A member of a new generation of Ford family members is taking on another leadership role at the automaker.
Alexandra Ford English, the daughter of Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford, was named global brand merchandising director for the Dearborn, Michigan, company on Monday.
English, 33, who already serves on the company's board of directors, will push for growth in sales of Ford brand merchandise.
English said Monday that there are passionate Ford fans around the world, and the company wants to offer them merchandise and accessories.
The appointment likely is another step toward ushering in the next generation of company leaders from the Ford family. Bill Ford is 64 and is getting closer to retirement age.
English was elected to Ford's board in May along with Henry Ford III, the son of Edsel Ford, who retired earlier this year after 33 years as a director. Both of the younger Fords are great-great-grandchildren of company founder Henry Ford.
English is the first female director from the Ford family on the company's board. She has been director of corporate strategy since March of last year. Before joining the company in 2017, she ran profit-and-loss operations for the merchandising divisions of Tory Burch and Gap Inc., according to the automaker.
English has a bachelor's degree from Stanford University in Human Biology with a concentration in the Neurobiology and Physiology of Human Behavior. She also has a master of business administration degree from Harvard.
Google Witness At Antitrust Trial Says Government Underestimates Competition For Online Advertising
Federal regulators who say Google holds an illegal monopoly over the technology that matches online advertisers to publishers are vastly underestimating the competition the tech giant faces, an expert hired by Google testified Thursday.
Mark Israel, an economist who prepared an expert report on Google's behalf, said the government's claims that Google holds a monopoly over advertising technology are improperly focused on a narrow market the government defines as "open web display advertising," essentially the rectangular ads that appear on the top and along the right hand side of a web page when a consumer browses the web on a desktop computer.
But the government's case fails to account for a variety of competition that occurs beyond those rectangular boxes, Israel said. In the real world, advertisers have dramatically shifted where they spend money to social media companies like Facebook and TikTok, and online retailers like Amazon.
When you account for all online display advertising, not just the narrow segment defined by the government's case, Google gets just 10% of the U.S. market share as of 2022, he said. That's down from roughly 15% a decade ago.
In addition, advertisers have moved away from placing their ads on the screens of desktop and laptop computers where Google is alleged to control the market, with money migrating to ads placed on apps and mobile device screens. Israel cited marketing data showing display ad spending on desktop and laptop devices has decreased from 71% in 2013 to 17% in 2022.
The government's case "seems to miss where the competition is today," Israel said.
His testimony comes as Google wraps up its defense in the third week of an antitrust trial that began earlier this month in Alexandria,... Read More