CN Board appoints Jean-Jacques Ruest as President and CEO
Posted: 26 July 2018 | Global Railway Review | No comments yet
Jean-Jacques Ruest joined CN in 1996 as Vice-President, Petroleum and Chemicals and since then has progressed throughout the company.
The Board of Directors of CN has announced the appointment of Jean-Jacques Ruest as President and Chief Executive Officer of CN, effective immediately.
He has also been selected to join CN’s Board of Directors.
“In Jean-Jacques, we have the best. He brings vision, energy and speed to the role. Jean-Jacques brought the team together to tackle the immediate operational and customer service challenges the company was facing since the fall of 2017,” said Board Chairman, Robert Pace.
Jean-Jacques has been with the company for 22 years, the last eight as Executive Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer.
“I am very proud to be a CN railroader and I am honoured and humbled by the Board’s confidence in me and the entire leadership team,” said Jean-Jacques. “CN’s team and I are committed to re-establishing best-in-class operational excellence on a sustainable basis, to growing the value of the company and to building the CN brand. We will do so by investing in human capital, efficient and effective digitisation and infrastructure that will drive future growth.”
Robert added: “Following a global search, the Board concluded that Jean-Jacques is the right leader to accelerate CN’s innovation strategy, to lead the company forward and to restore and retain industry-leading metrics and best-in-class customer service.”
Jean-Jacques was appointed Interim President and Chief Executive Officer on 5 March 2018, in addition to retaining his position as Executive Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer, to which he had been named in January 2010. He had responsibility for providing the strategic direction and leadership for CN’s sales, marketing and CN supply chain solutions groups.
Jean-Jacques holds a Master’s in Business Administration in Marketing from HEC Montréal (Université de Montréal) and a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Chemistry from Université de Sherbrooke. He also completed the executive programme of the University of Michigan Business School and CN’s Railroad MBA programme.
