Kent State Hosts 27th Employee Ownership Conference
FAIRLAWN, Ohio -- Kent State University will host the 27th annual Ohio Employee Ownership Conference at 9 a.m. April 19 at the Hilton West here. This year’s theme is “Employee Ownership: Building Jobs, Wealth & Communities.”
“Ohio, along with the rest of the United States, is seeing signs of a recovery from the most severe economic crisis of the last seven decades,” Steve Clem, senior program coordinator, said in a prepared statement. “Employee-owned companies are certainly not immune to the vagaries of the economy. However, they often do save jobs and companies, anchor capital locally, benefit local economies and create new wealth for employee owners.”
Participants will hear from speakers who represent the two leading employee ownership organizations in the nation. Morning speaker will be J. Michael Keeling, president of the ESOP Association. Since he assumed assumed his position in April 1991, the association has experienced strong growth in membership and revenues and is the largest organization in the United States dedicated to ensuring employee-owned companies are operating effectively.
Luncheon speaker will be Corey Rosen, co-founder and senior staff member of The National Center for Employee Ownership. Rosen is co-author with John Case and Martin Staubus of Equity: Why Employee Ownership Is Good for Business.
Over the course of the day, 19 panels (some featuring CEOs and chief financial officers from several of Ohio’s employee-owned companies) will provide participants with information about topics that range from the basics of employee ownership to more technical issues, such as fiduciary responsibility, repurchase obligation, and valuation, to visions for the next decade of employee ownership.
The conference runs from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., followed by a reception until 6 p.m. Registration begins at 8 a.m. Cost is $150 if paid in advance, $195 at the door.
Kent State’s employee ownership center is a nonprofit program established in 1987 to provide outreach, information and preliminary technical assistance to Ohio employees and business owners interested in exploring employee ownership. Since its inception, the OEOC has helped nearly 15,000 Ohio employees become owners.
For more information, call 330 672 3028 or visit http://oeockent.org.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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