Levent Gun

Over his 20 years as a CEO, Levent Gun has always felt his biggest role is to smooth out the emotional peaks and valleys a company goes through in its life cycle. 2020 was indeed a deep valley and lifting his employees’ spirits while focusing them to continue building a great company and succeeding was indeed a great leadership lesson he learned.

“From the beginning of the pandemic, I declared our employees will be our No. 1 priority in 2020,” said Gun. He also focused on growing AMPT, a solar energy company, by securing a multiyear contract and managing the relationships with customers and investors.

As a result, AMPT is moving into 2021 with a strong backlog to ensure four times the revenue growth.

“The key to keeping this result was to consistently focus both on my investors and employees, on our vision and long-term strategy, on why and how we will grow and win in the market, while moving my focus away from daily distractions and bad news that surrounded us all year,” said Gun.

Maintaining company culture and core values was the biggest challenge in a remote work environment, said Gun. He focused on communication to keep the culture intact and sent regular all-company emails to keep everyone engaged and informed about even small developments, acts of kindness and examples of employees practicing the company’s core values.

“I’m happy to say that I have an employee base that genuinely likes working with each other and it seems everyone is looking forward to going back to the office, mainly because they really like the support, energy and professional growth they get from each other,” said Gun.

The AMPT CEO said he was inspired by the hard work and dedication of his employees to support their team members and the mission with personal sacrifices they made while dealing with the disruptions the virus caused in their lives. “As a result, we are stronger as a team than a year ago,” said Gun.

Gun said he leads through change by getting his team involved in the process from the beginning while clearly and honestly identifying what needs to change, what the new goals should be and how the team can achieve them. “Times when change is needed are typically uncertain and stressful, but they present opportunities for strengthening bonds that hold us together as a team around our core values and mission,” said Gun.

For his commitment to strengthening bonds and encouraging a positive company culture, Gun has been named a Titan of industry.

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