By Boating Industry staff
The 15th Annual Boating Industry Movers & Shakers awards honor visionary leaders and trailblazers throughout the recreational boating industry who consistently embrace change and drive progress.
The 2025 Mover & Shaker of the Year and Finalists exemplify resilience in the face of industry challenges, while advancing innovation through their leadership, commitment, and influence both within their organizations and across the industry.
For Keith Yunger, president of Sea Ray Boats, the story of his career began long before he ever stepped into an office or a factory floor. It began in the cockpit of boats that his father was helping build and improve.
His dad worked for the founder of Sea Ray, C.N. Ray, as vice president and general manager of the company, and often brought home new models for his family to test. Yunger’s childhood was spent not only enjoying the water but also watching how products came to life.
“We’d always be the test family using the product,” Yunger said. “Back in the day, before laptops, my dad always had a yellow legal pad and a pencil on the water and he would take notes while we were out there overnighting on the product. He’d come back with what worked and what didn’t work.”
The lessons went beyond product design. Growing up exposed to Sea Ray dealer meetings, Yunger learned the importance of relationships in business at a young age too.
“They used to have meetings in town and then we’d do barbeques and entertainment at the house,” Yunger remembered. “So that was a way for me, when I was eight years old all the way up to high school, to be around those dealers, learn how relationships were built and the importance of that.”
Those lessons would become foundational when Yunger graduated college and officially entered the industry. Over the years, he took on a variety of roles in sales, customer service, marketing, portfolio management and strategy.
“That started shaping a lot of my thinking around the voice of the customer,” Yunger said. “How do we have customer centric solutions versus ‘let’s build what we like?’ The way I used to describe it to team members and dealers: If we build what you like, we’re a museum. If we build what the market likes, we’re a retailer. And we can actually move volume out there and put a lot of people on the water.”
Yunger has nearly 40 years in the marine industry, 20 of them with Brunswick. Before taking the helm at Sea Ray four years ago, he led Bayliner, played a role in the acquisition of the HeyDay brand, and helped form Brunswick’s Venture Group, bringing together the Quicksilver, Uttern, Bayliner and HeyDay brands.
“We brought together Venture Group as four value based brands to create synergies and dealer channel product portfolio development and operations in terms of manufacturing that helped us maintain a low cost point to maintain a good value proposition for the entry level side of the industry,” Yunger shared.
Today, he leads Sea Ray, an iconic brand that celebrated its 65th anniversary last year. For him, being a part of Sea Ray’s milestone anniversary, and Bayliner’s 60th anniversary prior, were more than commemorations. They were opportunities to take part in recognizing the people behind the brands that he was grateful for.
“What made me feel proud is there were decades worth of customers, dealers and employees that have shaped the legacy of those two iconic brands in the industry,” Yunger explained. “For me, it’s a big accomplishment to recognize those folks of the past, recognize the current team and then shape the current team to carry it forward.”
Yunger leads Sea Ray’s current team with approachability. “Being an engaged individual with our employees, our dealer friends, customers — I want to create a comfort zone,” he explained.
“At the end of the day, titles define roles and responsibilities, not people. I’ve been in businesses before where people get a little too hung up on their title, so they think their voice is louder. I don’t want that. I don’t have all the answers,” he said. “I have a team for a reason, and I need to get the best out of them. And to get the best out of them, they have to be comfortable in the environment or conversation, whether it’s on the plant floor, in a conference room, at a boat show or at a dealership.”
That philosophy drives his authentic approach to his team. “I’m not going to ask you to do something if you can’t do it or if I haven’t done it before,” Yunger said. He strives to help his team determine what to prioritize and what resources they need. He encourages personalized communication too. “My encouragement is, have the conversation and then back it up with the keyboard.”
Much of Yunger’s leadership style was shaped by mentors, starting with his father, who taught him the value of relationships.
“As a young kid, I’d be out at the plant with him and I’d see him talk to people in the lamination department or in the assembly line as comfortably and easily as some of his sales managers or marketing people in the office,” Yunger said.
More recently, leaders like Aine Denari, president of Navico Group, and Brenna Preisser, president of Brunswick Boat Group Division, have shared perspectives that have helped Yunger grow.
“[Aine] gave me a different way of thinking about innovation,” he said. “As we go forward, there’s a tendency over time as a company to innovate for the sake of innovation, versus the real value proposition for the customer and what they are willing to pay for. I think that was insightful for me.”
Preisser has reminded him that people are motivated by different social needs and social rewards. “There’s a theme between the three of them,” he shared. “It’s all about people; continuing to learn how to work with people, reward people, pull the best out of them, and understand what trips their trigger on value proposition if they’re on the customer end.”
His approach can be summed up in six guiding words he shares with his teams: curiosity, observation, anticipation, urgency, ownership and accountability.
“With any opportunity or challenge, understand the ‘why’ through curiosity and observation. Develop the ‘what’ and the ‘when’ with anticipation and urgency. And drive the ‘how’ through ownership and accountability,” Yunger explained. “That’s how we bring the best thinking out of everybody on the team, versus me as a leader just telling them what to do.”
Yunger is proud of the products that the teams he has worked with have brought to market over the years. “At the end of the day, we’re in it to create smiles and memories for people on the water,” he shared. “We do that through our touch points, and our products are a huge touch point.”
But he is also aware of the challenges ahead for the boating industry, especially around diversity and inclusion.
He shared that throughout his career, companies have largely focused on a single audience, but the market must be broadened to better engage women, younger generations and people from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
“I think it’s a multiyear, multidecade challenge in front of us,” he said. “But if we don’t start chipping away at it, we’re going to wake up a decade from now and ask what happened, versus recognizing new people coming in and learning how to retain them.”
Sea Ray has taken steps, from a multilingual website to diverse hiring in leadership roles, and through events like the Sea Ray Surf Camp in Switzerland, designed to connect boating with younger generations.
“It was all about teaching people how to handle a boat and surf system set up, and then getting them behind the boat and surfing. You see mid-50s to mid-teens out behind the boat on the wave and everybody is having a fun. It’s just a great way to connect the family.”
As he reflected on his career and the industry’s future, Yunger circled back to people. He recently caught up with a dealer whose father was signed by his in 1965. “All that history and the people in between that he knew and that I knew, just those memories coming back, it reinforced the passion and the people in the business and why we do what we do,” he said.
As his son carries on the family’s boating legacy as a Brunswick employee, Yunger reiterates that boats may be the product, but people are the purpose. He shared that boats are the vehicle to connect with people, and at the end of the day it’s about engagement, trust and relationships.