Martha Brooks is a widely experienced international operations executive, board member and philanthropist. She currently serves as a director at both Volvo AB and Constellium, and was formerly a director at Jabil, Bombardier, International Paper, and Harley-Davidson.
Martha has worked through major corporate transformation issues, including CEO transitions, dramatic strategic change including refocus on ESG issues, restructuring and refinancing, integration of large acquisitions, and major compensation plan changes, while chairing or serving on committees responsible for human capital, sustainability, finance and risk, audit, public policy, and governance.
In her executive career, Martha served 16 years with Cummins, the global leader in diesel engine and power generation, ultimately running the core truck and bus engine business. She then moved on to aluminum giant, Alcan as CEO of the Rolled Products Americas and Asia business. As her business and another division were spun off after a major acquisition, she took on the COO role for the new public company, Novelis, and later led it through a second sale process to Indian giant, Aditya Birla Group, before retiring as the leader of Novelis, the $11-billion global leader in aluminum rolling and recycling.
Throughout her career, Martha has lived on three continents and held leadership roles in joint ventures and licensing, marketing and customer engineering, product planning, M&A, corporate strategy and general management.
Since her early work as a teacher in China with the Yale-China Association, Martha has been deeply interested in economic development. She has chaired the board of CARE, a leading poverty fighting NGO active in over 100 countries, as well as the Yale-China Association, the Carter Center Board of Councilors, and has served on numerous other non-profit and university boards in leadership roles. She is a graduate of Yale University with a bachelor of the arts in economics and political science and a master’s degree in public and private management. She currently serves on the Yale President’s Council of International Advisors.
