To “The Board,” Mandi Rudd is known as “Dear Abby.”

No, not the boards of the multiple industry groups and nonprofits she’s sat on. It’s also not a work thing, although she’s certainly made an impact at Genumark (asi/204588) as director of new markets over the past year and a half.

The Board is a group of promo industry women who first found themselves bound together in a group chat during the start of COVID-19, where they built a space to help each other navigate parenting and work during the pandemic. Rudd has become the designated advice giver for the group of incredibly close-knit friends, much like the beloved “Dear Abby” column.

She’s a “solver,” says Samantha Kates, president of Spector & Co. (asi/88660) – someone who’s capable of tackling nearly any problem thanks to her enormous capacity for helping others.

“When I think of a life of service for others, Mandi’s is the name that comes to mind,” Kates says. “She puts others in front of herself. She gets up every day, and I think she asks herself, ‘What can I do to make the world a better place today?’”

That sense of giving back, of course, shines through in Rudd’s volunteer work, including her role on the board of PromoCares, where she’s recently helped raise more than $150,000 for the organization’s Water4Good initiative to support water access for underserved communities around the world. She’s also previously served as president of PPAMidwest and is a longtime event leader at Big Slick, an annual fundraiser raising millions of dollars for Children’s Mercy Hospital in her hometown of Kansas City, KS. The event was started by her brother, actor Paul Rudd, and friends in 2010, and Mandi now has the support of her promo industry entourage at each year’s event.

But it also shines through in how Rudd thinks about the promo industry, especially when it comes to sustainability. She considers it one of her most important jobs as a distributor to highlight products that will ultimately help others, whether that’s through giveback programs or eco-friendly choices to help mitigate some of the industry’s use of natural resources, she says.

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Mandi Rudd, the Counselor 2025 Woman of Distinction, shares in this episode of ASI Media’s Promo Insiders where her desire to help others comes from and why she loves the promo industry so much.

“Promotional products are the only advertising medium that people say thank you for,” Rudd says. “So when you give somebody a tangible piece of your brand, you want it to evoke a positive response. You want someone to use this item, keep this item, be bummed if they lose this item – and if that item can help others in the process, that’s a win for everybody.”

Genumark’s status as a certified B Corporation was one of the factors that prompted Rudd to make the switch from self-employment. Prior to starting with the Toronto-based company, she’d operated her own distributorship, Brand Energy Marketing, for more than a decade.

She’d found her passion for promo about two years before starting her own company, when trying to figure out how she wanted to re-enter the workforce once her son was old enough to head to preschool. A friend who owned a distributorship asked Rudd to do contract sales for her and that gave her the supplier relationships to eventually branch out on her own with Brand Energy – and Rudd loved every minute. Building up her own Rolodex of clients – through the trusty old method of “smiling and dialing”– was exciting.

She wasn’t looking to make a career switch, or even job hunting at all – she could have kept going with Brand Energy for another decade, she says. But Johanna Gottlieb, another member of The Board who’d just gone to work for Genumark as its vice president of business development, told her the company was hoping to expand its U.S. team with the right people. Several conversations later, with both Gottlieb and Mitch Freed – Genumark’s CEO and a member of Counselor’s Power 50 – and things just fell into place.

“When I think of a life of service for others, Mandi’s is the name that comes to mind.”Samantha Kates, Spector & Co. (asi/88660)

“I still get to do what I love in our business, which is conversations with clients, ideation and bringing branded merch to life,” Rudd says. “But I just now have exponentially more resources available to me.”

Gottlieb calls her “Snow White” because Rudd can’t go a day without helping a bird, a dog, a cat or some other pet. (Rudd fosters shelter dogs on top of her other volunteer commitments.) She’s one of the most peaceful, grounded and good people Gottlieb knows – and you can’t just teach that kind of attitude.

“This is an award that defines her,” Gottlieb says. “She’s thoughtful, natural, hopeful, and she is the kind of person you want on your team at all times because you know she’s going to bring the energy, bring the empathy and help you go to the next level.”