About

Kia has experienced unprecedented growth since Kay Nguyen joined the company in 2010. The Canadian business has been the fastest growing car company in the country, experiencing sales growth in excess of 100% over the last five years. As Kia has gained market share, and surpassed the sales volume of major competitors, Nguyen has advocated for greater industry involvement by her company and for the development of more effective relationships and communication with key regulators. As a result of her efforts, Kia Canada has taken on a greater leadership role in a number of industry initiatives and committees. The company is now more engaged in industry and regulatory developments and is increasingly encouraged, and able, to take these into consideration in business planning and strategy. Shortly after Nguyen took the role of general counsel at Kia, the organisation faced one of the biggest legal and public customer relations challenges in its history. Kia discovered that a number of procedural errors and regulatory interpretation issues meant that the fuel consumption figures for hundreds of thousands of Kia vehicles in North America might have to be restated. Because of legal and regulatory aspects, Nguyen was responsible for managing Kia Canada’s action plan on all fronts. ‘This involved leading Kia’s immediate and long-term crisis management strategy and PR and customer relations plan’, Nguyen explains. ‘I managed Kia Canada’s response to numerous class actions that needed to be coordinated with the US and Korea as well as a number of Canadian regulatory investigations and inquiries’. In the end, all class actions were settled swiftly, offering claimants compensation on par with Kia’s existing voluntary compensation program.