A career-long insider takes the wheel in Walnut Creek.
Walk into the corner office at 1277 Treat Boulevard and you will find a man who has been on the AAA payroll since the year of The Karate Kid. Marshall L. Doney is the President and Chief Executive Officer of AAA Mountain West Group, a federation arm that puts roughly 6.8 million members under one umbrella across Northern California, Nevada and Utah. He took the job on a permanent basis on July 2, 2024, after the regional board ran a search and quietly concluded the right candidate had been inside the federation the whole time.
The route to that office is unusual for an American CEO in 2026. Doney did not bounce between four logos in a decade. He did not raise venture money and pivot. He started at AAA Wisconsin in 1984 as an assistant district manager. He stayed. He moved to AAA's National Office in 1991 to run strategic planning and research. He stayed. He took a marketing post at the Automobile Club of New York. He stayed. By 1996 he was Vice President of Automotive Services back at the national office. He stayed. In 2013 he was named President and Chief Operating Officer of the National Office. He stayed. On July 1, 2015 he was elevated to President and CEO of AAA National, the federation hub for what was then 55 million members and 43 affiliated clubs. He stayed for almost a decade.
Forty years, one logo. The address keeps changing, but the brand on the door does not.
What 6.8 million members actually buy.
The triple-A patch on the windshield is shorthand. Strip the badge off and the Mountain West Group is, in practice, a consumer services holding company. Membership and emergency roadside services are the front door. Behind them sit travel, insurance, financial services, home security, automotive repair, even car-share experiments. Doney's brief is to make these feel like one product to a member who joined for a tow and ends up booking a cruise.
His public posture leans operational rather than evangelical. When the regional board chair Wendy Paskin-Jordan introduced him as the permanent CEO in 2024, she described "unparalleled operational expertise" and "a visionary entrepreneurial spirit." Read the order of those words. The operations come first. The vision is what you allow yourself once the trucks are arriving on time.
Pieces of the puzzle.
Roadside
The original product. Still the reason most members keep paying after the third renewal.
Agencies & Via
From cruise bookings to the Via member magazine, AAA's travel arm is older than most airlines.
Auto & Home
Where consumer trust turns into recurring revenue. Quiet, regulated, structural.
Approved Auto Repair
The club certifies shops so members do not get fleeced. A trust ladder, not a product.
Home Security
The category Doney's predecessors decided was a logical extension of "we show up when things go wrong."
Car Share & New Bets
Connected-car partnerships, ride-share frictions, the next forty years of "how Americans move."
Forty years, told in seven moves.
Joins AAA Wisconsin as an Assistant District Manager. Marquette is across town. He has both undergrad and MBA degrees in business administration from there.
Hired into the AAA National Office as Director, Strategic Planning and Research. The job description fits the rest of his career.
Director of Marketing and Service Quality at the Automobile Club of New York. The membership operator learns the boroughs.
Back to the national office as Vice President, Automotive Services. The product he started with becomes the product he leads.
Promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer of the National Office. Two-year audition for the top job.
July 1: appointed President and CEO of AAA National. Inherits 43 clubs, 55+ million members, and a federation more decentralized than most boards prefer.
July 2: named permanent President and CEO of AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah - rebranded AAA Mountain West Group. 6.8 million members. Same logo. Different ZIP.
Things worth knowing.
Both his bachelor's and master's are from Marquette University in Milwaukee. He did not graduate-school-shop.
Married to Nancy Polsky Doney. Two adult daughters, Lauren and Sarah Claire.
Wisconsin, New York and the National Office on his CV before the Mountain West Group. Three clubs, one badge.
Chair Wendy Paskin-Jordan, on the 2024 hire: "unparalleled operational expertise" with "a visionary entrepreneurial spirit." Operations first, vision second.
Run the largest western club through an era when the car itself is changing - electrification, autonomy, ride-share, connected-car data.
Strategic Planning & Research is where this career began. It still reads like the right job title for the man.
Why the regional called him home.
The regional club known for decades as AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah rebranded to AAA Mountain West Group around the same time Doney took over. Rebrandings are usually a tell. They mean the parent organization wants to stop being read as a tow truck and start being read as a multi-line consumer services operator. They mean the next CEO will be measured on cross-sell, on insurance combined ratio, on member lifetime value, not on response time alone.
That is the brief the Mountain West board handed him. It is also the brief that explains why the search ended on a man who spent a decade running the national office. He has seen every club's books. He knows where membership leaks, where travel actually makes margin, where insurance underwrites the goodwill. He knows which technologies AAA has bet on and which ones the clubs quietly ignore. He has been, for forty years, the institutional memory of an organization that is older than the interstate highway system itself.
If you wanted to write a contrarian playbook for running a 100-year-old membership business, you could do worse than the one Marshall Doney has been living: pick one company, stay, become the thing the board reaches for when the strategy needs a steady hand.