Jeff Barna, president of Yokohama Tire Corporation (YTC), recently announced five promotions within the tire manufacturing company. Each of the four newly-promoted vice presidents will report to Barna, while the newly-promoted senior director will report to vice president of marketing and product management Andrew Briggs. 

Bruce Besancon was named vice president of OTR sales. Besancon joined the YTC as senior director of OTR sales in 2017. Before that, he was vice president of marketing at Alliance Tire Americas and has nearly 30 years of OTR tire experience, according to YTC. 

Dan Funkhouser has been promoted to vice president of commercial sales and will report to Barna. Funkhouser, who has been with YTC since 1994, has held several positions, including senior director of commercial sales. 

Larry Kull has accepted the role of vice president of consumer sales. Kull joined YTC in 2003 as an account manager and has been promoted several times.

Andrew Zeisser joined YTC in 2013 and has most recently been named the new vice president of OEM sales. Zeisser has more than 37 years of experience in the OE arena and is responsible for the company’s OE business in North America. 

Fardad Niknam has been promoted to senior director of consumer product planning and product marketing. Niknam will leverage his engineering background and market experience to support the company’s product and marketing initiatives in the US, according to YTC.