Kent State Presents Ohio Employee Ownership Conference, April 29

Kent State University will host the 25th Annual Ohio Employee Ownership Conference on Friday, April 29, at the Hilton West in Fairlawn, Ohio. The theme for the conference, presented by Kent State’s Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC), is “Working Together, Saving Jobs.”

“Ohio, along with the rest of the United States, is beginning to see signs of a recovery from the most severe economic crisis of the last seven decades,” said Steve Clem, OEOC senior program coordinator.
“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 at the conference will hear from the following speakers:

• Jeffrey Evans is the chairman, CEO and president of the Will-Burt Company, an employee-owned company located in Orville, Ohio. The Will-Burt Company has been a part of the manufacturing fabric of Ohio for 93 years. The company’s products include pneumatic telescoping masts for broadcast, cellular and specialty applications; military masts and pneumatic antenna masts for military applications; and telescoping light towers for fire apparatus, construction, and utility and nighttime work operations.

• Michael Peck is the founder of MAPA Group, a consulting practice working primarily in the green economy sector. His affiliations include the Apollo Alliance, the Blue Green Alliance and the Wind Energy Foundation. For more than a decade, Peck served as North American delegate for Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. He also participated in forming the Mondragon and United Steelworkers partnership to revamp U.S. manufacturing through worker ownership.

Last year’s conference attracted almost 400 people. Widely regarded as the “best one-day conference on employee ownership in the country,” this annual event brings together employee owners, both management and shop floor workers, to learn how to improve the performances of their companies. 

The conference also attracts community and economic development professionals, government officials, nonprofit organizations, students and professional service providers. Over the course of the day, 19 panels (some featuring CEOs from several of Ohio’s employee-owned companies) will provide participants with the opportunity to learn more about topics ranging 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 will be held from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. on Friday, April 29, at the Hilton West in Fairlawn, Ohio, followed by a reception until 6 p.m. Registration begins at 8 a.m. The cost is $100 in advance and $150 at the door. For more information, call 330-672-3028 or visit http://oeockent.org.

Kent State’s OEOC is a non-profit 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, visit http://oeockent.org.

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Media Contacts:
Steve Clem, cclem@kent.edu, 330-672-0335
Bob Burford, rburford@kent.edu, 330-672-8516