Annaliese Atina Appointed Managing Director of Ford New Zealand

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, 16 May 2024 – Ford New Zealand has announced the appointment of Annaliese Atina to the role of Managing Director. Annaliese takes on the role from Simon Rutherford who has been appointed to a new regional role within the Ford International Markets Group.

“We’re excited to have Annaliese joining the Ford family and look forward to her insights and ideas gained from her wealth of experience,” said Andrew Birkic, President and CEO of Ford Australia and New Zealand. “Ford will certainly benefit from her perspective and the new lens she can put on serving our customers.”

Annaliese joins Ford New Zealand following several senior executive roles with Coca-Cola Amatil and One New Zealand. Annaliese is a customer focused, forward-thinking leader who has a passion for building innovative, agile teams, which she believes is key to delivering strong commercial outcomes.

“I am excited to be joining the fantastic team in New Zealand,” said Annaliese Atina. “Ford has a rich history in New Zealand and is both locally and globally a leading brand with a promising future. It’s a great time to be joining and I look forward to working closely with our team and dealers to help better serve our customers.”

Beyond her professional achievements, Annaliese is involved in for-purpose endeavors aimed at positively affecting society. A member of Global Women and the Institute of Directors NZ, Annaliese is a passionate technologist and Board Member of TUANZ (Technology Users Association of NZ) and is Head Coach of the Ambition Collective founded to uplift women in business and newly appointed Principals.

Annaliese will start as Ford New Zealand Managing Director on 27 May, allowing for a transition and handover with current Ford NZ MD, Simon Rutherford. 

Annaliese Atina – Bio

Annaliese has spent more than 25 years helping New Zealand businesses deliver for their customers holding several senior executive roles with Coca-Cola Amatil and One New Zealand (formerly Vodafone NZ). 

Annaliese is a customer focused, forward-thinking leader who has a passion for empowering innovative, agile teams which she believes is key to delivering strong reoccurring commercial outcomes and win in the market.

As a strategist and leader, Annaliese has an accomplished career leading transformational change across customer, market, and operating environments. Recent career highlights include leading the turnaround performance of the SMB Business Unit at One New Zealand, setting up strategic routes to lead the segment compromising of 125k customers from share loss to robust annual revenue growth.

Her time at CCA saw Annaliese take a leadership position in establishing omni-channel capabilities to grow reach across market that drove significant YOY (Year Over Year) revenue growth, led the Customer Experience strategy which transformed the business, leveraging technology advancements to improve customer satisfaction by 35 per cent and consistently achieved world class people engagement scores in the top quartile as measured by AON Hewitt & McKinsey OHI.

With several industry achievements attributed to her leadership across diverse teams including winning multi-year CRM Contact Centre Awards, multi-year Coalface FMCG Supplier Awards and later the prestigious Coca-Cola Company Global awards for Best Execution Market.

Annaliese is a proud wife and mother of three boys, and as a lifelong learner is enrolled into The University of Waikato completing her master's in business administration.