To: All Acuity Brands Associates
From: Vern Nagel – Chairman, President and CEO
Date: April 8, 2014
Subject: Organizational Announcement
Creating and delivering market aligned lighting solutions specific to our customers’ requirements with speed and agility is a differentiating advantage of Acuity Brands. As you all know, our industry is changing rapidly with evolving business models for both manufacturers and end customers. Our customers are looking to us as the market leader to respond and support them in this evolution. Doing so requires us to have even greater connectivity to our customers. In order to differentiate themselves and thrive in this new world, our customers continue to narrow their focus by specializing along market verticals and end applications, honing their expertise in areas such as education, industrial, healthcare, infrastructure and so on. Whether our customer is the actual end user, a contractor, an engineer, a lighting designer or an electrical distributor, they are finding it increasingly difficult to be a generalist in a more specialized world.
At Acuity Brands, we are uniquely positioned to provide tailored, specific lighting solutions from individual devices to holistic integrated lighting solutions, all serviced and supported by the Acuity promise. We have invested heavily over the last five years — both organically and through acquisitions — to advance our capabilities in technology, innovation, service and lighting solutions. We have tripled the number of individual products we can offer and greatly enhanced our pre- and post-sales support and service capabilities, which has resulted in our unique position as a one-stop provider for our customers. We now must bring these great pieces and parts together to work harmoniously along the same vertical dimensions as our customers.
Aligning our organization along the various market verticals and end applications will allow us to have a greater focus on the end customer and provide the support to grow even faster than we are today. Our structure must allow us to have the responsiveness and the speed necessary to create, organize, communicate, and support the expanding needs for our customers. This is an incredible opportunity for our key stakeholders: customers, shareholders and especially you, our associates.
As such, I am pleased to announce the following organization change:
Mark Black has done an outstanding job as the leader of Acuity Brands Lighting, preparing our company for the transition into the new world of digital lighting and laying the foundation for us to expand our market leading position. As such, I am pleased to acknowledge his leadership as the President – Acuity Brands Lighting in addition to his role as EVP – Acuity Brands, Inc. Under Mark’s continued leadership, I am confident we will accelerate our transformation as an application and customer centric, integrated lighting solutions provider. Mark’s strategic vision and his maniacal focus on deploying the tools of ABS will set us apart from our competitors, enhancing the foundation of Acuity to lead and thrive for years to come. Mark will continue to report to me.
On behalf of Mark, I would like to announce the following changes to his organization:
A critical element in our evolution to a more customer centric, vertical application focused company is a robust marketing function. As many of you know, the lead marketing position has been vacant for some time and Mark Black has been leading this team. We are extremely pleased to announce that Geoff Marlow will now lead our marketing team as Senior Vice-President, Marketing. He is uniquely qualified and skilled for this hugely important role in our company. Geoff brings an extensive history of market connectivity, vertical market and end application expertise, channel knowledge and understanding, industry experience, educational training in marketing, firm commitment to deploying ABS, and a proven ability to accelerate performance across our organizational matrix. Geoff’s leadership and that of his team will be foundational in our ability to extend our market-leading position. Geoff will continue to report to Mark.
As a result of Geoff moving to this new leadership role, George McIlwraith will expand his role to lead the entire sales organization in the position of Senior Vice-President, Sales. George brings a long history of success creating product solutions, crafting strategy development, and expanding sales. George’s broad leadership experience from customer connectivity to delivering tailored engineered solutions addresses the market’s demand for solutions along market verticals and end applications. George will continue accelerating and supporting the efforts of the Acuity Brands industry-leading sales teams across all channels around the globe.
As part of this change, we are also pleased to announce that Sero Cardamone will now have increased responsibility for the C&I and Strategic Accounts groups in addition to his leadership of the Holophane Sales team. Sero, as Vice-President C&I Sales, will report to George. Sero’s extensive sales leadership experience in our industry and demonstrated track record of growing sales, as well as developing winning sales teams, position him for continued success in this new role. Prior to leading the Holophane sales team, where we are enjoying record sales growth this year, Sero was the Regional Vice President for Region 4. He is well known and respected both in the C&I and direct sales channels as well as in distribution.
These organizational changes should provide the opportunity for continued explosive, transformational growth with benefits for all our key stakeholders.
Acuity Brands will continue to win and lead the lighting market. A transforming landscape requires transformational strategies and transformational leaders focused on developing the very best Acuity Brands sales and marketing teams. Please join me in congratulating Mark, Geoff, George and Sero on their new positions and expanded responsibilities.