Leadership in a Time of Crisis: AAA Northeast

Over the last few months, AAA Northeast has focused on pivoting the way we do business in order to continue to do what we’ve always done: help and serve our members, our communities and our employees – on and off the road. Our priorities have been twofold: keeping our employees and members safe and doing everything we can to keep everyone at AAA Northeast employed throughout this challenging time.

I’m proud of what we’ve done as a team and what we’ve learned along the way. We’ve transitioned over 2,000 employees to a remote working environment and our teams are ready and available to help our members find ways to save more, stretch budgets and stay protected. Our branches in Rhode Island are open for all our services, including registry transactions, as part of our partnership with the Division of Motor Vehicles. Our insurance company, Motor Club Insurance, refunded over $800,000 to members with an auto insurance policy in effect from March 16 to May 15 due to the change in driving behaviors. And even though many of our members may be driving less, when they need to be on the road, they can have peace of mind knowing that AAA will be there with them. We know there has never been a more critical time to deliver on our mission of helping and serving.

As a result of COVID-19, we had several hundred employees who either couldn’t perform their roles or had little to no work to do. We retrained and reassigned employees into other areas within AAA that needed help, and into our communities, delivering meals and personal protective equipment, prepping food and emergency care packages and helping the state with its contact tracing efforts. The willingness of our team to adapt, learn new skills and work in a new environment for however long this will last has been nothing short of inspiring to me.

When the final history of this pandemic is written, our business community’s creativity and resourcefulness will underscore the spirit of generosity that characterized these unprecedented times. And all of us will have a new benchmark to call upon, a reserve of strength, a well of inspirational stories to draw upon, should a tragedy of this breadth and depth strike again.

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We’ve adjusted our world in so many ways and there’s a lot of work left to do. But I’m confident that by working together and supporting one another, we’ll emerge stronger because of it.

John Galvin
President & CEO
AAA Northeast
aaanortheast.com