Wikoff appoints David Donnelly as Chief Operations Officer, consolidating manufacturing, supply chain, IT functions

GLOBAL – Wikoff has appointed David Donnelly as chief operations officer, effective June 1, 2026, giving him end-to-end accountability for manufacturing, supply chain, quality, ESH, PMO, and IT functions.

Donnelly has served as Wikoff’s Project Management Office director since 2025, where he has led the company’s enterprise-wide operational transformation initiative. 

CEO Mark Lewis explained that Donnelly joined a year ago with a clear mandate to strengthen Wikoff’s operational foundation to position the company for growth, adding that Donnelly has established a clear vision and built the roadmap for transforming operations across the network to better serve customers. 

Donnelly has already driven meaningful progress, and with expanded responsibility for all operations, he is well-positioned to accelerate execution and deliver strong results as Wikoff advances its transformation agenda.

Consolidating for an Integrated Operating Model

Consolidating manufacturing, supply chain, quality, ESH, PMO, and IT under a single operational leader reflects Wikoff’s commitment to a more modern, integrated, and standardised operating model across its network. 

In many manufacturing companies, these functions report through separate chains, manufacturing to the plant manager, supply chain to logistics, IT to the CIO, creating coordination gaps. 

Donnelly’s consolidated role removes those silos, giving him authority to align production schedules with raw material procurement, quality testing with production release, and IT system upgrades with plant shutdowns. 

For a printing ink manufacturer with multiple production sites, standardised operations mean that a customer in Chicago and a customer in Charlotte receive the same batch-to-batch consistency.

A Background in High-Stakes Operations

Donnelly brings over 20 years of experience in program management and operational leadership across life sciences, manufacturing, and defence. 

Before Wikoff, he served as projects, programmes, and operations director at EAI, where he led a portfolio of complex, high-stakes engagements. 

Earlier in his career, he held senior program management roles at AECOM, overseeing quality, safety, and risk programmes for a US$65 billion infrastructure programme in Libya and a major biological defence initiative in Kazakhstan for the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency. 

That background in regulated, high-consequence environments is directly applicable to printing ink manufacturing, where quality deviations can affect millions of packages.

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