You can still rent a Ryder truck locally, but now,
thanks in great part to Laura L. Kozloski '85, they're rolling around the
world. Kozloski is the new director of strategic development for Ryder
International, which handles all of the Ryder company's truck leasing business
outside the U.S. and Canada.Ryder's main business is leasing specialized vehicles (a Sears truck, for
instance, is a Ryder truck leased on a five- to seven-year contract), and it's
her job to look for alliance partners--banks or large local companies already
licensed in the transportation industry. She finds new markets, manages
strategic and business planning and develops models for Ryder's market entry.
"I arrange the due diligence," Kozloski said, shoptalk for investigations of a
partner's financial standing, record in human resources, liability and
relationship with its government. "I have to check to see that it has the same
business ethics as we do." In 1996 she determined the appropriate legal
structure of CRTS, a partnership among Ryder, a German company and two
Brazilian companies, and she set up and directed Ryder of Brazil until the
partnership could establish local management. In 1997 alone she has been to
Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain,
France, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan and India looking for joint venture
partners. 
Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and conversational in German, Kozloski "can
function" in Polish. "I don't think I'd be where I am without Colby's language
program," said the Spanish major who did Jan Plans in Mexico and Germany and
spent her junior year in Madrid. Soon after Colby, Kozloski found that economics as well as language was
required by a Massachusetts company interviewing her to work in the Middle
East, Africa, the Far East, the South Pacific and South America. "So I went out
and bought myself a book, taught myself all I needed to talk about supply and
demand . . . and then I learned on the road. That's what Colby does," she said.
"It teaches you to take the initiative and teach yourself." When Ryder recruited her in 1993, Kozloski was teaching international business
and economics at Barry University in Miami and consulting on the side. She had
a master's in international management from the American Graduate School of
International Management and was about to finish her University of Miami Ph.D.
in international studies with a focus on economics and Latin American studies.
"I said, `No, I like my life,'" Kozloski said. Ultimately she hitched up with
Ryder in March 1995 because "I thought that with more practical experience,
I'll be a better business professor when I go back to it." Even though she loves being on the road 80 percent of the year, she still
finds time to do some of the teaching she plans to return to eventually. She
says she'd be in Panama on a Wednesday and a couple of days later put her
experience to good use in a class. "Good professors motivate people," she said.
"Traveling makes it interesting."--Robert Gillespie