SANTA ANA, Calif. — Yokohama Tire Corp. has promoted five executives in its consumer and commercial tire business departments.
Those promoted, and their new roles, are:
• Bruce Besancon — vice president of OTR sales. Mr. Besancon joined YTC in April 2017 as senior director of OTR sales. Before that, he was vice president of marketing at Alliance Tire Americas and has nearly 30 years of OTR tire experience.
• Dan Funkhouser — vice president of commercial sales. Mr. Funkhouser has been with YTC since 1994, holding several positions, including senior director of commercial sales. He will report to Mr. Barna.
• Larry Kull — vice president of consumer sales. Mr. Kull joined YTC in 2003 as an account manager and has been promoted several times. and will report to Barna.
• Andrew Zeisser — vice president of OEM sales. Mr. Zeisser joined YTC in 2013 and has more than 37 years of industry experience in the OE arena.
• Fardad Niknam — senior director of consumer product planning and product marketing. Mr. Niknam joined YTC in March 2014 as director of corporate planning and strategy. He has 12 years' industry experience.
In his new role, he will leverage his engineering background and market experience to support the company's product and marketing initiatives in the U.S.
Messrs. Besancon, Funkhouser, Kull and Zeisser will report to Jeff Barna, who was promoted to president of YTC, effective Jan. 1, while Mr. Niknam will report to Andrew Briggs, vice president of marketing and product management.
"At Yokohama, our No. 1 strength is our people," Mr. Barna said. "Bruce, Dan, Larry, Andrew and Fardad have definitely made important contributions across our business. As we continue to build upon our success, we felt this was the right time to broaden their management responsibilities through stronger leadership roles, while providing them the opportunity to contribute further to our growth."