Norman Cohn was born in 1933 in Waterloo, Iowa and graduated with a BS and a BA from the University of Northern Iowa. While a senior in high school, he became a distributor of advertising specialty products and while in college, also became a supplier of promotional products. By the late 1950s, his family owned the largest supplier company in the advertising specialty industry.

In 1962, Cohn’s family acquired ASI and sold all of their supplier activities. With the acquisition of ASI, the Cohns moved to the Philadelphia area and immersed themselves full-time into growing ASI and the industry. In 1998, ASI re-entered the trade show business with The ASI Show^®.

Norman Cohn was named ASI’s chairman of the board in 1967 and remains active in the company.

Over the years, Cohn introduced numerous innovations to the industry, including the first full color catalog, a demonstration of the first fax machine and the first industry-specific, computerized business software system to manage supplier and distributor businesses. ASI Computer Systems remains the most widely used business management system in the industry. In addition, Cohn is proud of helping promote the many accomplishments women have made to the industry.

Cohn was the head of the suppliers committee for the Advertising Specialty Guild, which merged with the predecessor of PPAI. He also served on PPAI’s public relations committee for several years.

Over the years, Norman Cohn has also served on numerous boards, including the International Board of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). He was International YPO Chairman of Education and International YPO Chairman of Communications, each for two years. He was an officer of the Great American Achievements Program, a member of the Board of Overseers at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, represented the State of Pennsylvania on the Commemoration of the Bicentennial of the Constitution, and was the chairman of the Bicentennial Council of the Thirteen Original States. He also served on the Boards of the National Public Radio, the Pennsylvania Board of Commerce Bank, Jewish Publication Society, National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Philadelphia Heart Institute, Fairleigh Dickinson University, the World Affairs Council, the Walnut Street Theatre, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Mayor’s Millennium Philadelphia. He currently serves on the executive board of the National Liberty Museum and the board of the Institute of Gaming Hospitality and Tourism.

In 2003, he received the Award of Merit from the Philadelphia Art Alliance and is currently a frequent speaker at national and international conferences. In 2016, he was recognized with PPAI’s Pioneer Award, which recognizes people whose business acumen or technological skills played a role in the advancement of the promotional products industry.

Norman Cohn and his wife, Suzanne, have been married for over 50 years. They have five children and 10 grandchildren. ASI remains a family-owned company, with a fourth generation having interned at the company co-founded by their great-grandfather, Maurice Cohn, who was inducted into the PPAI Hall of Fame in 1990.

Click here for more on Norman Cohn.

In 1998, Matthew Cohn launched The ASI Show, which made the Tradeshow Week 200, a listing of the largest shows in the U.S. The show has also been recognized by the Tradeshow Week Fastest 50 as one of the fastest-growing shows in North America. Three times, the Wharton Small Business Development Center named The ASI Show to the Philadelphia 100 – a hallmark of entrepreneurial achievement – as one of 100 fastest-growing, privately held companies. The company made the Inc. 500 list as the 153rd fastest-growing private company in America.

The Philadelphia Business Journal recognized Cohn in its 40 Under 40 awards, and he was named among the Top 100 People to Watch by Business Philadelphia magazine, as well as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the trade show industry by Tradeshow Week.

Cohn is on the board of the audit committee of The Bancorp Bank (NASDAQ:TBBK). He is also on the International Board as well as the Eastern Pennsylvania chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), where he was the 2010–2012 International Walk Chair. In addition, he serves on the International Board of YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization – the world’s largest organization of CEOs) where he is the International Events Chair and serves on the audit committee. Cohn has served as president, education chair and treasurer of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization. Additionally, he has been on the boards of CADE, a Philadelphia nonprofit helping children make smart decisions, and the Society of Independent Show Organizers (SISO).

Cohn has been a featured speaker at national conferences such as American Society of Association Executives, Direct Marketing Association, Internet World, Annual Catalog Conference, Seybold Seminars, International Association of Exposition Managers and SISO.

Cohn is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business with a dual concentration in marketing and entrepreneurial management, as well as the University of Pennsylvania College of Arts and Sciences with a degree in economics. He and his wife Lea have two children, Sydney and Mackenzie, who are very active in raising money for diabetes research at www.cohnsisters.com.

Under Tim Andrews’ guidance, ASI has become the industry leader in the development and management of print and Web-based products and services, with an emphasis on technology and multimedia marketing across all platforms. Customer satisfaction is the focal point of ASI’s cutting-edge online research and data services, marketing tools, trade shows, educational resources, award-winning magazines and catalogs.

Andrews is also president of the ASI Show Family of Events – ASI Show, fASIlitate, ASI Roadshow and Engage – and vice chairman of ASI Computer Systems, Inc., a provider of innovative accounting and systems software to the industry.

Prior to joining ASI, Andrews served as chief executive officer of Primedia Business Magazines, a $400 million media company. He led key business, editorial and product strategy for the company’s 80 magazines, 100 websites, 24 trade shows and its group of 450 reference titles.

Before Primedia, Andrews spent 16 years at Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, where he served in a variety of senior management, editorial, marketing, technology and product development roles. He launched the first real-time news-alerting products in the industry, introduced a Web-based version of Dow Jones Interactive long before other companies recognized the importance of the Web, and led the team that developed Personal Journal, an electronic newspaper that later became part of WSJ.com.

His final role at Dow Jones was as founder, president and chief executive officer of Factiva, a joint venture he championed with Reuters, which at launch had annual revenues of $225 million, 750 employees in 40 countries and products in 22 languages.

Andrews is active in several community organizations. He served three years as board president of the Arts Council of Princeton and is a trustee of the McCarter Theatre Center for the Performing Arts in Princeton, NJ. In addition, he actively supports several community programs in his rural Indiana hometown.

Andrews earned a degree in journalism and economics from Ball State University, which inducted him into the institution’s Journalism Hall of Fame and also named him Outstanding Alumnus. Andrews, a Hauser High School graduate, was also inducted into the Clifford/Hope/Hauser Alumni Hall of Fame.

Click here for Tim’s Blog and here for his Twitter page.

Carol Albright and her team are responsible for staffing and retention, employee programs, training, employee relations, maintenance of employee records and performance consulting.

Albright successfully oversaw the staffing of ASI over a period of growth that quadrupled the number of employees. In 1990, she was recognized as Employee of the Year.

Albright has a B.S. in industrial labor relations from Rider University and a Master’s Degree in instructional systems design and performance technology from Pennsylvania State University.  She also holds certificates in human resources management from the Institute of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University and in training and development from Bucks County Community College.

Albright is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management, the American Society of Training and Development, and the International Society for Performance Improvement.

From 1972 until coming to ASI, Steve Bright was a partner in the Iowa law firm of Phelan, Tucker, Mullen, Bright and Walker. He holds membership in both the Iowa and Pennsylvania Bar Associations.

A devoted Hawkeye, Bright earned B.B.A., M.B.A., and J.D. degrees from the University of Iowa. He was a professor in the College of Business from 1974 to 1991 and continues to serve on the university’s Law School Foundation Board. He has also co-authored articles published in Lawyer’s Cooperative Publishing (third edition, 1993) and Taxation for Accountants (May 1991 and January 1994 editions).

Vince Bucolo joined ASI in 1978 as a junior accountant and assistant credit manager, was promoted to assistant supervisor of accounting, then to director of special finance projects and, in 1994, became director of purchasing and production. He became a vice president in 1996 and senior vice president in 2002.

One of his major contributions to the company’s development involved helping to research and select ASI’s current location, and then successfully consolidating four separate offices into a single headquarters in Trevose, PA.

Bucolo also provided strong leadership and operating insights during ASI’s transition to a comprehensive database that helps ASI serve its customers more efficiently. He also helped to seamlessly incorporate the production of three new apparel magazines ASI acquired in 2007, improved customer service and drove new sales approaches that have allowed ASI to grow its membership.

Bucolo holds a Bachelor’s Degree in business administration from Temple University and an MBA from LaSalle University.

Nancy Carmona has nearly 20 years of experience in financial planning and reporting, with a proven record of productivity and quality. She and her finance team are in charge of budgeting and forecasting, providing critical analysis used in the day-to-day financial management of ASI and ASI Show, as well as completing ad hoc reports explaining trends that appear during the business cycle. Carmona is also responsible for the oversight of financial reporting, budgeting and forecasting for ASI Computer Systems.

Carmona joined ASI in December 2006 as a senior business analyst. She has her MBA from LaSalle University.

Andy Cohen has been with ASI since 2005, first as editor of Counselor magazine and then as executive director of integrated media. He was appointed editorial director in December 2015. In his current role, Cohen and his team are responsible for producing the editorial and educational content that ASI consistently pushes out to its members – in both print and digital formats.

Prior to ASI, Cohen worked at Nielsen Business Media in New York, where he was an editorial staffer for magazines such as Sales & Marketing Management, Incentive, and Potentials in Marketing. He was editor-in-chief of Incentive magazine from 2004-2005.

Since joining ASI, Cohen has been honored with six Jesse H. Neal awards for excellence in business journalism. And, over the past 10 years, ASI overall has won nine Neal Awards, awarded by American Business Media. Cohen is a graduate of Vassar College with a BA in English. He lives with his wife and son in Tuckahoe, New York.

Victoria Hain also leads the application registration team, which processes all new membership requests, the customer service team and the ASI Show customer service support team responsible for member outreach and registration for roadshows and major trade shows. She is also responsible for EAT digital advertising, eMedia, technical product support and ESP Chat social media.

Hain joined ASI in October 2006. She has over 25 years of professional sales and operations support experience in a variety of industries, including telecom, financial services, law, health care insurance, publishing and promotional products.

She received her Bachelor of Science degree in business administration and finance from Rider University in N.J., received a Certification of Regulatory (Audit) Compliance from the University of Oklahoma and earned a Master’s Degree from the ABA Stonier Graduate School at the University of Delaware.

Selected as one of Counselor magazine’s 2004 Women of Distinction, Chris Lovell continues to be active in the promotional products industry. She serves on the board of the Promotion Products College Education Foundation and was past president of the board of directors for the Gold Coast Promotion Products Association, serving on a variety of committees, including by-laws, membership, education, tradeshow, awards, legislation, nominating and budget.

In addition, she served on the Promotion Products Association International’s Marketing Information and Research Committee and on the board of the Incentive Marketing Association (IMA), where she also was co-chair of the Membership Retention Committee.

She received her Bachelor’s Degree in education with a minor in mathematics from Fredonia State University. Before embarking on her sales career, Lovell taught elementary school and junior high mathematics.

Chuck Machion was promoted to ASI vice president in 2004 and to senior vice president in 2011.

Machion began his career while in the military, serving as chief of prosecution for the United States Army Judge Advocates Generals Corps at Fort Eustis, Virginia. Following that, he was a contracts attorney and litigator at the Pentagon before moving on to civilian work.

Machion then spent four years in Washington, D.C. at Newman and Hotzinger, a law firm that utilized his talents in the areas of complex civil litigation and government contracts. His next role was in-house counsel at Computer Data Systems Inc., a high-tech computer services company. Finally, before joining ASI, Machion worked for AMP Inc., a large electrical connector company.

Machion holds a law degree from Temple University. He also obtained his undergraduate degree in Political Science from Temple University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Machion and his wife, Judith, are the proud parents of two girls and one boy.

Mark Quinn is also a member of ASI’s retirement and benefits committees, ensuring benefits continue to provide a competitive advantage to secure and retain top talent to serve members.

Prior to ASI, Quinn was the CFO for Content Data Solutions Inc. (CDSI), a subsidiary of Thomas Publishing Co., providing clients content management and web/print publishing solutions to meet their data needs. Quinn was responsible for all finance, accounting, project management, legal and strategic planning.

Before CDSI, Quinn spent 15 years at Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) in a variety of financial and operational roles. During his tenure, he provided recommendations to senior management to correct compliance issues and resolve operational inefficiencies. He also played a leading role within the contracts department to transform the contracts administration process and underlying infrastructure into the industry benchmark.

Quinn earned his BS in accountancy from Villanova University. He also holds a CPA and is a member of the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs (PICPA).

Additionally, Quinn is a steering committee member and a founding member of the Philadelphia chapter of the CFO Leadership Council, a nationwide organization whose mission is to develop strong ethical leadership at all professional levels from controller to CFO.

Armughan Rafat also serves as the chair of company’s Technology Council, which involves promoting best practices across the company to drive scale in ASI’s technology infrastructure, promote innovation through technology and use information intelligently to continue ASI’s tradition of designing, developing and offering the best products in the industry.

Mr. Rafat is an innovative and technology savvy executive with nearly 20 years of demonstrated success in running technology organizations for mission critical, billion dollar and small start-up businesses. Throughout his distinguished career, he has developed products and services for enterprise-wide, real-time, high-performance systems that deliver content to highly demanding users of every size and sophistication globally. He has built a reputation of turning around problem brands and building teams that can deliver results in high pressure situations for clients ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies.

In 2013, he was selected by the ranking committee of ExecRank as one of the top chief technology officers in the nation selected out of the top 15,000 private company chief technology officers. He also holds two patents awarded by the U.S. patent office in the fields of low latency financial data and machine learning technologies.

Previously, Mr. Rafat was vice president of technology for the markets division at Thomson Reuters. During his tenure at Thomson Reuters, Rafat held a number of senior leadership positions, including vice president of technology for the news division, global head of product strategy for news collections and editorial technology and VP of product development for investment banking. Under his leadership, Thomson Reuters become ranked number one in the world in real-time, low latency market data delivery. During his time at Thomson Reuters he also worked with few friends to build a start-up company from ground up in advertisement management space and sold it to a Billion dollars company.

Throughout his distinguished career, Mr. Rafat has delivered solution of enterprise nature to companies like Liberty Travel, AT&T, Cendant, RCI and others.

Rafat holds a Bachelor’s Degree in computer technology, a Master’s Degree in software engineering and an Executive Master’s in technology management.

Gene Rahill is responsible for the vision and growth of ASI’s supplier sales division, including all supplier membership, digital and print opportunities within ASI®, including SGR^™, Counselor^®, Advantages^® and Wearables^® magazines, eight catalogs and Connect^™ sourcing, prospect and ROI technology.

Rahill joined ASI in 1999 as an account representative. He was promoted to digital advertising director in 2010, to vice president in January 2013 and to senior vice president in 2015.

A Philadelphia native, Rahill graduated from Penn State University with a degree in telecommunications. He and his wife, Tina, live in Hatfield, PA, with their two children.

Ugianskis-Fishman joined ASI in 2014 as vice president and general manager and was promoted to senior vice present and general manager in 2016.

Since joining ASI, Ugianskis-Fishman has led her team in reinventing ASI Show. Major initiatives she’s put into place include expanding fASIlitate (ASI’s executive-level, invitation-only hosted buyer event) into six, more profitable events, reorganizing her entire team to add the specific skills needed in the changing show and event world, reimagining ASI’s East and West coast shows into the Engage shows piloted in 2016, creating the ASI Show advisory board to gain market insight, and using research to identify ways to improve ASI’s shows and compete more aggressively and effectively in an evolving market and industry.

Each year, about 20,000 distributors, representing the vast majority of total industry sales, attend ASI shows and events, including the ASI Roadshow, which successfully incorporated escorted end-buyers into the format and remains the industry’s No. 1 traveling tabletop roadshow.

Ugianskis-Fishman came to ASI after 14 years at Penton Media, a B2B media company based in New York City, with 1,300 employees who develop leading digital, print and live events in 17 major markets. Previously, she worked at Reed Exhibition Companies, the world’s leading events organizer with a global network of 35 worldwide offices, where she was director of marketing and industry development.

She graduated from the University of Connecticut with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree and a Bachelor of Science degree from its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, with a concentration in biotechnology. She and her husband have two sons.