Lordstown Motors Appoints Melissa Leonard as Executive Vice President
LORDSTOWN, Ohio — Lordstown Motors Corp. announced today that its Board of Directors has elected Melissa Leonard as executive vice president, effective Jan. 1, 2022.
Leonard will replace Tom Canepa, Lordstown Motors’ current general counsel and secretary, who is leaving to pursue other opportunities.
She was co-leader of the mergers and acquisitions team for Baker & Hostetler LLP, where she has served as outside counsel to the company since 2019. She has been a corporate and transactional attorney at Baker & Hostetler LLP since 1995 and has extensive legal experience with mergers and acquisitions, financings and corporate governance matters.
Leonard was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio from 2007 to 2021 and served on the Finance and Governance Committees. She earned a baccalaureate of science from Miami University and her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan School of Law.
“We are excited to have Melissa join our team at Lordstown Motors,” said Dan Ninivaggi, CEO of Lordstown Motors. “Not only does Melissa bring over twenty years of deep experience in mergers and acquisitions, financing and corporate governance, she knows Lordstown Motors well, having served as our primary outside corporate counsel over the past two years. I look forward to her continuing contributions as a core member of our management team.”
“I am thrilled to be joining the LMC team at such an exciting time,” Leonard said. “I look forward to continuing to work alongside Dan and the entire Lordstown team as we get closer to bringing The Endurance to our commercial fleet customers, further strengthen our global strategic partnership with Foxconn, and expand the commercial fleet opportunities within the automotive industry with LMC designed and engineered electric vehicles.”
Lordstown Motors is in the process of launching its all-electric Endurance pickup. Commercial deliveries to customers are expected to begin during the third quarter of 2022. In November, the company announced it had reached an agreement to sell its manufacturing plant to Foxconn for $230 million.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
