Commerce House competitors

Over 20 years of transformational media, education, publishing and technology leadership. Ashley is Chief Operating Officer at Cambium Learning Group. Prior to joining Cambium in 2020, Ashley served as Chief Operating Officer, Co-President and Chief Marketing Officer at GreaterGood, a cause commerce, digital publisher and registered fundraiser for nonprofit programs in education, healthcare, conservation and animal rescue. Previously, Ashley served as Chief Content Officer for Capstone, a leading publisher of children's books, media, audio, digital solutions and services, literacy programs, and K-12 professional development resources for classrooms, school libraries and home. Before that, Ashley served as CEO, President and Publisher at Trudy Corporation, later Palm Publishing, responsible for the group's family of global children's imprints and media businesses. She has spent over 20 years in media, technology, publishing and retail for global consumers, education and nonprofits working in North America, Africa, Asia, Europe, the UK and South America.Ashley began her career as an elementary school classroom teacher and collegiate coach, igniting her passion for social impact. Since then, she has devoted her career to closing the opportunity gap and creating great outcomes in education through the power of social enterprise and innovation. She serves on the government affairs council of the SIIA and before that as as chair of the board of directors and executive committee member for the SIIA's Education Division and co-chair of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. She is the co-founder and former co-president of the Fairfield University MFA Alumni Association and is the author of Now What? The Creative Writer’s Guide to Success After the MFA. Ashley holds a bachelor’s degree in education and a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Michigan and teaching certifications K- 5 and 6 - 8. She also holds a Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing from Fairfield University with concentrations in fiction and screenwriting and certificates in media strategy from Harvard Business School; in executive function in the classroom from the Harvard Graduate School of Education; and in design thinking instruction from Ideo U.

Frank Vella is a business leader equipped to navigate ever-changing market conditions, keeping his company ahead of the crowd with a demonstrated ability to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Over the past 30 years, he has relied on his strength as an operator to help build a lineup of first-rate businesses, displaying time and again both the soft and hard skills needed to drive real shareholder value. As CEO of Information Builders, a leader in business intelligence (BI), analytics, and data management solutions, Mr. Vella leads a workforce of more than a thousand people operating on six continents. Hired as COO in 2017, he promptly led a successful transformation effort across product, marketing, and sales. Today, he continues to bolster the company’s leadership position, defining the role of data and analytics for many Fortune 500 companies, and takes pride in the teams he has assembled and the considerable value those teams create. Mr. Vella’s track record in both venture-backed growth companies and large multinational organizations is unmatched. After a 10-year stay at Microsoft, he joined Quest Software where, as Global Sales leader, he drove significant organic growth. Following that success, he went to then-startup Virtustream as COO and helped lead the company from pre-revenue to $100 million, setting the stage for a $1.2 billion exit. More recently, he ran Global Sales and Field Operations at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Software where he led strategic sales direction and reconfigured the go-to-market model. Prior to joining Information Builders, he oversaw an enterprise expansion and aggressive growth strategy as Chief Revenue Officer at BlueJeans Network.

When Brian sets his mind to something, he follows through. He’s driven and determined. Steadfast. It’s that same passion, energy and work ethic that drove him to get his law degree at night after working long days for the Reagan Administration while starting his first agency-all before turning 30. He would then go on to create-and grow-two additional award-winning agencies over 25 years that represented clients from Deloitte Consulting and Verizon to the Pennsylvania Lottery and IBM. More recently, it drove Brian to assemble a diverse group of investors to buy two storied newspapers - the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News-as well as their website, philly.com. As publisher, his creative approach increased circulation, sparked the fastest growing news site ranked by Nielsen, and catapulted its sales team to #2 in national advertising.