Marc Braun will deliver both an opening and closing keynote address for the AME Back to Basics Lean Summit.
Marc Braun loves growth and the uncomfortable feeling he gets when stretching and growing as a leader and when businesses grow beyond their current capabilities. He is a fierce advocate of others and their courageous growth. This is why he coaches CEOs and senior executives to lead fearlessly and to build courageous cultures of growth.
His life's purpose is to encourage others to become everything they were created to be, and this passion has led to a lifetime of pursuing challenge after challenge, testing his potential and encouraging others to do the same.
He studied chemical engineering at the University of Missouri because he was told it had the most complex problems of any engineering discipline. But in his real-world job, he quickly learned that engineering problems and statistical process control were nothing compared to getting everyone on the team aligned and moving in the same direction. Over the next decade, he focused on deep learning of people systems in sales and operations. He read voraciously, started paying for professional coaching to accelerate his growth, and experimented with different leadership models to find the optimum.
Everywhere he went — specialty chemicals, oil and gas, manufacturing, service industry, sales, or operations — growth was the common factor. The business growth was directly correlated to his growth as a leader and the growth of the people he had the privilege to lead.
Thirteen years ago, he had the honor of stepping into a leadership role at Cambridge Air Solutions, an engineering and manufacturing company focused on providing market-leading HVAC technologies for the commercial and industrial markets. Over the last decade, the team delivered four times revenue growth and 10 times profitability growth. Along with the financial gains, Cambridge became one of the most studied mid-sized manufacturing cultures in the U.S. Over 5,000 people traveled from around the world to visit Cambridge's Courageous Culture and be encouraged and inspired by Cambridge employees.
In July 2021, he stepped down as Cambridge's president after helping the owner transition to an internal successor. The company continues to thrive, and Braun has begun advising CEOs and senior leaders so that they can build their own growth story.
He currently serves as the chair of AME's board of directors, where he is able to inspire thousands in pursuit of AME's mission to "share, learn and grow."
