Jill Gwaltney
Advisory Board Member
Jill Gwaltney is an energetic leader and board advisor with a demonstrated track record of building successful businesses by applying cutting-edge technologies to expand service offerings. Her approach is to drive growth by recognizing customer needs and building the team with the talent to innovate and act on the opportunities. She possesses a keen sense for identifying emerging trends in the marketplace and transforming companies to maintain competitive advantage.
Ms. Gwaltney founded Rauxa in 1999 with just four employees. In the years since, it became one of the fastest growing ad agencies in the country with over 320 employees and 7 offices nationwide. The 20.5% year-over-year growth was driven by Rauxa’s unparalleled strength integrating data, technology, and creative strategy to improve results for Fortune 500 brands (Verizon, Audi, Amazon, Vans, Audible, Sirius, Western Union, Adobe and Blue Shield of CA) . With revenues exceeding $120M, she negotiated and sold to Publicis in 2019 and continued as Chair until February 2022 to consult on a four-agency merger and to lead business development.
Prior to Rauxa, Ms. Gwaltney worked 20 years in the printing business. She started immediately after college graduation as the first female sales rep for Forms Engineering Company. She became the top salesperson after just one year and was promoted to Sales Manager and then Vice President of Sales. At the age of 30, she became President and led the transformation and rebrand from Forms Engineering to FEC that shifted the services to personalized direct mail production. During her tenure she increased sales from $1.2M to $44.6M. She negotiated the sale of FEC in 1996 for twice shareholder expectation of valuation and continued to ensure a smooth transition until September 1998.
Ms. Gwaltney served on the Stanford Alumni Board from 2006 to 2011 and on the Brandman University Board of Regents from 2019 to 2021 when they were acquired by Massachusetts Global. She is a Director on the UCI Beall Applied Innovation Board and joined the advisory board of a web3-enabled start-up that is establishing a mechanism where people can build, secure, distribute and monetize their own data. With her background in real estate investment, she was recently invited and accepted a position on the Transtar Capital Advisory Board.
Ms. Gwaltney led the involvement of Rauxa in DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) organizations such as Advertising for Change and the 4A’s Foundation Faces of Talent. She was named as Adweek’s Disruptor in 2018 and was recognized by the Orange County Business Journal Women in Business in 2015.
Ms. Gwaltney holds a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University. She is a sports enthusiast, playing golf and beach volleyball and is an avid Colts fan.