- Managing Director Tony Roach is promoted to Vice President Customer Experience & Customer Relations.
- Anthony Gregory, former Vice President Ground Operations, is leaving Southwest Airlines.
- Chris Johnson will immediately assume responsibility for all of Ground Operations and Provisioning.
Southwest Airlines Co. today announced the promotion of Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer Linda Rutherford to Executive Vice President People & Communications, effective immediately. This news follows last week’s announcement of Leadership Plans for 2022. Rutherford will succeed Bob Jordan in what was the Executive Vice President Corporate Services role, as he pivots to making the CEO transition as smooth as possible and spending time with Employees across the Company.
Rutherford will report directly to Jordan and will continue to serve as the Chief Communications Officer for the Company. She will continue to oversee Communications & Outreach and Culture & Engagement, while adding Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DE&I), People, and Southwest Airlines University to her responsibilities. Reporting to Rutherford in her new role will be Vice President and Chief People Officer Julie Weber, Managing Director Communications & Outreach Laurie Barnett, Managing Director Culture & Engagement Whitney Eichinger, Vice President Southwest Airlines University Elizabeth Bryant, and Director DE&I Raquel Daniels.
Rutherford is approaching 30 years at Southwest Airlines after joining the Company in 1992. In recent years, she has helped build enterprise change agility, continued the strategic implementation of programming and incentives aimed at nurturing our Corporate Culture, led Enterprise efforts to develop and implement an Employee Experience roadmap, championed the enterprise social business strategy, devised relevant programming for Employee engagement, and evolved multi-channel communications support system for multiple stakeholders internally and externally. She guided the Company’s response effort at the Enterprise level to the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of the Company’s beloved Founder Herb Kelleher.
“Linda is an innovative Leader who challenges Southwest to continually evolve how we engage and champion our Employees and Communities, and she consistently delivers on our Southwest Purpose, to connect People to what’s important in their lives with friendly, reliable and low-cost air travel,” said Bob Jordan, EVP and incoming CEO.
The carrier also announced Leadership changes in Operational and Commercial Departments.
