Queens, NY Lelina Chang is the president and CEO of GAMCO Corporation, one of the earliest market players in the commercial fenestration manufacturing industry within the tri-state area and one of the largest family-owned employers in Flushing with over 60+ team members. According to DataUSA, the metal fabrication sector only has 1% Asians and 4% women. Chang is one of the few Asian and female C-suite leaders in this field and brings a unique skillset with her untraditional background. She has a pre-med background and earned a dual bachelor’s degree from Yale University in both Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Sociology. 

Prior to joining GAMCO, Chang was a government and public sector consultant with Deloitte where she was responsible for legislative implementation, modernization initiatives, and major policy and program improvement efforts with federal agencies. She is passionate about environmental justice and spearheaded an environmental justice and anti-racism curriculum that became Deloitte’s formal training for over 120,000 employees. She became the youngest founding leader of Deloitte’s new Climate Equity market offering, which helps federal agencies equitably distribute billions of dollars in federal climate investments for crucial infrastructure projects across the United States.

With GAMCO conducting business over 35+ years, Chang’s goal is to re-invigorate the business and prepare the organization to transform and succeed amid major technological advancements. 

1. What inspired you to pursue a career in the fenestration industry, particularly in metal doors, windows, curtain walls, skylights, and storefronts?

As a second-generation immigrant, I saw my parents’ incredible passion, craftmanship, and perseverance in establishing GAMCO. My mother was the brain behind the business while my father was the metal craftsman who developed the products. They worked tirelessly — seven days a week for years — in order to establish the foundation of the business, which gave me and my siblings stability and greater opportunities in America. Although it was never their plan for us to join the business, a critical point emerged in 2020 when my father’s health was severely at risk due to COVID. I decided to join the family business with my younger sister so our parents could finally retire. I have a deep desire to keep building a business that represents our immigrant legacy and continues to employ so many local residents in the vibrant Flushing, Queens community. 

2. How do you think your experience as a consultant has supported your role at GAMCO?

I served as an in-house consultant for McMaster Carr, an industrial supply distributor, where I saw the ins and outs of a well-established, large distribution center and implemented initiatives to improve operations. In my long-term role at Deloitte, I worked with many clients to drive modernization strategies, organizational change management, executive visioning and strategy, process improvements, and data analytics. All these experiences were indispensable when I joined GAMCO. There’s so much to improve, I am energized by my wonderful team.

3. We know that you’re passionate about sustainability and worked on the topic at Deloitte. How does that play a role in running GAMCO?

There’s an inextricable tie to sustainability in both spaces, which meant that joining GAMCO was only a continuation of my passion for climate work. Both the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL)—two legislations with which I engaged in my climate work at Deloitte—offer significant potential for the commercial fenestration industry by providing incentives and funding related to energy efficiency, building upgrades, and infrastructure projects. These legislations create demand for high-performance commercial windows and doors, which pushed me to strengthen GAMCO’s  R+D capabilities and prioritize upgrading the performance of our product-lines. With buildings accounting for nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, we can make a real impact.

4. What are the key challenges and opportunities currently facing the metal fenestration sector?

Building off the last question, the new energy codes pose both an opportunity and a challenge. It’s an opportunity to begin re-designing our product lines to become more thermally efficient and meet a growing demand in the commercial real estate sector. However, as a small business, this requires significant capital, technical expertise, and time for trial and error. Getting the product to market requires thermal simulations to predict performance, thoughtful designs that produce strong structural integrity, constant engagement across multiple vendors who often need more than one try to get our designs right, and rigorous structural, acoustic, and thermal testing. Despite these high costs of innovation, GAMCO is well positioned to become a leader in the tri-state area and help buildings in our communities become more energy efficient. Our quick lead times and high-touch engagements with customers as a small business make us stand out compared to national competitors.

5. What technological advancements have you been implementing at GAMCO?

We are implementing a brand-new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and Configurator to improve efficiency and accuracy of quoting, creation of bill of materials, cut lists, department-to-department coordination, and forecasting of sales demand to production capacity against company-wide targets. We’re also beginning to invest in relevant smart machinery that can help grow our machinery capabilities and optimize manufacturing processes through interconnectedness of cutting, drilling, and assembly competences. 

These major changes are just the beginning for GAMCO. There are so many new AI-driven technologies to integrate into our operations over the next 10-20 years. I continue to engage our workforce to help them understand the technical advancements in our field and energize them in preparation for upcoming transformations to our operations and manufacturing capabilities.

6. What is the most important cultural change you’ve brought to GAMCO?

One of the biggest shifts in culture I’ve tried to bring to GAMCO is instilling the importance of teaching, mentoring, and growing new and existing team members. We created an hour-by-hour training schedule lasting 4 weeks that engaged leads from R+D, production, sales, and inventory to help new hires understand the conceptual elements of our product-lines in the classroom, while seeing the concept come to life on the production floor. We also infused round-tables for new hires to provide feedback directly on how GAMCO’s operations can do better. Furthermore, the culture of providing real-time, constructive feedback is crucial to empower team members to achieve personal and company-wide goals. Building up my team and our sense of camaraderie has been one of the most rewarding elements of my role.