Serving as Summit’s President, Ed Gerber brings a deep understanding of industrial supply channels. With 30+ years’ experience in executive leadership roles in distribution and manufacturing, he has built, led, and turned around organizations. Known as an entrepreneurial-driven business builder, Ed's expertise is growing successful businesses organically or through M&A.
From 2016 to 2021, Ed served as the President & CEO of the Industrial Supply Association, the premier trade association for the Industrial MROP Channel. Prior to that, as Executive Vice President - Sales & Marketing for the Industrial Distribution Group (IDG), he led the reengineering and execution of IDG’s Integrated Supply and Industrial vision/strategy focused on the end-user first, which led to the acquisition by Sonepar in 2014. During this transition, Ed helped integrate IDG and Hagemeyer, which has since become Vallen.
Before IDG, he served as Vice President of Sales & Marketing for the Sandvik CTT group leading the Precision Twist Drill, Titex, and Prototyp brands for North America. In this capacity, Ed reengineered the salesforce through a mix of direct and independent reps to leverage the combined product and distribution portfolio for the German tool brands. He successfully repositioned the organization to become part of Walter Tools, ultimately strengthening the overall brand value for the end customer and industrial channel.
Ed has served on the Summit Electric Supply Board of Directors since May 2018.