Taco appoints new president/COO

Cranston, RI — At company employee meetings held December 11 at Taco facilities in Cranston and Fall River, Taco President & CEO John Hazen White, Jr. introduced Wil VandeWiel as the new president & COO of Taco. As the new president & COO of Taco, Mr. VandeWiel will oversee daily operations of Taco and work with John White, Jr. and his board of directors in steering Taco’s growth forward in the years ahead.

John White, Jr., the third generation of the White family to lead Taco, will remain as company CEO but will refocus his responsibilities on building new partnerships and strategic acquisitions worldwide in pursuit of company growth and diversification.

Mr. VandeWiel, a native of the Netherlands who is also a U.S. citizen, is an experienced executive with a track record of building collaborative teams and achieving sustainable growth with a number of top-tier international companies. He served as president/CEO of DORMA Americas, a global access control company located in Pennsylvania, where he guided the company through a period of outstanding growth based on a strategy of customer and employee engagement and successful acquisitions, resulting in a leap in profitability and substantial market share expansion. Prior to his time at DORMA, he was Managing Director for U.S. based Robert Bosch LLC’s Security Systems division and served in senior leadership roles for Royal Philips N.V.

Married with four children, he received a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Eindhoven Technical University in the Netherlands and an advanced degree from MIT. He holds a Master Black Belt in the application of Six-Sigma and Lean Enterprise techniques. He currently holds a board position at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and is a member of the Founders-Society, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

As Taco’s new President and COO, Mr. VandeWiel will lead a talented and experienced management team focused on ways to best serve Taco’s valued customers and employees. He will report directly to John White, Jr.