24. Ashley McCune

Facilisgroup

2019 Rank: N/A

Title: President

Industry Experience: 16 years

The measure of a leader is certainly tested in times of crisis, and Ashley McCune knows this firsthand.

The former COO of Facilisgroup, a software-as-a-service company and partnering community for the industry, McCune (who was also just named a 2021 PromoStandards board member) was promoted to president in January, just as COVID-19 wreaked havoc in Asia and headed for North America.

“In the first week of March, I talked to Paul Bellantone and Tim Andrews and I said, ‘This will go away in a month or two. We’ll just have to hunker down and get through it,’” she says. “Then when Amazon sent everyone home and the NBA suspended its season, that was significant. It was like, ‘OK, here we go.’”

While the circumstances were new, McCune’s familiarity with the promo industry wasn’t, having spent a decade and a half at Facilis and Gateway CDI. She took a job in marketing at Gateway CDI after several years in retail, when the “brutal hours” as an assistant manager for The Gap compelled her to look for greener pastures. “When I was growing up, I played office when other girls were playing with Barbies,” she says. “I always wanted to be in business. At Gateway CDI, I was introduced to Facilis technology and I was excited about it. I brought what I learned at CDI to Facilis. The technology is a way to bring process to the crazy.”

That philosophy certainly came to bear this year, as Facilis checked in on distributors and suppliers who were “in different stages of disbelief and shock,” says McCune, who urged partners to lean into Facilis’ technology since it was designed for remote work. McCune and her team also quickly set up a virtual event called REBOUND-2020 in June, comprised of four weeks of townhalls and educational events with Facilis and industry executives, to empower partners. A second event, called REBOUND-Q4, took place in October.

“Now it’s Q4 and it’s time to make a push,” said McCune just two days before the Q4 events. “We’re finding that 50% of our Partners are still disabled by what happened. But we still have a whole quarter this year. We can’t wait until 2021. We have to take control now.”

The objectives haven’t changed for 2021, McCune says, but the feeling will be different. “As a leader, this isn’t the way I wanted to start,” she adds. “But if we can get through this year, there aren’t many mountains we can’t climb.”