General Manager of Badger State Auction Tom Francois will be stepping up to the position of IARA Membership Committee chair, joining Kim Hunt, who serves as the committee’s current co-chair and as director, client program management at Cox Automotive.

Francois — who has over 30 years of experience in the sales and auto auction management industry — will be taking over Tom Wright’s committee duties.

Tom Wright, national sales manager, institutional sales for XLerate Group, will be stepping down after many years with the committee. He began serving as chairman in 2011 and continued in the role as sole chairman until 2016, when he took on co-chair Kim Hunt.

“Tom has been critical to the success of the committee and has volunteered countless hours over the years.  Though Tom’s leadership will be missed, we are happy to know he isn’t going far. He will still be involved with IARA, and we will continue seeing him at IARA conferences,” said Hunt.

Looking at IARA’s membership, in 2017, roughly 200 companies are members of the IARA. Renewal notifications for the 2018 calendar-year were sent in late December and reminders will be sent in February.

An initiative that the committee has for the 2018 calendar year is recording videos of IARA member testimonials. The committee will be recording testimonials during the upcoming IARA Roundtable held concurrently with the Conference of Automotive Remarketing at Caesars Palace Las Vegas on March 5-7.

The Membership Committee plans to partner with the Social Media Committee to then share the video testimonials across IARA’s social media outlets.

The committee would also like to recognize two of its new members: Andrew Hoenecke, remarketing manager at Credit Acceptance and Aria Tactaquin, business development at Pathfinder Services.