Meet the Team
Greg Lehmkuhl,
President & Chief Executive Officer
As President & CEO of Lineage, Greg Lehmkuhl provides strategic leadership and oversees all facets of the organization’s operations worldwide. Under Greg’s leadership, Lineage has experienced significant growth, expanding our organization’s international reach through acquisition and expansion as well as securing long-term investors to fuel future growth and innovation. Greg is fiercely committed to driving results for Lineage’s customers, while also creating a strong company culture rooted in core values and purpose-driven work. Prior to joining Lineage, Greg served as Corporate EVP for Con-Way (NYSE: CNW) and President of Con-Way Freight and held management positions at Menlo Worldwide, Delphi Automotive and Penske Logistics. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University as well as a Master of Business Administration from Oakland University.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work?
Unprecedented growth, massive investments in our infrastructure and service capabilities as well as a commitment to innovation make Lineage a dynamic place to work. The momentum we continue to generate is incredible, and it creates limitless opportunities for our team members.
Speaking of our team members, so rarely do you come across a group of people who are ferociously smart, who are unequivocally good at what they do, and who can so agreeably work together in pursuit of a higher purpose. Lineage is special because our team is special, and I am grateful to serve them every day.
Which of Lineage’s values is most meaningful to you, and why?
Is this a trick question? All of Lineage’s core values are especially meaningful to me because they are foundational to the character and spirit of our company. However, if I were to narrow in on a few, I would choose Trust, Innovation and Servant Leadership.
To me, Trust is simple – do what you say you’re going to do. That is how trust is earned. Innovation isn’t just a mindset at Lineage. We solve our toughest challenges using future-forward, cutting-edge approaches to deliver value to our customers, grow our company and transform the food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the world. Finally, Servant Leadership calls on our leaders to support our team members first and foremost. Our job as leaders is to make decisions and investments that make their critical jobs safer, easier and more efficient.
If you had to deliver a message directly to our hourly warehouse team members, what would you say?
First of all, thank you for the tremendous work you do every day! It takes a special person to work tirelessly to ensure food is stored, prepared and moved safely from farm to fork, and you should be proud of how profoundly your work impacts our communities and the world.
Moreover, I would encourage you to be vocal and proactive in recommending changes that make your and your fellow team members’ jobs safer, easier and more efficient. We are fortunate to work in an environment that champions innovation and continuous improvement, so take advantage of it!
What is your proudest achievement?
No doubt, my proudest achievements are raising two remarkable kids, Brendan and Brooke, and finding my perfect bride, Leslie. I cherish my family and the time we spend together playing games, staying active and traveling.
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"Lineage is special because our team is special, and I am grateful to serve them every day."
GREG LEHMKUHL
President & Chief Executive Officer
Rob Crisci,
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Financial Officer, Rob Crisci oversees Lineage’s finance organization and is responsible for creating a firm foundation for the company’s next phase of growth and expansion. He and his leadership team are focused on building a world-class finance organization, serving as key business partners to the CEO, and developing strong financial structures across the company. Prior to joining Lineage, Rob served in financial and executive leadership positions at Roper Technologies (NYSE: ROP), in which he led the growth of the company’s market capitalization from $12 billion to over $45 billion as Executive Vice President and CFO. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a Master’s in Business Administration from Columbia University.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work?
I think what makes a company an exciting place to work always starts with its people, and I’ve been incredibly impressed with Lineage’s culture. We have a collection of smart, driven leaders who make coming to work each day a pleasure. On top of that, Lineage has a history of strong growth with many exciting opportunities to further expand on our industry’s leading position. It’s an extraordinary time to join Lineage, and I am grateful for the opportunity.
Which of Lineage’s values (Safe, Trust, Respect, Bold, Innovation, and Servant Leadership) is most meaningful to you, and why?
Each of our values are so important. I love that while we have them posted at each facilities, they aren’t just words on a wall – we take pride in the way all our team members actually live them every day. The most important to me? Everything starts with safety! It’s how we start every meeting and, without a safe working environment, we can’t and won’t succeed. Our team members are the definition of essential. They come to work each day so consumers around the world have access to food at the grocery store and restaurants will have the supplies they need to serve their customers. Protecting our work family will always be our number one priority.
What are the two or three most important lessons you have learned in your career that others could benefit from?
I am grateful to have worked for some amazing leaders throughout my career. I have seen great success and believe anything is possible if you are willing to work for it. Business (and life) presents many ups and downs, and I believe long-term success is all about learning from mistakes and making sure you never stop growing. Listen with the intent to learn. Always act with the end in mind. Be accountable!
What is your proudest achievement?
Since I’ve still never had a hole-in-one, my proudest accomplishment is bowling a 243 in my Saturday morning league when I was 10-years-old... Just kidding! Of course, it’s my wonderful wife and our two teenage boys. Their love and support mean everything to me.
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
“Lineage has a tremendous history of growth and a dedicated employee base that lives our values each day. We work hard, treat each other with respect and strive to make our world’s food supply more efficient and secure. I am honored to have the opportunity to help further advance Lineage’s position as the world’s leading and most innovative temperature-controlled logistics company.”
ROB CRISCI
Chief Financial Officer
Jeff Rivera,
Global Chief Operations Officer
Jeff Rivera oversees Lineage’s operations across the organization as Global Chief Operations Officer. As Global Chief Operations Officer, he and his team are focused on creating operational excellence across the company through flawless execution, ensuring top-quality customer experience and making Lineage a great place to work. As a values-focused, servant leader Jeff is committed to creating a strong company culture where every team member can thrive. Prior to joining the Lineage team, Jeff held several leadership positions at Con-Way Freight, Menlo Worldwide Logistics and General Motors. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Michigan Technical University and a Master’s degree from Stanford University.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work?
Lineage’s awesome culture inspires me each day. I absolutely love that we’re a purpose-driven company. We come to work every day to transform the food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the world—that’s a big responsibility, and it inspires us to continuously improve as we care for our customers’ products. We’re making an impact in our communities every day, and the engagement of our teams at local food banks is awesome, infectious and humbling.
Our team is also deeply entrepreneurial, driven by our core values and future-focused in ways you just don’t find at every company. There’s an energy at Lineage that is unique, and I feel blessed to be a part of something so special.
If you had to deliver a message directly to our hourly warehouse team members, what would you say?
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! You are heroes of the cold chain! We have the best team members in the industry, and I’m blessed to work with you every day.
Also, when we speak to our values, we really believe in them. They’re not just wallpaper. I think about how I can live our values every day and try to recognize and consistently thank our leaders for doing the same. So, to our hardworking and dedicated team members, I stress the importance of living our values. Live them every day, and you’ll have a great career at Lineage.
Our values and our people are closely linked, and both are essential to our company’s bright future. We need great people to strengthen our great organization. I challenge you to recognize your peers when they bring our values to life and show them appreciation by giving them one of our Values cards.
We’re building something great here. And we’re blessed with passionate owners and an awesome CEO who genuinely cares about people. We’re going to change the cold storage industry, and we want you to be a part of it!
What is a piece of professional advice you received from an impactful leader that you can share with others?
The people on the team who add real value to a company like ours are the team members touching the customer’s product. The rest of us add value to the company by helping to make life easier for those team members who are in the cold, on the front lines of handling customers’ products every day.
That means our decisions – from supervisors to the C-Suite – need to always be squarely focused on meeting the needs of our team members on the warehouse floor. If we fail to make the lives of our value-adding team members better, we fail the customers and we fail the company.
What is your proudest achievement?
That’s an easy one—20 years of marriage to my incredible wife, Marilyn, and my three incredible kids, Samantha, Roman and Madeline. Our family is passionate about supporting our local dog rescue. We’ve fostered more than 200 dogs over the past 6 years. It’s normal to come home from a work trip to meet a new dog running around my house!
I’m also proud of the incredible work we are doing through the Lineage Foundation for Good. In just a short amount of time, we have provided over 200 million meals to food bank partners and supported team members during times of personal hardship. We’re living our purpose of reimagining the food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the world – right here in our local communities and all around the world.
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"Many companies pay lip service to ‘innovation,’ but few of them live that value as fully as we do here at Lineage. From our data science and IT teams to our operators on the warehouse floor, Lineage team members are driving revolutionary changes in how food gets to dinner tables around the world."
JEFF RIVERA
Chief Operating Officer
Sudarsan Thattai,
Chief Information Officer & Chief Transformation Officer
As Chief Information Officer & Chief Transformation Officer at Lineage, Sudarsan Thattai is responsible for all facets of the company’s technology and digitization efforts. He and his team focus on optimizing technology to drive customer value, expand service capability and make a global impact. Previously, Sudarsan served as SVP of IT Services at UTi Worldwide and held technology leadership positions at Cisco Systems and DFS Group.
What does Lineage’s purpose mean to you?
Today, 10% of households in the U.S. alone are food insecure, yet 110 billion pounds of food goes to waste. Those statistics are staggering! Lineage’s role in the global food supply chain is uniquely positioned to make a tangible, immediate impact on a real societal issue. By transforming the food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the world, we can do good while doing well – not a lot of companies can say that.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work?
Lineage embodies the dynamic, nimble attitude of a Silicon Valley startup, while operating in an industry that has been around for generations. Our owners at Bay Grove place an extraordinary amount of trust in our team to challenge the status quo, which gives us the freedom to dream big and deliver meaningful long-term value to our customers while making a positive impact in the communities we live in. On top of that, the passion for and alignment to Lineage’s purpose across the organization creates a shared mission that continues to propel us forward.
What is a piece of professional advice you received from an impactful leader that you can share with others?
You are never as good or as bad as someone makes you out to be – the truth is always somewhere in the middle. No matter what, be a positive leader and always put the mission before personal ambition.
The Lineage family is close-knit, but there’s no place like home.
My wife, Kavita, and my son, Vidyuth, and I are passionate travelers and have been fortunate to live in beautiful places around the world like Singapore and Hong Kong. My son is also becoming a serious challenger on the golf course – I’m not sure how I feel about that!
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"Lineage embodies the dynamic, nimble attitude of a Silicon Valley startup, while operating in an industry that has been around for generations. Our owners at Bay Grove place an extraordinary amount of trust in our team to challenge the status quo..."
SUDARSAN THATTAI
Chief Information Officer & Chief Transformation Officer
Natalie Matsler,
Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary
Natalie Matsler serves as Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary at Lineage, where she oversees the company’s global Legal, Corporate Compliance & Ethics, Food Optimization, and Safety and Compliance Functions. She rejoined Lineage from McCourt Partners, a private investment platform, where she was a member of the executive team and successfully led several projects in real estate development featuring green technology and resilient design. She originally joined Lineage in 2014, serving in several legal leadership roles, including Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, through April 2021. Natalie began her legal career at Latham & Watkins LLP and continued on to Downey Savings and Loan Association and U.S. Bank. Natalie holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and her J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work?
The growth mindset and commitment to continuous improvement. With the pace of change here at Lineage, being able to approach each new issue as a welcome challenge and opportunity to learn is energizing.
Which of Lineage’s values is most meaningful to you, and why?
Safe! Our team wakes up every morning thinking about safety. Physical safety is of utmost importance for our thousands of team members around the world. Of course, we also spend a great deal of time and energy focusing on ways to minimize other types of risk – keeping the company safe by making informed and measured decisions.
What is your proudest achievement?
I’m incredibly grateful for a full life – an amazing husband, two wonderful (and energetic) boys, a fully engaged extended family, Lineage team members who are excellent professionals and even better human beings, and a community of friends who provide inspiration and support…and a lot of laughs.
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"There is a lot packed into our purpose statement. We “transform,” meaning we challenge the status quo and make progress. We aim to “eliminate waste” of all kinds – including food waste, energy waste and process waste. And ultimately, we “help feed the world” and meet a fundamental need of every human being."
NATALIE MATSLER
Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary
Tim Smith,
Chief Commercial Officer
Tim Smith serves as Lineage’s Chief Commercial Officer and is responsible for delivering top-line revenue commitment and defining the company’s commercial strategy. Tim brings to Lineage over 30 years of sales, new business development, account management, and marketing experience in the consumer-packaged goods, protein, fresh produce, and retail industries. Prior to joining Lineage, he held management positions at Millard Refrigerated Services, CHEP, and The Hershey Company. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from St. Lawrence University and a Master of Business Administration from Stetson University.
Which of Lineage’s values is most meaningful to you, and why?
Trust. Every day, Fortune 500 companies and family-owned businesses alike trust Lineage with their brand, their product and their promise to the end-consumer to provide safe, quality food. Trust is intrinsic to our role in the global food supply chain, and we take that responsibility seriously.
Turning internally, establishing Trust amongst team members inspires a culture in which we can speak authentically and without fear of repercussion – in other words, our value of Trust lays the foundation for our value of Bold. Embodying our value of Bold pushes our team to challenge the status quo and skirt “group think,” and I believe we are a more creative, honest company because of it.
If you were to deliver a message directly to our hourly warehouse team members, what would you say?
You are the last team members to care for our customers’ product. Without your dedication to their product’s integrity and your uncompromising focus on food safety, Lineage would not have been able to grow to become one of the largest, most respected companies in the temperature-controlled logistics industry. At the end of the day, without you, we don’t have a business. Thank you.
What are the two or three most important lessons you have learned in your career that others could benefit from?
How long do I have? I’ve been fortunate to receive so much great advice over the years, but here are the nuggets that have stuck with me: (1) never stop learning; (2) don’t be afraid of stretch assignments – they were likely offered to you for a reason; (3) set aspirational goals with a roadmap to success; and (4) always be intellectually curious.
What is your proudest achievement?
Together with my wife, Jennifer, I am enormously proud of watching our three children – Grace, Owen and Eva – grow up, gracefully accept new challenges, and contribute to making our family special in their own individual ways.
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"Every day, [our customers] trust Lineage with their brand, their product and their promise to the end-consumer to provide safe, quality food. Trust is intrinsic to our role in the global food supply chain, and we take that responsibility seriously."
TIM SMITH
Chief Commercial Officer
Sean Vanderelzen,
Chief Human Resources Officer
Sean Vanderelzen serves as Chief Human Resources Officer at Lineage, where he leads all aspects of the company’s Human Resources function. Under his leadership, the Human Resources department is committed to serving as a strategic partner to the business by fostering a dynamic, values-based culture and driving employee engagement. Prior to joining the Lineage team, Sean held a variety of leadership positions both domestically and internationally at General Motors. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Trevecca University.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work?
Because we are a fast-moving, high-growth company, every day at Lineage is exciting. Each of us are challenged to adapt to the changing needs of the business while also driving innovation in an industry that is ripe for new energy and new ideas.
And, at the end of the day, our work contributes to feeding the world -- and it is tremendously rewarding to work for an organization that both functionally and philanthropically does such good for the world. At Lineage, every decision we make impacts how food moves through our communities and reaches dinner tables around the globe.
What is a piece of professional advice you received from an impactful leader that you can share with others?
Don't let your process become your purpose. If you remember why you are doing what you are doing, you will always do it better.
What are the two or three most important lessons you have learned in your career from which others could benefit?
As a leader, you will need to communicate many different times and in many different ways (seven is my go-to number). You will never be accused of over-communicating.
Also, work hard, show up on time and be willing to take personal risks, like relocating or taking a job in which others failed. There are a lot of smart, capable people in the world, but not all of them are willing to go the extra mile.
Finally, you will never be able to know everything before making a decision – do your research, ask intelligent questions, but also trust in your own wisdom and experience to make a choice and stand behind it.
What is your proudest achievement?
Personally, I am proud of seeing my four kids – Drew, Julia, Lauren and Ethan – standing on their own two feet. But let’s be honest, I couldn’t have done it without my incredible wife, Christina, at my side. Professionally, I am especially proud to have always done things that others shy away from. Taking calculated risks in my career has given me exposure to many rare and valuable experiences I carry with me today.
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"By doing hard work in a challenging, cold environment, our team members are connecting families with the food they need to survive. There are many hard jobs out there, but few that are this important to the world."
SEAN VANDERELZEN
Chief Human Resources Officer
Brian McGowan,
Chief Network Optimization Officer
Brian McGowan serves as Lineage’s Chief Network Optimization Officer. In his role, Brian oversees Lineage’s Strategy Management and global growth through greenfield projects, expansions, and acquisitions. Under his leadership, the Continuous Improvement group – which includes the Project Management Office and Lean organization – is tasked with driving enormous value to the organization by executing strategic projects and instituting Lean processes. Prior to joining the Lineage team, Brian served as Vice President of Lean for Con-Way Freight and held leadership positions at Menlo Worldwide and the Ford Motor Company. He holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master of Business Administration from Wayne State University.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work?
Working for a company that is in an accelerated growth mode like Lineage is flat-out fun. The pace of change and uncharted territories that come with such incredible growth forces you to challenge yourself with opportunities and experiences that might be out of your comfort zone. Luckily, Lineage has a remarkable team-based culture, and everyone wants to see you, and the company, succeed.
What is a piece of professional advice you received from an impactful leader that you can share with others?
Make time for people. Listen and help develop them. In the end, it’s our job as leaders. That’s really the spirit behind our value of Servant Leadership – we are here to support, build up and see our teams realize success. I, along with the rest of the leadership team, are personally invested in our people, and I truly value the time I spend with each of them.
What are the two or three most important lessons you have learned in your career from which others could benefit?
I’ve learned many valuable lessons throughout my career, but a few stand out as particularly impactful. To innovate, you must be a change leader. Change is inevitable, so jump in and take charge of it. I’ve also learned the importance of investing in your own career development. If you are not an active participant in your development, how can you expect anyone else to be? Finally, you have to surround yourself with an “A Team” and know the team’s individual strengths so you can help further develop them.
What is your proudest achievement?
That’s a no-brainer – my proudest achievement is my loving marriage to my beautiful wife, Jenna, and the work we are doing together to raise our three kids – Abbey, Anna and Cole.
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"We are comfortable being uncomfortable because of Lineage's remarkable team-based culture. Everyone wants to help you and the company succeed."
BRIAN MCGOWAN
Chief Network Optimization Officer
Brian Beattie,
President, North America West
Brian Beattie is Lineage’s President of the U.S. West Business Unit. In his role, Brian supports our operations leadership across Lineage’s facility network who are responsible for working collaboratively with our entire team to deliver excellent service to our customers day-in and day-out. Prior to joining the Lineage team, Brian held several leadership positions at Preferred Freezer Services, CHEP, Ryder Systems, Tenneco Automotive and Pepsico. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Transportation from Michigan State University.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work?
Lineage is poised to grow like no one else in the industry—what’s more we have the evidence to show that we can sustain that growth while still delivering for our customers. All of that adds up to a tremendous runway ahead of every one of our team members—little wonder why Lineage is loaded with such top-level talent across the board.
If you had to deliver a message directly to our hourly warehouse team members, what would you say?
Make no mistake—you are the heartbeat of this company. At Lineage we don’t make a product, we provide a service. Our customers trust us to store, move and prepare the food they produce. The Lineage brand is built on the hard work we all do to meet the needs and exceed the expectations of our customers every day.
And it is you, as the warehouse team member, who is on the front line handling the food in our care. It’s up to you at the end of the day to ensure those products get safely to the right place, at the right time, at the right temperature every time. Our brand as a company is, quite literally, in your hands.
Which of Lineage’s values is most meaningful to you, and why?
Lineage’s commitment to Servant Leadership has always stood out to me as particularly important to our success. It’s the idea that if we want to build a team that goes above and beyond for our customers, we need to start with leaders who go above and beyond for our team members.
When your leader treats you with respect and cares about you as a person, you’re more likely to bring your A-game to the table. It stops being about just punching a clock and it becomes about delivering for our customers and delivering for each other.
The Lineage family is close-knit, but there’s no place like home.
Together with my wife Kim, we have four adult sons — Jerry, Brandon, Evan, and Brent — and two daughters-in-law, Jessica and Karsyn, with Stephanie soon to join the family and the greatest gift of all, our first grandson Beckham. Family vacations have always been very important to us and, whenever we get together, you know there’ll be lots of laughter and one of our sons will be playing a musical instrument in the background.
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"Lineage is a dream opportunity for anyone who is eager to learn and grow. As the company continues to grow, transform and grow again, your opportunities for career growth are virtually limitless."
BRIAN BEATTIE
President, North America West
Matt Cramer,
President, North America East
Matt Cramer serves as Lineage’s President of North America East region. Along with his team, Matt is focused on supporting operations and local sales for the Eastern business unit in North America. With degrees in Production and Operations Management from University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, Matt is able to set Lineage and his team up for success.
What does Lineage’s purpose (to transform the food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the world) mean to you and why is it important?
You don’t have to look far in any location worldwide to see where people are struggling with food insecurity. This resonates at a personal level for me, and it’s truly inspiring to work for a company that has made it a core part of its mission to focus on solutions to abate these issues at a level that no single individual ever could.
What is a piece of professional advice you received from an impactful leader that you can share with others?
Never allow your perspective to prevent you from learning in the moment. Take each opportunity you are given and ask yourself, "What can I learn from this person, situation or perspective?"
What are the two or three most important lessons you have learned in your career that others could benefit from?
- Build teams of leaders that are better than you are as an individual.
- Make time for those you support and listen intently when you are interacting with them.
- Get good at the “why” when introducing change. People are not naturally resistant to change but we, as leaders, need to understand how to tie change back to the team member in meaningful ways.
What is your proudest achievement?
No question, the proudest achievements in my life are my marriage to my beautiful wife Katherine and becoming a father to our three wonderful children Emma, Madelyn, and Matthew.
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"Our responsibility to the world is to put those who we support in a position to succeed by eliminating barriers, supporting their development and creating teams that are far better than any individual."
MATT CRAMER
President, North America East
Harld Peters,
President, Europe
Harld Peters serves as President, Europe at Lineage. Harld and his team are focused on overseeing all operations in Europe. Before joining Lineage, Harld held multiple key leadership positions at ManpowerGroup and UPS. He holds a Master of Business Economics from Radboud University of Nijmegen and has taken various executive courses at the International Institute for Management Development, IESE Business School, and Harvard University.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work? What makes it unique?
Great strategy, great mission, and great people! Lineage is unique in our unprecedented growth and everyone working together across both functional and physical borders.
What would you tell someone considering a career in supply chain, logistics, or at Lineage?
The world has become more and more connected, and recent disruptions have proven how complex supply chains have become and what the impact on society is when they get broken. This is a fantastic industry for people that like complexity at a global level and in a continuously changing environment. If you add components like growth, technology, and fantastic people to it, you have Lineage!
What does Lineage’s purpose (to transform the food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the world) mean to you and why is it important?
Throughout my professional career I have lived and worked across the world and learned that having access to sufficient and good quality food is not a given for many people. This is true both in developing and developed countries. The production of food is also closely linked to creating a more sustainable world. Our management of food supply chains, supported by technology, will help to reduce waste in this global food supply chain and support a more sustainable world.
If you had to deliver a message directly to our hourly warehouse team members, what would you say?
What I would like to stress is it is them who deliver service to our clients every day. It is our people that live up to our global vision and make it happen. For one message to summarize it all: You do an awesome job!
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"Even though it is extremely hard to choose from such strong values, I would say Bold is the most meaningful to me. We are bold in shaping the vision of the company, bold in driving growth, and bold in embracing continuous change as the norm."
HARLD PETERS
President, Europe
Brooke Miller,
President Asia Pacific
As President of Lineage in Asia Pacific, Brooke Miller oversees the company’s operations in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka. In this role, she is focused on delivering exceptional outcomes for Lineage’s customers in the region, helping ensure customers can take advantage of the scale of the company’s global network and innovation.
Prior to joining Lineage, Brooke spent 23 years at global energy company BP in numerous roles, including Asia Pacific Chief Financial Officer, Vice President of Castrol in Asia Pacific, and Vice President of Retail, Sales and Marketing. Prior to that, Brooke worked as a landscape architect and town planner.
She holds a Bachelor of Planning and Design in Environmental Planning, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Melbourne, as well as an MBA from the Melbourne Business School. She is a director for biosciences research centre Agribio Australia as well as the Melbourne Business School.
What makes Lineage an exciting place to work?
What attracted me to Lineage is the fact that it’s a values-driven organization. Our values are not just a list on a page. Every day I see them clearly on display – I see our team drawing on them when they are facing challenges or pursuing opportunities.
Secondly, it is the huge opportunity that Asia Pacific presents for Lineage. We can play a part in transforming the food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the region, benefitting our communities in Asia Pacific.
What does Lineage’s purpose (to transform the food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the world) mean to you and why is it important?
There are 850 million people living in Asia Pacific, excluding the populous nations of China and India. The great opportunity in this region is that you have economies that are still moving through a growth phase with huge numbers of people moving into the middle class. Providing access to safe and reliable food is critical to improving people’s prosperity and future as part of this journey, and this aligns perfectly with Lineage’s purpose.
In areas that are often quite challenged from a logistics perspective, Lineage can deliver scale, capability, and processes that allow things to be done differently and more efficiently.
Which of Lineage’s values (Safe, Trust, Respect, Bold, Innovation and Servant Leadership) is most meaningful to you and why?
Safety always comes first, and in Asia Pacific, it's also hard to go past bold. The history of many countries in this region is built on being bold, so I think that fits really nicely for Lineage in Asia Pacific.
What are the most important lessons you've learned in your career that others could benefit from?
One of the key lessons I’ve learnt is to give things a go – just step in and start. You might not get the right answer the first time around, but you will find an answer which moves the position forward. When you're in a market like Asia Pacific, making decisions and moving forward is more important than perfection.
Secondly, businesses that are involved in supply chains face challenges every day. We've particularly seen that through the last few years! The most powerful thing that you can do when there is an issue is lean into the challenge and work out how to solve it. And that tends to lead you to success much faster than anything else. It’s about accepting and embracing disruption at times.
What is your proudest achievement?
My proudest achievement is still a work in progress – it's very much around helping my kids grow up to be resilient, creative and curious, and to be contributing members to their communities.
Greg Bryan,
Chief Integrated Solutions Officer
Greg Bryan oversees all aspects of Lineage’s Logistics operations as Chief Integrated Solutions Officer, supporting the company’s Transportation, Foodservice, Re-distribution, Customs Brokerage, Port container/drayage, Freight Forwarding, and E-commerce teams. A member of the International Refrigerated Transport Association’s board, Greg previously served as Senior Vice President of Operations for C&S Wholesale Grocers and held transportation leadership positions at Americold Logistics and Ryder Integrated Solutions. He holds a bachelor’s degree and a Master of Business Administration from Pennsylvania State University.
What are the two or three most important lessons you have learned in your career that others could benefit from?
First and foremost, a positive attitude always perseveres. Listen to different ideas presented from all levels across the organization. Don’t be afraid to ask why. And never be satisfied.
Oddly enough, I wholeheartedly believe that the team members of Lineage naturally live these lessons – we are positive, entrepreneurial, ever-curious and always reaching for more.
What is on your professional bucket list?
My team’s role in Lineage is to provide seamless, integrated logistics solutions for our customers in service of their extended supply chains – and that takes us around the world. We are rapidly expanding our integrated footprint in Europe and the Asia Pacific regions. To say “the sky is the limit” is an understatement at Lineage, and my team is raring to go!
The Lineage family is close-knit, but there’s no place like home.
My wife, Michele, and I are so proud to have raised two successful adults, Jayse and Halle. We recently were thrilled to add our first grandson, Kyler. I also can’t forget about our two dogs, Kemba and Otto. They are a handful, but part of the family nonetheless!
FROM OUR LEADERSHIP
"Servant Leadership is such a unique value to Lineage, and it directly speaks to the workplace culture we have set out to create. We authentically enjoy developing future leaders and empowering our team members to achieve personal and professional goals in a safe, integrated team environment. The support our managers provide to team members at all levels of the organization allows the company not only to keep up with an incredible pace of change, but also to continuously improve."
GREG BRYAN
Chief Integrated Solutions Officer