Voiland exits Saltchuk Board after decade-long tenure

Gene Voiland joined Saltchuk’s Board of Directors in 2011 and was an integral voice in creating the company’s culture and commitment to safety.

During Gene Voiland’s decade-long tenure on Saltchuk’s Board of Directors, the company’s revenue nearly doubled. Assets grew by a staggering 77 percent, and more than 1,000 employees joined the ranks. And while Voiland is the first to say his contribution to Saltchuk’s growth and overall culture of safety and transparency was modest, company executives credit his push for continuous improvement as a catalyst for the successful, sustainable growth Saltchuk has experienced since 2011 when he joined the Board.

“To look back and see how the company has grown and matured is pretty amazing,” said Voiland, who transitioned off the Board earlier this year. “Saltchuk has successfully evolved from a company led and driven by its founders to a second-generation, large enterprise while still retaining its core values. That’s hard to do.”

‘I learned to be very pragmatic’

Voiland was born in Seattle, the eldest of 12 children – six boys and six girls. His family moved to Richland, Washington, and he described his childhood as “typical, but also very different.” He stayed busy with school and sports, but he had a unique set of responsibilities as the eldest sibling.

“I always had to set a good example,” he said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but it fostered a lot of leadership and management skills. I learned to be very pragmatic. I started mowing and edging lawns when I was 10 or 11. My first job where I got paid by a company was as a salesman for JC Penny. All in all, I learned a lot, earned spending money, and most of all learned what I didn’t want to do for a living.”

Voiland dreamed of becoming a baseball player, but his talent didn’t match his drive. When he was a senior of high school, headed to Washington State University, his father asked what he wanted to major in.

“I didn’t know,” he laughed. “I was good in math and science. So I told him that maybe I’d be a chemist like he was. He said, ‘If you’re going to go to all that trouble, be a chemical engineer.’ So I became one.”

‘I learned the business from extremely talented and selfless people’

Post-graduation, Voiland was fortunate enough to get a job for the “old Shell Oil Company.”

“I learned the business from extremely talented and selfless people who were mostly World War II veterans. They were like father figures to me.”

Voiland’s most challenging job was leading the newly formed division that began drilling wells in the Gulf of Mexico, where water depths exceeded 3,000 feet.

“The technology was amazing and exceedingly complex,” he said. “I didn’t sleep well for two years.”

He became General Manager of Engineering and then Corporate Planning in a career that spanned some 30 years.

“Later in my tenure with Shell, I had an idea to form a spinoff company of Shell’s California Exploration and Production Assets,” he explained. “After four or five years of arguing the case, they let me. I ended up being the Founding CEO of Aera Energy LLC, where I stayed for a little more than 10 years. We built a world-class organization.”

Armed with his conviction that a person should only be CEO of a company for 10 years, Voiland retired from Aera. Looking around for his next opportunity, he and a friend saw the need for a community bank in Bakersfield, California. So they formed one.

“Valley Republic Bank is now more than 11 years old and has $1.3 billion in assets and good earnings,” said Voiland, who acts as the bank’s Chairman. “The best part of all of…