Director
John Hughes is Director of Risk management for Alex Lee, Inc. Alex Lee is a holding company for 3 southeastern food/warehousing companies including: Merchants Distributors, Inc. (MDI), a wholesale food and merchandise distributor; Lowe’s Food Stores, Inc. (Lowes Foods), a supermarket operator; Institution Food House, Inc. (IFH), a food service distributor. Annual revenues are approximately $2.5 Billion and Alex Lee employees over 10,000 personnel.
John has primary responsibility for developing and implementing Risk Management programs involving loss and accident prevention, claim and litigation management, risk transfer and risk financing for both traditional and alternative programs.
With 30 years of experience in the Risk Management field, John worked in the Compressed, Liquefied, and Medical Gas Business a “long time” and spent a portion of his career as the Risk Manager for the world’s largest retail photography company.
Having worked as an Accountant & Auditor in the Finance and Banking/Credit arena for some 15 years, the transition into Risk Management, at least the finance aspect of the job wasn’t that arduous, but the education in risk taking and management is another story.
John earned an Associate Degree in Accounting in 1973 and completed the Associate in Risk Management , ARM in 1981.
He served in the U.S. Army from 1963-1966, is a qualified parachutist, and was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge for service in Viet-Nam and was Honorably Discharged.
As a member of the Carolinas Chapter of RIMS, John has served in almost every capacity, including Chapter President, twice. He has served 6 different terms as RIMS Delegate and chaired numerous committees. At the Society level he worked on the Membership and Chapter Services Committee for 3 years and then volunteered for the Conference Programming Committee (CPC) and was Chairman of the 1997-1998 CPC for the San Diego Conference. John was, as the By-Laws allowed, able to serve a combined total of 10 years on the CPC. He was first elected to the RIMS Board of Directors as of May 1, 2006.
In his spare time, John enjoys fishing and riding his Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Classic.