The Center for Sales Strategy Recognizes the 2025 Talent Superhero Award Recipients
The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS), a leader in transforming sales organizations and elevating talent performance, proudly announces its 2025 Talent Superhero Award winners. These distinguished leaders are honored for excellence in recruiting, developing, engaging, and retaining top talent across their teams and markets.
The annual Talent Superhero Awards celebrates talent champions whose people-first leadership drives exceptional team performance. Winners are selected by a committee that evaluates nominees on their ability to build and maintain a strong talent pipeline, recruit top performers, coach for strength optimization, foster employee engagement, and retain high-impact contributors over time.
“We are honored to recognize this remarkable group of leaders whose commitment to talent excellence sets a standard for organizations everywhere,” said Beth Sunshine, Senior Vice President of Talent Services at The Center for Sales Strategy. “Their dedication to developing people and strengthening teams not only fuels business success but also inspires others to lead with purpose.”
The 2025 Talent Superheroes are:
Ansel Olson – General Sales Manager, Cox Media Group
Anthony Merullo – VP of Sales, Clear Channel Outdoor
Ashley Anderson – Director of Sales Operations, Lands’ End
Bob Allen – Senior Director of Sales, Graham Media Group
Carrie Berkbuegler – Director of Sales, Zimmer Communications
Chris Ganoudis – Director of Sales, Cox Media Group
Donna Sue Marks – Local Sales Manager, Cox Media Cable
Jason Naft – Local Sales Manager, Graham Media Group
Josie Planas – Local Sales Manager, Clear Channel Outdoor
Julie Monafo – Market President/General Manager, Summit Media
Kaleigh Brower – Recruitment Director, Townsquare Media
Kari Packer – Regional Director of Advertising, Hagadone Media Group
In addition to this honor, Carrie Berkbuegler joins the Talent Superhero ‘League of Legends,’ as she has received this prestigious award two times (2023 and 2025).
Founded in 1983, The Center for Sales Strategy (CSS) partners with hundreds of clients annuallyacross a spectrum of industries, including media, professional services, non-profit associations, and more. For over 40 years, CSS has focused on improving sales performance as it helps sales organizations turn talent into performance and develop the highest-performing sales professionals. Its approach to customer-focused selling and talent-focused management has always been, and continues to be, core to its clients' success and the organization's success. CSS is joined by LeadG2, a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner and revenue operations agency, Up Your Culture, an employee engagement and company culture division, and Robertson Lowstuter, an executive coaching firm, to help organizations achieve total revenue performance. To learn more about The Center for Sales Strategy and its portfolio of brands, visit DriveTotalPerformance.com.
The Center for Sales Strategy helps B2B companies improve revenue growth and reduce sales costs.
Driven by understanding each company’s unique needs, we improve sales, marketing, employee engagement, and executive development with our portfolio of brands which includes The Center for Sales Strategy, LeadG2, Up Your Culture, and Robertson Lowstuter.
As companies have different needs at different times, this holistic approach has proven to be a winning formula for revenue performance.
"CSS has a proven track record of identifying talents and potential of future sales consultants and sales leaders. While I appreciate the assessment and rating for selection, I value the coaching conversations with the CSS Talent Analysts. Each has documented success in media sales and management which allows them to walk in our shoes as we analyze our team members. "
LEADG2
"We've worked with LeadG2 since 2015 and will continue working with them...no end in sight. Not only are they positive, inspiring, responsive and fun to work with, they have transformed our business. We consider them partners and trusted advisors. They help us with our complete inbound marketing strategy from beginning to end, and since starting, we have tracked and attributed well over a million dollars in new revenue and have blown past all our key success metrics. We recommend LeadG2 to anyone... except our competition. "
UP YOUR CULTURE
"The Up Your Culture program was pretty much perfect and aligned with our needs. All the feedback from our leaders has been wonderful. I wish I had this type of structure when I led a market. I did it on my own and didn’t have a road map. Being given a roadmap but being able to customize it to the needs of each market, like Up Your Culture does, is extremely valuable. "
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