Chris Royle

Chris Royle is Senior Vice President, Product & Product Innovation at FordDirect. In this role, he is responsible for leading the company’s product strategy to ensure FordDirect is providing simplified solutions that are impactful to Ford and Lincoln Dealers.

Chris is a seasoned product leader with 15 years of experience in product management roles. He has led global product teams and brings sales and analytics leadership experience to round out his view of solving market problems.

Prior to joining FordDirect in 2019, Chris was senior vice president, vertical markets for the Ultimate Data Division of Wiland, Inc. He has spent his entire career in and around the auto industry, working for General Motors in the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, and Detroit, before joining R.L. Polk, where he spent 15 years. In that time, Chris worked with sales and registration data, CRM and VIN decoding solutions, and audience and marketing products. He has extensive experience in leading the teams and processes necessary to have an effective product management discipline, and understands the importance of listening to the market and aligning solutions in a strategic framework.

Before coming to the United States in 1997, Chris grew up in Manchester in the UK and earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Aston University in Birmingham, UK.