Thad Bedard

President APL Logistics

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Thad Bedard is President of APL Logistics, the Scottsdale-headquartered global supply chain specialist that serves automotive, consumer, industrial and retail customers through a network spanning every major market and a workforce of more than 5,500. He took the role on 1 January 2022 after fourteen years inside the company, and he is responsible for its global commercial, financial and operational activities. The arc is unusual at both ends. He entered the logistics industry as a warehouseman, having moved to the San Francisco Bay Area out of graduate school hoping to become a professor of American literature and finding no teaching jobs; he entered APL Logistics in 2008 as a key account manager. Under his presidency the company has organized itself around a single stated ambition — to become the premier order management provider in the world — with product strategy, operational strategy and capital investment aligned behind it.

Career Highlights

• Named President of APL Logistics effective 1 January 2022, succeeding William Villalon, who retired after five years leading the company; the appointment was announced by APL Logistics on 3 January and by parent Kintetsu World Express on 5 January.
• Served immediately beforehand as Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer.
• Held, over fourteen years at the company, roles including Vice President of Strategy and Marketing, interim Chief Information Officer, North America Retail Head, Commercial Head of the SCS Group and Director of Strategic Accounts.
• Led and, in KWE’s words, “paved the way for” the development of APL Logistics’ data management and analytics solutions.
• Rolled out the company’s first diversity and inclusion programme after becoming President.
• Identified by KWE management as the internal candidate who could “deliver strategic approaches based on APLL’s core values”, in a succession the group described as a completed leadership transition.

Professional Journey

Bedard did not set out to work in supply chains. He finished graduate school intending to teach American literature, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and found the academic job market closed. Warehouse work was a stopgap that became a career: he has said the industry challenged a lot of his preconceptions about business and that he enjoyed it enough to stay. An early formative assignment had him managing organized labour on the waterfront in Richmond, California, where the prevailing advice was to be harsh with the crews. He tried that and it failed; treating the workers as people with legitimate concerns worked, and he has cited it since as the origin of a collaborative management style in which executives from every discipline carry equal weight and dissent is encouraged, even though the final decision remains his.

He joined APL Logistics in 2008 as a key account manager and spent the next fourteen years moving across the company’s functions rather than up a single track. He ran commercial management for the SCS Group, headed North America retail, served as Vice President of Strategy and Marketing, and stepped in as interim Chief Information Officer — a technology stint that connects to the work KWE credits him with, the development of the group’s data management and analytics capability. By 2021 he was Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer.

The presidency came at the start of 2022. APL Logistics’ chairman, George Tomiyama, framed the appointment around Bedard’s depth in supply chain and logistics and his forward-thinking vision; KWE said its management had been looking specifically for an internal candidate. His stated priorities were consistent from the first day: aligning product management, operational strategy and capital investment — in both physical assets and technology — behind becoming the world’s premier order management provider, and standing up the company’s first diversity and inclusion programme.

Speaking six months into the role, he described the job’s hardest part as balancing a global organization across geographies and businesses that each present their own problems, in a world that does not sleep. His reading of the pandemic was that it forced a renewed focus on inbound logistics and on demand as the true driver — and that getting demand planning wrong leads directly to over-manufacturing and carbon waste, a link he considers direct rather than incidental. APL Logistics’ leadership page continues to list him as President.

Education

No education record could be established from a primary source. What is documented is that he completed graduate study in literature — Inbound Logistics reported in 2022 that he left graduate school hoping to become a professor of American literature — but no company page, press release or filing names an institution or a degree. Candidate values that surfaced only in aggregator listings are recorded in the verification notes rather than asserted here.