Gunner Smith and the long way back

Gunner Smith left Ply Gem in 2008. Seventeen years later, he returned to a company that contained it, this time as chief executive. Between those two jobs lay a long education in a deceptively ordinary object: the roof. His customers sold it, installed it and depended on being able to get it. Eventually, his responsibility was to make sure an entire manufacturing business could keep up.

When Smith became CEO of Cornerstone Building Brands on August 11, 2025, the appointment carried an unusual combination of familiarity and distance. He knew one branch of the family. He had spent most of the intervening years at Owens Corning, learning another company's products, people and distribution system. Returning to an old employer can involve finding your old desk. This return involved a considerably larger inventory.

Cornerstone's products span windows, siding, metal roofing, wall systems and accessories. The business serves residential and low-rise commercial construction across North America. Smith arrived with experience in a particular part of that world: the long chain of relationships connecting a factory to the person who climbs a ladder.

The education between factory and roof

Smith earned a bachelor of business administration at Mississippi State University. His later education included programs at Chicago Booth, UNC Kenan-Flagler and Texas McCombs. Booth's Executive Selling credential is a fitting detail in a career whose early chapters were written close to customers. Before the executive committee and board appointments came territory, product and account responsibilities.

From 1999 to 2007, he worked at Elk Premium Building Products, holding district and Southwest regional sales management roles. Elk made roofing products and composite lumber. He then moved to Ply Gem as a national sales manager, working with the Georgia-Pacific brand in its siding group. The materials changed; the commercial work continued.

Owens Corning hired him in 2008. Over the following decade, his responsibilities included sales, marketing and pricing, as well as distribution and home center sales. These are useful places to learn how a building product travels. A manufacturer must understand the distributor carrying its stock, the retailer selling it and the contractor whose next project depends on it arriving.

In 2021, explaining his background to investors, Smith described having spent most of his professional life in direct contact with distributors and contractors. By May 2025, he put his steep-slope roofing experience at close to 30 years. His explanation of his qualifications began with those encounters. The corner office came later in the sentence.

“I've spent most of my professional life face-to-face with distributor and contractor customers.”

Gunner Smith, November 2021

In August 2018, Smith became president of Roofing and joined Owens Corning's executive committee. He was now responsible for the business whose customers he had spent years meeting. His remit included shingles and components in the United States and Canada; his later leadership biography also records responsibility for the global nonwovens fabric business.

The awkward problem of being sold out

By the 2025 International Roofing Expo in San Antonio, Smith had a problem that sounds rather agreeable until one has to manage it. Demand was pressing against the business's ability to supply it. In a conversation there, he described four years in a sold-out market and the pressure this placed on plants, sourcing, supply chains and sales teams.

He singled out the team's resilience. That emphasis gives the sales story a less tidy second half. Winning demand creates work for everyone who must fulfill it. A product can be popular while the system behind it is strained. For the person running Roofing, the next question was how to add room without treating every surge as a permanent forecast.

The capacity work had been developing for years. In April 2023, Smith wrote to customers about converting an existing three-tab line at Medina, Ohio, to produce laminated shingles while preserving flexibility for other products. The letter connected an investment in equipment directly to customers' growth and the ability to deliver where and when products were needed.

In February 2025, Owens Corning announced a new southeastern U.S. shingle plant, with production expected to begin in 2027. The proposed four-wide laminator would produce around six million roofing squares annually. Advanced automation and nearly 100 skilled manufacturing jobs were part of the announced plan. These were future commitments, with a construction timetable attached.

The distinction matters to Smith's story. A sales leader lives with today's demand. A manufacturing leader must also decide what future demand deserves a factory. The new facility extended the same customer argument into a longer period: invest now so the next contractor has something to buy later.

Other work addressed what happens after a roof's useful life. In 2022, Owens Corning announced enhanced shingle recycling efforts, exploring both new shingles and asphalt pavement as destinations for reclaimed material. Smith spoke about combining internal expertise with outside partners. Recycling added another set of relationships to a business already dependent on getting materials between organizations.

A return with more doors to open

Cornerstone announced Smith's appointment on July 21, 2025. Chairman John Krenicki had been serving as interim president and CEO and would remain chairman. The board emphasized Smith's commercial experience and existing relationships with customers, including customers already doing business with Cornerstone. Familiarity with the market was central to the choice.

The company itself had changed substantially since his Ply Gem years. Cornerstone was formed through the 2018 combination of Ply Gem and NCI Building Systems. Clayton, Dubilier & Rice took it private in 2022 in a transaction valued at $5.8 billion. Smith was coming back to a broader business, with more categories to understand and more operations to connect.

He also inherited a difficult financial backdrop. Cornerstone recorded a $1.19 billion net loss for 2024, before his arrival. That figure puts the appointment in perspective. The task was larger than renewing acquaintances. It required applying commercial experience inside an enterprise facing substantial financial demands.

In September 2025, a month after his start, Cornerstone acquired Metal Sales Manufacturing Corporation. The acquired company, founded in 1963 and based in Sellersburg, Indiana, had about 900 employees. Cornerstone said its Shelter Solutions business would have more than 100 plants and distribution locations following the transaction. The announcement illustrates the operational breadth of Smith's new assignment.

His leadership team changed during 2026. Vishal Singh became president of Windows & Doors in January. Michael Pulcanio took the chief human resources officer role in May. Austin So joined as general counsel in July, followed by Matthew Garth as chief financial officer in September, with oversight of finance and information technology. The CEO's work now included assembling the people responsible for making the larger organization function.

Learning belongs in the job description

Smith's responsibilities also extend outside the building envelope. Howmet Aerospace elected him an independent director on September 29, 2023. The company makes engineered products for aerospace and transportation. Its explanation for choosing him stressed manufacturing and sales experience, along with the business perspective he brought from Owens Corning.

That appointment placed a roofing executive in discussions about a different kind of manufactured performance. Smith later served on Howmet's Audit and Finance Committees. The product categories may be distant, but oversight of strategy, risk and business development travels across industries. A board appointment gives that accumulated operating experience another setting.

There is also a quieter detail in his Owens Corning years. Smith was executive sponsor of employee affinity groups, including HOLA. Describing that responsibility in the company's 2023 sustainability reporting, he emphasized the opportunity to gain perspective from others. His phrase was unusually balanced for a job title that places “executive” before “sponsor.”

“My role is as much about learning as it is about leading.”

Gunner Smith, on employee affinity groups, 2023

That remark sits comfortably beside the years spent with customers. Both involve listening to people who occupy a different place in the organization or the market. It is a modest thread through a career with increasingly large titles: other people know something about the business that the person in charge needs to hear.

The material meaning of home

At Cornerstone, the customer story has a community counterpart. In January 2026, the company named country musician Jordan Davis its Home for Good project ambassador and pledged building products valued at $500,000 for Habitat for Humanity. The planned donation included windows, vinyl siding, trim and accessories, with approximately 100 Habitat builds expected to receive support.

The program predated Smith: it began in 2016. His role is in carrying it forward. That history matters because a new chief executive inherits commitments as well as factories. The appeal here is practical. A company with windows and siding can contribute windows and siding. Country music supplies the microphone; the products still have to reach the house.

In September 2026, Cornerstone released its report on 2025 corporate governance and responsibility. Smith linked responsible business practices with operating performance and set out priorities including operational improvements and product stewardship. The company reported diverting 87.2% of waste from landfill during 2025, a company-wide result spanning a year in which he arrived in August.

The return to Ply Gem's parent company gives Smith's career a pleasing shape, though the work ahead is less circular. He has moved from selling particular products to overseeing the teams, investments and decisions behind a broad portfolio. The question that followed him through roofing remains useful across the business: when a customer is ready to build, can the manufacturer deliver?