David B. Menzel

President and Chief Operating Officer Echo Global Logistics

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

David B. Menzel is President and Chief Operating Officer of Echo Global Logistics, the Chicago-founded transportation and supply chain provider that built its business on putting proprietary technology between shippers and carriers. He is a Certified Public Accountant who spent nine years at Arthur Andersen and then a decade and a half as a chief financial officer across software, marketing technology and travel technology companies before joining Echo in that capacity in April 2008. He became Chief Operating Officer in October 2013 and added the President title in July 2014, and has run the company’s operations ever since — the operating counterweight to long-serving Chief Executive Doug Waggoner through Echo’s growth into a top-five technology-enabled logistics provider. In May 2026 the two were named together to Supply and Demand Chain Executive’s Pros to Know awards, Menzel in the Top Transportation Innovators category.

Career Highlights

• Named to Supply and Demand Chain Executive’s 2026 Pros to Know awards in the Top Transportation Innovators category, announced 28 May 2026, alongside Echo Chief Executive Doug Waggoner.
• President and Chief Operating Officer of Echo Global Logistics since July 2014, having been Chief Operating Officer from October 2013 and Chief Financial Officer from April 2008.
• Helped lead Echo’s transformation over two decades from a freight brokerage into a top-five provider of technology-enabled transportation and supply chain services.
• Drove Echo’s strategic acquisitions, expanded service offerings, proprietary technology investment and growth into new markets including Mexico.
• Chief Executive Officer of YesMail from 2000 to 2003, having joined as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in 1999.
• Certified Public Accountant; spent nine years, from 1985 to 1994, in Arthur Andersen’s audit and financial consulting practice.

Professional Journey

Menzel trained as an accountant, taking both a bachelor’s degree in Accounting and a Master’s of Accountancy at Florida State University, and spent the first nine years of his career at Arthur Andersen in audit and financial consulting. That was a conventional start; what followed was not. From 1994 he moved into a sequence of chief financial officer roles at technology companies operating in markets that were being created as he worked in them.

At Campbell Software he was Chief Financial Officer for five years. He then joined YesMail in 1999 as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and was promoted to Chief Executive Officer within a year — the shift from finance chief to chief executive that defines the rest of his career, since he has since tended to hold operating rather than purely financial authority. YesMail was an email marketing company at the height of the first internet cycle, and he led it from 2000 to 2003.

After two years as a Managing Director at Parson Consulting, he became Chief Financial and Operating Officer of G2 SwitchWorks, a travel technology company, from May 2005 to March 2008. Each of these was a technology business selling into an established, intermediated industry — travel distribution, marketing — which is a reasonable description of what Echo Global Logistics would ask him to do next.

He joined Echo as Chief Financial Officer in April 2008, in the run-up to the company’s public listing, and stayed in that seat for five and a half years. In October 2013 he moved across to Chief Operating Officer and in July 2014 became President and Chief Operating Officer. In the decade since, Echo has grown through acquisitions, deepened its investment in proprietary technology, widened its managed transportation services and pushed into new markets including Mexico. The company was taken private by The Jordan Company in 2021, and Menzel has remained in the operating chair throughout.

Education

Florida State University

Bachelor’s degree, Accounting

Florida State University

Master’s of Accountancy