Jörn Hoppe — Senior Logistics Executive | AI in Logistics & Supply Chain

Executive Profile

Senior logistics and ocean freight executive with 20+ years leading international teams and P&L across Europe, Asia and the Americas, combining deep operational and commercial expertise with a modern focus on AI-enabled transformation. Now building a practitioner track record in logistics AI — turning emerging AI capabilities into practical, governed and measurable improvements that make teams faster, more data-driven and more resilient.

Key Achievements

~$130M

Turned a loss-making ocean freight business around to sustained EBIT profitability within 12 months (CEVA Germany, 2021–2022).

~500

People led across P&L portfolios up to USD 130M, spanning Germany and Greater China.

2024→

Pioneering AI-enabled transformation in ocean carrier & yield management at DHL Global Forwarding — from manual reporting to AI-assisted market intelligence and decision support.

Core Strengths

Logistics Leadership

Ocean freight product leadership
Carrier, capacity & yield management
P&L ownership and business turnaround
Customer implementation & SOP design
Procurement, tender & pricing governance

AI & Digital Transformation

AI adoption in day-to-day logistics workflows
Automation of reporting & market intelligence
Microsoft 365 Copilot & productivity use cases
Data-driven decision support
Knowledge management & workflow design

Entrepreneurial Profile

Practical innovation mindset
End-to-end supply chain perspective
Human-centric change enablement
Bridges business and technology
Strong global network across freight forwarding & carriers

Professional Experience

Senior Manager Global Ocean Carrier & Yield Management

DHL Global Forwarding · Bremen, Germany

May 2024 – Present

Lead carrier and yield-related activities, translating market intelligence and carrier developments into commercial guidance for leadership decision-making.
Drive AI-assisted ways of working — from automated reporting and market intelligence to Copilot-based collaboration — to improve speed, consistency and decision quality.
Champion responsible AI adoption with realistic business cases, strong governance, data quality and user acceptance.

Selected impact: Leading early Copilot adoption in Carrier & Yield Management — onboarded 6 team members, moved the first recurring report to Copilot-assisted production, and reviewed and refined the complete Smart Engine functional specification (FSD) for AI orchestration.

Director Ocean Product Services — Germany, Austria, Switzerland & Eastern Europe

Crane Worldwide Germany GmbH · Hamburg, Germany

Apr 2023 – May 2024

Led a 20-person ocean organization with shared P&L responsibility, including planning, execution and business reviews with country management.
Built a standalone ocean pricing and procurement setup, including a structured rate repository and improved sales communication.
Established back-office support in India and standardized onboarding and process training for ocean staff.
Drove customer implementations, tender management and business development through customer-facing ocean capability presentations.

Selected impact: Built a more structured and scalable ocean operating model, strengthening commercial responsiveness, process discipline and organizational clarity.

Head of Ocean DACH — Germany, Austria & Switzerland

CEVA Logistics · Hong Kong & Bremen, Germany

Dec 2020 – Feb 2023

Led an 80-person ocean organization with full P&L ownership (~USD 130M), including budget, execution and monthly European management reviews.
Turned around a loss-making ocean business to sustained EBIT profitability in 2021–2022.
Reorganized export and import departments and stood up service centers for invoicing, file creation and customer reporting.
Served on the European Ocean Management Team as executive sponsor for productivity, cost and centralization initiatives.

Director Global Ocean Allocation & Operations Management

CEVA Logistics · Hong Kong

Apr 2017 – Mar 2021

Governed global ocean operations processes, work instructions and country performance reviews.
Designed CEVA's ocean allocation management process and led a team of allocation managers across FEWB, TPEB, ANZ and LATAM trades.
Contributed to shared service center development, offshoring and major ocean IT implementations, including myCEVA's online quotation and booking capability.

Selected impact: Standardized global ocean allocation planning across FEWB, TPEB, ANZ and LATAM trades and supported the rollout of myCEVA's online quotation and booking capability.

Earlier Career Highlights

General Manager Ocean Operations Management, Greater China

CEVA Logistics · Hong Kong · 2015 – 2017

Led approximately 500 ocean export and import operators across China, Hong Kong and Taiwan; shared P&L responsibility above USD 35M; improved productivity in key stations and strengthened governance, training and shared-service structures.

Manager Global Business Process Ocean

CEVA Logistics · Hong Kong · 2014 – 2015

Governed global standard ocean operations processes and supported development, testing, training and deployment of global process and system tools, including EDI, allocation, reporting and compliance-related solutions.

Business SME / Project Manager / Process Specialist

CEVA Logistics · Bremen & Hong Kong · 2011 – 2014

Led international process transformation and rollout projects across regions, translating business requirements into operational tools, training and standardized workflows.

Ocean Export, Pricing & Development Leadership Roles

Eagle Global Logistics / CEVA Logistics / Group7 · Bremen, Germany · 2003 – 2011

Progressed through operational, pricing, customer service, sales support and supervisory roles covering ocean and air freight, contract management, tender support, customer implementations and apprentice training.

Apprenticeship

Circle International · Bremen, Germany · 2000 – 2003

Completed commercial freight forwarding training across airfreight, ocean freight, road freight, warehousing and finance.

AI, Innovation & Entrepreneurial Focus

Building a practical AI-in-logistics profile centered on implementation, adoption and measurable business value — not technology hype.
Completed DHL Global Forwarding's full internal AI training curriculum; selected for the AI Pioneer Program (2026).
Long-term ambition: become an entrepreneurial AI expert for logistics and supply chain organizations, connecting deep industry experience with practical AI solution design.

AI & Ecosystem — Hoppe.home

Outside of my day job, I design, build and personally operate a private, production-grade AI and infrastructure platform — Hoppe.home. It's a real environment in daily use, not a lab or a demo, and it's where I turn my logistics-honed operating discipline into hands-on software and AI practice.

12+

Self-managed servers across Windows and Linux, built out as a genuine enterprise-style environment — domain services, certificate authority, monitoring and automated backups.

10+

Custom-built applications running in daily production use — spanning financial and tax tooling, monitoring dashboards, knowledge management and a browser-based game platform.

24/7

A resident AI agent operates as a genuine working partner — handling day-to-day development, operations and monitoring continuously, always under my direct oversight.

How it's run

The platform is a real working partnership between human oversight and an autonomous AI operator: I set direction, priorities and guardrails; the AI handles day-to-day engineering, infrastructure operations, monitoring and documentation. Every significant change is tracked, reviewed and kept inside clear governance boundaries — the same operating discipline I apply professionally, brought home and applied at a personal scale. Meet Joanna, Hoppe.home's resident AI operator →

Education

Commercial Training Certificate

Business School Ellmerstrasse · Bremen, Germany · Aug 2000 – Jan 2003

Advanced Certificate of Secondary Education

Secondary School Thedinghausen · Thedinghausen, Germany · Jul 1994 – Jul 2000