Ashly Audio has announced that industry veteran Scott Leslie will join the company as executive vice president. Ashly and its parent company, JAM Industries, are committed to a new growth strategy and they are drawing on Leslie’s vision, experience, and leadership to help execute it. In the newly-created position, Leslie reports to Ashly CEO and president Mark Wentling and oversees the R&D, marketing, and the North American sales divisions.
Leslie’s roots are deep in the audio industry; his father invented the famed Leslie rotating speaker that has long been an essential component of electric organs. The younger Leslie earned his master’s degree in acoustics from Georgia Tech and, after interning at Fender, took a position as a loudspeaker engineer at Altec Lansing. From there, he pivoted to the computer and software industry with positions at Tektronix, Sun Microsystems, SeeBeyond, and others before starting his own analytics software company. He returned to the pro sound industry as vice president of Engineering at JBL Pro before launching his own consulting firm, PD Squared, which helped clients with strategy, product development, and product management.
Noted Wentling, “Everyone here at Ashly Audio is excited about taking the company to the next level – what we call Ashly 2.0. To accomplish this we need highly motivated leaders from within our industry, as industry insiders know best how the pro-sound business operates. Leslie brings a great blend of both pro-sound and "outside of" pro-sound experience to the company. With Leslie, we have the best of both worlds. Together with the backing of our parent company, JAM Industries, Ashly's future is unlimited.
“Ashly has an amazing reputation and a dedicated following based on superior products and unequaled customer support,” said Leslie. “Ashly’s Class D amplifiers are the best designs on the market, and the company is successfully swimming against the current by building competitive products in the USA.”
Regarding Ashly’s new growth strategy, Leslie said, “Ashly has a lot of opportunity to get closer to our customers and increase our value to sales partners and end users. I hope to implement new programs that will give us deeper penetration and pursue a partner strategy that brings all of us new opportunities. Lastly, we will add several new positions in a variety of areas.”
