![\"m_shippinghandling\"](\"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/m_shippinghandling.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nToday, the director of national sales for the Jacksonville Port Authority (JAXPORT) has a global perspective that extends far beyond her southern roots. She is responsible for new cargo business development in major regional markets, and her transportation industry experience is helping cement Jacksonville\u2019s role as the Southeastern U.S. hub for international trade.<\/p>\n
Wheldon earned her Bachelor of Business Administration degree in marketing from the University with two areas of emphasis: sales and sales management, and transportation and logistics. In 2002, she received a master\u2019s degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix\u2019s Jacksonville campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been working in this industry for 20 years, and it is not anything that was planned \u2013 it just happened, I believe, because of these two emphasis areas in my major,\u201d said Wheldon. <\/p>\n
Wheldon\u2019s extensive background in trucking and logistics began when she landed her first job as an office manager for Lanport Trucking in Savannah, which seemed a comfortable fit. \u201cAt the time, I had a lot of family in Savannah working around the ports. It was an entry-level job, and I was able to learn the ins-and-outs of the trucking industry,\u201d she related. <\/p>\n
Shortly thereafter, the company moved Wheldon to Atlanta, promoting her to trucking service sales.<\/p>\n
In 1994, Wheldon began working for SeaLand in the customer service division, which at the time, was the largest steamship line in the world. Subsequently, she acquired 14 years of intermodal rail experience with CSX Intermodal and Florida East Coast Railway.<\/p>\n
In Wheldon\u2019s current position, her focus is on freight forwarders, cargo owners, custom brokers and other trade partners to sell the port and its extensive facilities, which encompass three terminals and 1,100 acres. These individual terminals include warehouse facilities for both dry and refrigerated products that are transported both by interstate and railway.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past year, we exceeded 826,500 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units), a record for us, with most of our global trade being with Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, South America and Asia. JAXPORT is the second busiest vehicle-handling port in the nation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
During the past couple of years, JAXPORT has added 22 direct port calls to 13 other countries, and more than 100 indirect connections to countries such as Belgium, China, Germany, England, France and Singapore.<\/p>\n
Although Wheldon\u2019s career requires traveling almost as much as the containers that come into JAXPORT, she hasn\u2019t forgotten her small-town roots, and her father\u2019s words about staying close to home. She, her husband Mark and 4-year-old daughter Emily enjoy returning to the slower pace of Georgia to visit extended family. \u201cWe love to take a quick weekend getaway trip to my dad\u2019s farm in Reidsville,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
–Mary Beth Spence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alumna Promotes Jacksonville Port to International Clients<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-4222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-spring-2011"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}