned leadership to enhance its operations to best serve its customers. As CHEP continues to innovate and invest in its infrastructure, these leaders will play a crucial role in ensuring the seamless delivery of state-of-the-art supply chain solutions, fostering a customer-centric culture that prioritizes resiliency and sustainability.
Manufacturers and retailers will benefit from each leader’s wealth of supply chain talent and knowledge, spanning numerous industries and businesses of all sizes regionally and globally.
CHEP Leadership: 3 Key Promotions in 2024
- David Cuenca, CEO, CHEP North America: Since joining CHEP in 2000, Cuenca has held a range of leadership roles in the organization throughout Europe and Latin America. Now, he’ll leverage his extensive global pooling experience to elevate the North American market, which has the most expansive regional network of service centers and supplies more than one million pallets per day to customers. Under his leadership, CHEP will continue investing in what matters most to customers and stakeholders to create a smarter and more resilient supply network.
- Frank Bozzo, Senior Vice President & General Manager, CHEP Canada and Pallecon North America & Europe: In this role, Bozzo adds Pallecon Europe to his scope while continuing to support the CHEP Canada and North America Pallecon businesses. During his 22 years at CHEP, Bozzo has worked to improve the organization, starting with pallets in Canada and expanding his responsibilities to include Pallecon containers in 2022, where he continued to challenge the status quo to achieve record success in North America. With a steadfast focus on his people, customers and retail partners, Bozzo fosters a collaborative culture that continuously drives success.
- Chad Connors, Vice President, Operations, North America, CHEP U.S.: Connors steps into this role from a senior director position, following his continued positive contributions to the organization throughout his tenure in various leadership roles. With a robust background spanning more than 25 years, Connors has experience in engineering, automation, tech systems, operations, strategy and sales. His extensive industry knowledge enables him to provide exceptional support to his teams, colleagues and customers, ensuring best-in-class service.
These three leadership appointments support CHEP in delivering quality service and solutions to the approximately 300,000 partners it serves worldwide. The continuity of its executive team also reflects the company’s longstanding position as an industry leader and trusted partner for more than 60 years.
Is Internal Promotion the Best Path Forward?
While this section has nothing to do with the CHEP promotions discussed above, it is useful to consider the pros and cons of internal promotion more generally. I think internal promotion has often been undervalued in the past and typically makes the best sense. Promoting from within for executive leadership roles offers a lot of advantages, especially when it comes to continuity, company culture, and employee morale. An internal candidate already understands the company’s operations, its challenges, and its people. They don’t need to spend months—or even years—getting up to speed, or correcting aggressive early missteps made before fully understanding the landscape. That familiarity allows for a smoother transition, reducing disruption and maintaining momentum. Plus, promoting from within sends a strong message to employees: work hard, stay loyal, and you’ll have opportunities to grow. That can boost retention and keep institutional knowledge within the organization.
That said, internal promotions aren’t without their risks. A company that only promotes from within may find itself with leadership groupthink—where everyone has similar ideas and perspectives, making it harder to innovate or adapt to new market realities. There’s also the risk of promoting someone excellent at their previous job but lacking the broader strategic skills needed for an executive role. Just because someone was a great operations manager doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be an effective VP. Without proper leadership training and mentorship, internal promotions can sometimes fizzle, putting the employee and the company in a tough spot.
For years, it seems, corporate America leaned heavily on outside guns, often bringing in executives with fresh perspectives from other industries to shake things up. But more recently, many companies—especially those with strong cultures and long-term visions—are returning to internal promotions. The thinking is that leadership longevity and cultural fit are just as important as new ideas. Companies like Apple and Walmart have famously built leadership pipelines that favor internal growth, while others still prefer the outsider approach for shaking the tree and injecting change. It’s a balancing act, and the best companies know when to promote from within and when to look outside for a shake-up.
About CHEP
CHEP is a global leader in supply chain solutions. Together with producers, manufacturers, retailers and logistics partners, CHEP advances the smart and sustainable movement of goods across more than 60 countries. Powered by its share, repair and reuse network of pallets, crates and containers, CHEP helps businesses optimize their supply chains to reduce costs and minimize the environmental impact of their operations. CHEP pairs its leadership in circularity, which helps tackle emissions, waste and single-use packaging, with a focus on resilience, to build future-ready supply networks through data, scale, and collaboration.
With its operational excellence trusted by the world’s top brands, CHEP primarily serves customers in the consumer staples (e.g. dry food, grocery, household products, health and personal care, fresh produce and beverage), retail, automotive and general manufacturing industries. A part of the Brambles Group, CHEP manages ~347 million pallets and containers through a network of 750+ service centers, employing approximately 11,000 people worldwide with its largest operations in North America and Europe.
For more information, visit www.chep.com.
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Rick LeBlanc, EMBA, is the founder and editor of Reusable Packaging News (subscribe to the free newsletter) and editor of Western Pallet Magazine. A supply chain journalist with more than 30 years of experience, he specializes in pallets, reusable packaging, material handling and related operations. Rick is co-author of Pallets: A North American Perspective and Pallets & Progress: A Collected History of Pallets and Palletized Handling 1922–1945. He is also an advisory board member of the Virginia Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design. Read Rick’s full bio.
