Personnel Articles

COX Automotive Australia and New Zealand (CAA) has appointed two of its executives to new senior roles.

Matt McAuley has been appointed to a newly created position as director of strategy and business transformation, while Kirzsten Pountney has joined the senior leadership team as chief customer officer.

Mr McAuley has been with CAA for 12 years in senior roles, including most recently director of strategy, marketing and communications.

CAA said Mr McAuley brings a wealth of industry expertise to the role and will lead the combined strategy and transformation efforts of the business, having recently helped to successfully develop and execute a new direction to empower customers to thrive in today’s rapidly changing automotive marketplace.

Mr McAuley has extensive experience in the automotive industry including positions with Porsche Cars Australia as marketing and public relations executive and as national public relations manager for Peugeot Automobiles Australia.

He joined Cox’s logistics and auction business Manheim as head of communications and public relations in 2009 and was promoted to Cox Automotive Australia in 2017 as director of marketing and communications. In 2019 he became director of strategy marketing and communications.

Mr McAuley has a bachelor of business, marketing and information technology, from the Swinburne University of Technology.

In addition to this change, the marketing and enterprise sales functions of the various CAA brands have been aligned under Ms Pountney’s newly created chief customer officer position, in which she has direct responsibility for CAA enterprise customers, marketing and industry engagement.

Having joined CAA after many years at Toyota Finance, the automotive division of St George Bank, and, most recently, Pepper Group, Ms Pountney has held a wide variety of roles that have seen her develop expertise in automotive, relationship management and customer experience.

CAA said that throughout her career she has honed her skills in sales and new business development; strategy; planning and continuous improvement.

Ms Pountney said she was “excited about the opportunity to bring the unique offering and integrated Cox Automotive approach to their customers”.

CAA CEO David Colwell said: “With Kirzsten and Matt’s appointments, we are strengthening our focus on streamlining and improving customer experience across Cox Automotive’s comprehensive set of products and services.

“Working on this from different yet complementary directions, these two new roles will fast track our goal of providing our customers with a comprehensive and connected range of solutions for any automotive retail or wholesale related services they may need.”

By Neil Dowling

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