Meet Your NAFA Community Leaders: NAFA Lifetime Honorary Member Joe LaRosa, CPA, MBA

Launched during the 2019 Institute & Expo this past April, NAFA's Communities have been setting the pace for membership networking and interaction. Each NAFA Community goes deep into a specific aspect and/or segment of fleet.

Joe LaRosa, CPA, MBA, is the leader of NAFA’s Multinational Fleet Community, and with him comes an impressive history in the global fleet segment. Presently an international fleet consultant, LaRosa is also a Lifetime Honorary Member of NAFA and an AFLA 2019 Hall of Fame inductee. He was integral to NAFA’s International Fleet Academy seminars in previous years and hopes to share this wealth of knowledge with fellow global fleet administrators via the Multinational Fleet Community framework.

“(I) recently completed International Framework Agreements (IFA) with two multinational leasing companies and found that there were a few nuances in utilizing IFAs to streamline local credit applications including parental guarantees,” LaRosa said. “However, we didn’t realize that certain services must be harmonized only under local agreements.” LaRosa is putting the call out to fellow Multinational Fleet Community members who are willing to share their experiences to spark new conversations on the subject. “I’m certain this would be helpful to other multinational fleet managers.”

Another interesting concept LaRosa has come across under the auspices of “mobility” is utilizing temporary vehicles for assignment outside of the U.S.A. “(This seems to be a) hard sell…how do you measure the benefit of a temporary vehicle when changing out the vehicles every few months or annually? I recently made a proposal to an EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) fleet manager who, at first, was quite interested in the concept.”

LaRosa noted that this manager couldn’t get move the merits of such a plan past the presumed lack of a human resources benefit. Such a topic, LaRosa suggested, would be a perfect conversation-start in the Multinational Fleet Community. “If anyone else has worked with this experience and were either successful or rejected for their proposals, your input in the Communities forum would be appreciated by myself and other multinational fleet administrators.”

To Participate in the Multinational Fleet Community – or the 14 other NAFA Communities that focus on specific fleet segments – login at www.NAFA.org and click on the green “COMMUNITIES” button on the homepage.