COLUMBUS, Ind.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 2, 2025--
Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI) announced today that Nicole Y. Lamb-Hale has been appointed Chief Administrative Officer and Corporate Secretary, effective June 1. She will succeed Sharon Barner when she retires on May 31.
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"Nicole has spent her career mastering the complex fields of corporate and international law, regulatory compliance and trade policy," said Jennifer Rumsey, Chair and CEO, Cummins Inc. "She is a visionary and strategic thinker, and as our Vice President and Chief Legal Officer has leveraged her extensive legal expertise, strategic advisory skills and experience in corporate governance to advise, protect and grow our company."
"A values-based and team-centered leader, Nicole's skillset and experience make her uniquely qualified to step into the role of Chief Administrative Officer and lead this critical organization during an important time in Cummins’ history," Rumsey added. "I am excited for her continued, positive impact on our company and our people."
Lamb-Hale joined Cummins in 2021 as Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, adding Corporate Secretary to her responsibilities in 2023. Since then, she has been a valued member of the Cummins Leadership Team, providing day-to-day legal counsel to Cummins' global business and functional leaders and leading a diverse team of legal experts across 11 countries. In this role, Lamb-Hale helped lead some of the company's most complex trade and regulatory matters and transactions, including the acquisition of Meritor, the largest in the company’s history; the spin-off of Cummins' Filtration Business; and the formation of its battery cell joint venture, Amplify Cell Technologies.
As Chief Administrative Officer, Lamb-Hale will lead a global organization comprised of several functions that provide critical services, expertise and support to Cummins' businesses around the world. These global functions include: risk management, ethics and compliance, product compliance and regulatory affairs, government relations, communications and corporate responsibility. Lamb-Hale will also continue in her role as Corporate Secretary, ensuring the company's compliance with corporate governance standards and advising Cummins' Board of Directors.
Prior to joining Cummins, Lamb-Hale held executive leadership roles in two global firms: Kroll, LLC, a global risk advisory firm, and Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategic advisory and commercial diplomacy firm. Before that, Nicole was nominated by U.S. President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Manufacturing and Services in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration (ITA). In this role, she was the Chief Executive Officer of the industry-facing unit of ITA, serving as the liaison between U.S. industry and the federal government. Nicole also served as Deputy General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Commerce and as an equity partner in two global law firms.
Lamb-Hale is an independent director on the corporate boards of Federal Realty Investment Trust (NYSE: FRT) and of Kroll, LLC. She also serves as a board director for the Cummins Foundation, as well as several other non-profit boards, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the Center for International Private Enterprise. In addition, Lamb-Hale is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an emeritus member of the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University (Bloomington, IN). She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Harvard Law School.
About Cummins Inc.
Cummins Inc., a global power solutions leader, comprises five business segments - Engine, Components, Distribution, Power Systems and Accelera by Cummins - supported by its global manufacturing and extensive service and support network, skilled workforce and vast technological expertise. Cummins is committed to its Destination Zero strategy, which is grounded in the company's commitment to sustainability and helping its customers successfully navigate the energy transition with its broad portfolio of products. The products range from advanced diesel, natural gas, electric and hybrid powertrains and powertrain-related components including aftertreatment, turbochargers, fuel systems, valvetrain technologies, controls systems, air handling systems, automated transmissions, axles, drivelines, brakes, suspension systems, electric power generation systems, electrified power systems with innovative components and subsystems, including battery, fuel cell and electric power technologies and hydrogen production technologies. Headquartered in Columbus, Indiana (U.S.), since its founding in 1919, Cummins employs approximately 69,600 people committed to powering a more prosperous world through three global corporate responsibility priorities critical to healthy communities: education, environment and equality of opportunity. Cummins serves its customers online, through a network of company-owned and independent distributor locations, and through thousands of dealer locations worldwide and earned about $3.9 billion on sales of $34.1 billion in 2024. See how Cummins is leading your world toward a future of smarter, cleaner power at www.cummins.com.
Nicole Y. Lamb-Hale, Chief Administrative Officer and Corporate Secretary
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — A Utah woman was convicted Monday of aggravated murder after poisoning her husband with fentanyl and self-publishing a children’s book about coping with grief.
Prosecutors say Kouri Richins slipped five times the lethal dose of the synthetic opioid into a cocktail that Eric Richins drank in March 2022 at their home outside the ski town of Park City. They say Richins was $4.5 million in debt and falsely believed that when her husband died, she would inherit his estate worth more than $4 million. They also say she was planning a future with another man she was seeing on the side.
Richins stared at the floor and took deep breaths as the judge read the verdict.
The jury deliberated for less than three hours. Afterward, family members on both sides of the case left the courtroom hugging and crying.
She was also convicted of other felony charges, including an attempted murder charge in what authorities alleged was another effort to poison her husband weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich that made him break out in hives and black out. Jurors also found Richins guilty of fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after his death.
Sentencing was scheduled for May 13, the day her husband would have turned 44.
Richins’ defense attorney said Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers and had asked his wife to procure opioids for him. Kouri Richins, however, told police earlier in a video that her husband had no history of illicit drug use.
“She wanted to leave Eric Richins but did not want to leave his money,” said Summit County prosecutor Brad Bloodworth.
Richins had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The most serious charge — aggravated murder — carries a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
What was scheduled to be a five-week trial was cut short last week when Richins waived her right to testify, and her legal team abruptly rested its case without calling any witnesses. Richins’ attorneys said they were confident that prosecutors did not produce enough evidence over the past three weeks to convict her of murder.
“They haven't done their job, and now they want you to make inferences based on paper-thin evidence," defense attorney Wendy Lewis told the jury on Monday.
Prosecutors said Richins, a real estate agent focused on flipping houses, was deep in debt and planning a future with another man. She had opened numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge, with benefits totaling about $2 million, prosecutors alleged.
They showed the jury text messages between Richins and Robert Josh Grossman, the man with whom she was allegedly having an affair, in which she fantasized about leaving her husband, gaining millions in a divorce and marrying Grossman.
The internet search history from Richins’ phone included “what is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl (sic),” “luxury prisons for the rich America” and “if someone is poisned (sic) what does it go down on the death certificate as,” a digital forensic analyst testified.
Bloodworth replayed for the jury a clip of Richins’ 911 call from the night of her husband’s death. That’s “not ‘the sound of a wife becoming a widow,’” he said, quoting the defense’s opening statement. “It’s the sound of a wife becoming a black widow.”
Lewis responded that the prosecution “looks at facts one way and sees a witch, but if you look at those facts another way, you see a widow.”
The defense focused on trying to discredit the prosecution's star witness, Carmen Lauber, a housekeeper for the family who claimed to have sold Richins fentanyl on multiple occasions.
Lewis argued Lauber did not deal fentanyl and was motivated to lie for legal protection. Lauber said in early interviews that she never dealt the synthetic opioid, but later said she did after investigators informed her that Eric Richins died of a fentanyl overdose, the defense noted.
Richins had asked Lauber for “the Michael Jackson stuff," which Bloodworth said likely refers to the drug combination that killed the singer.
“She knows she wants it because it is lethal,” he argued.
The housekeeper was already in a drug court program as an alternative to incarceration on other charges when authorities arrested her in connection with the Richins case, investigators said. She had also violated some conditions of drug court.
The defense showed a video of law enforcement warning Lauber that they could pull her drug court deal and that she could face a lengthy prison sentence.
“Give us the details that will ensure Kouri gets convicted of murder,” a man in the video said.
Lauber was granted immunity for her cooperation in the case. She testified that she felt a need to “step up and take accountability of my part in this.”
Shortly before her arrest in May 2023, Richins self-published the book “Are You with Me?” She promoted it on local TV and radio stations, which prosecutors pointed to in arguing that Richins planned the killing and tried to cover it up.
Summit County Sheriff’s detective Jeff O’Driscoll, the lead investigator on the case, testified that Richins paid a ghostwriting company to write the book for her.
Prosecutors showed the jury excerpts of a letter found in Richins’ jail cell that they said appeared to outline testimony for her mother and brother. In the six-page letter, Richins instructed her brother to tell her former attorney that Eric Richins confided in him about getting fentanyl from Mexico and “gets high every night."
Defense attorneys said the letter contains a fictional story Richins was working on. They argued that Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers and asked his wife to procure opioids for him.
However, Richins told police on the night of her husband's death that he had no history of illicit drug use, according to body camera footage shown in court.
Associated Press reporters Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.
Defendant Kouri Richins, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, listens to closing arguments in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
Judge Richard Mrazik listens to closing arguments in the Kouri Richins trial where she is accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
Defendant Kouri Richins, left, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, listens to closing arguments in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
Summit County Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth presenting the state's final arguments in the trial of Kouri Richins, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Third District Court in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
Defendant Kouri Richins, left, accused of poisoning her husband in March 2022, listens to closing arguments in Third District Court, Monday, March 16, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (David Jackson/Pool Photo via AP)
