With less than two weeks until he picks up the gavel to chair his first Steamship Authority meeting on March 17, James Malkin is getting to know the boat line as few passengers get the chance to do.

On Thursday morning, the day after he was named by the Dukes County Commission to represent Martha’s Vineyard on the board, Mr. Malkin was at the Vineyard Haven terminal, introducing himself to employees from the office manager to a maintenance worker replacing a ceiling fixture. Outdoors, the ferry Martha’s Vineyard edged into the slip on a blustery but mild March day.

“The staff has a tremendous amount of knowledge, and you only get that by listening,” he told the Gazette during an interview in the terminal lobby. “That’s how you collect data.”

Mr. Malkin, 71, lives in Chilmark with his wife Joan Malkin, an attorney who serves on various town boards and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. They have two grown children and three grandchildren. The Malkins began summering in Chilmark in 1978 and became year-round residents in 2010. They also hold dual citizenship in the United States and Australia, where they raised their children while Mr. Malkin ran the Asian region of Thomson Financial, now Thomson Reuters.

“We were very happy there,” he said. “We had no plans to leave.”

When jobs in London beckoned, the couple moved north in 2000, with their dual citizenship allowing them to return to Australia if they wish.

Since moving full-time to the Vineyard 10 years ago, Mr. Malkin has been active in Chilmark town government, most recently as a selectmen for more than four years.

He has also served on the town’s human resources board, finance committee and other advisory groups.

Mr. Malkin has run companies in the transportation, finance and publishing industries, and he said the same key management principles apply to the Steamship Authority.

“It’s management process. It’s accountability. It’s goals. It’s measurement,” he said.

“My job as chairman and CEO of companies was to make sure we hired the right people, give them the tools they needed to do the job, get out of the way while they did the job and make sure they were held accountable,” he said.

Mr. Malkin said he plans to spend two days at the boat line’s Falmouth headquarters next week as he continues to familiarize himself with SSA operations.

Meetings with general manager Robert Davis, treasurer/comptroller Mark Rozum and director of marine operations Mark Amundsen, as well as mid-level managers, are all on the new boat line governor’s to-do list in his first 30 days on the board, he said.

He also wants to review the records of cancelled and delayed trips, on a vessel-by-vessel basis, for the past five years in order to answer several questions.

“What actions have been taken to mediate this issues in the past? Who was responsible, and how was the remediation measured?” he said.

He plans to take his fact-finding aboard the ferries as well.

“I want to meet with the captains of the vessels, go through what their issue logs look like and follow the trail of those logs,” he said. “I want to follow issues.”

In the past, Mr. Malkin has spent much of his ferry commuting time catching up on news online. He’s a daily reader of the BBC, Wall Street Journal and New York Times online, and also reads news summaries from Axios, he said.

Now, he’s adding ferry transportation to the list of topics he researches.

“I’m spending a good bit of time finding stories about electric ferries and following that,” he said.

Mr. Malkin joins the SSA board as chairman, taking over for departing governor Marc Hanover. (The SSA enabling legislation spells out which member holds the gavel year by year, and this year is the Vineyard’s turn.)

Steamship Authority governors are unpaid, but entitled to free ferry travel. Mr. Malkin said he and his family would not take advantage of that perquisite.

“I intend to not avail myself of that, so as to avoid any question of undue influence,” he said.

The exception will be when he rides the boat on SSA board meeting days, when travel is free for all Islanders attending the meetings, he said.