Taking the AMA to the next level

The AMA's Board Chairman and President/CEO talk about the future of the Association

On March 27, 2007, Rob Dingman was named president and CEO of the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA). In the fall of that same year, Stan Simpson took the reins as chairman of the AMA Board of Directors when former chairman Dal Smilie resigned after the AMA uncovered evidence of unsubstantiated expense reimbursements. In this interview, both men speak about the challenges and progress of the last two years, and the opportunities that lie ahead.

American Motorcyclist (AM): So much has happened at the AMA in the last two-and-a-half years. What stands out?

Rob Dingman (RD): When I came to the AMA, I thought of it as the land of missed opportunities. What I discovered was that the world’s largest motorcycling association did not have the infrastructure to maintain its existing membership base, let alone expand it to become the premier advocacy organization that it needs to be. So behind the scenes we’ve undertaken a complete overhaul, from staffing to finance to management systems. At the same time, we created a strategic plan that we began implementing at the end of 2007.

Stan Simpson (SS): Every successful business has a functioning strategic plan, and the AMA desperately needed to overhaul its strategic plan. The board tasked Rob and his senior staff with that effort, and they did a bang-up job. So late in 2007 we had established a revamped vision, mission statement and strategic goals. The plan focused the Board on the AMA’s priorities, and laid out a road map to get us there.

Today, the Board and Rob and his staff are totally in sync. We had to be, because some aspects of the strategic plan were controversial, like the sale of AMA Pro Racing. That was absolutely essential if the AMA was going to extract itself from the daily controversies of pro racing and get us back to our core mission, which is to protect the future of motorcycling and promote the motorcycle lifestyle.

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