Gary Slack, CBC

Gary is serving a two-year term (2009-11) as national chairman of the Business Marketing Association. He organized and led the last two national BMA conferences (“UNlearn” and “Engage!”) and is currently organizing BMA’s 2011 national conference, which will return to Chicago June 1-3, 2011.

In his day job, Gary is chairman and chief experience officer of Slack and Company, a leading integrated marketing communications agency, founded in 1988, that works exclusively with business-to-business marketers to build strong business brands and generate profitable demand for their products and services.

Crain’s BtoB magazine has named Slack and Company a Top 3 national agency for five of the past eight years, and the publication has named Gary to its annual list of the “Top 100 Most Influential People in Business-to-Business Marketing” for seven consecutive years. The Business Marketing Association has named Slack and Company its national Agency of the Year three times in the past eight years.

Gary served as president of the Chicago chapter of the Business Marketing Association in 2001-03 and again in 2008-2009. He has served as vice chair and a member of the board of directors of the Economic Club of Chicago. And, for three consecutive years, he has been named to the annual “Who’s Who in Chicago” list published by Crain’s Chicago Business.

Before starting Slack and Company at the age of 33, he worked for 10 years with Omnicom agencies Porter Novelli and Doremus & Co. in both Washington, DC, and Chicago. Prior to entering the agency world, he was a newspaper reporter in his home state of New Mexico.

Gary graduated in 1976 with a B.A. in economics from Dartmouth College. He and his wife, Kelley, a creative director at Slack and Company, have two sons in their early 20s and now live peacefully in Winnetka, IL.