The 26th annual Ohio Employee Ownership Conference will take place on Friday, April 20, from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., at the Hilton West in Fairlawn, followed by a reception until 6 p.m. This year’s conference theme is “Employee Ownership: Simply a Better Way of Doing Business.” The conference is hosted by the Ohio Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University. Registration begins at 8 a.m. The cost to attend is $150 in advance and $195 at the door.

Participants at the conference will hear from keynote speaker Joseph Blasi, Ph.D., a world-leading authority on employee ownership, named in 2010 as the inaugural J. Robert Beyster Professor of Employee Ownership at Rutgers University.

Blasi has been a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Social Organization at Princeton University, a visiting professor at the Yale School of Management, and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School. He also serves as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Last year’s conference attracted 325 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 and CFOs 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 Ohio 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. It is based at Kent State University. Since its inception, the center has helped approximately 15,000 Ohio employees become owners.

For more information, call 330-672-3028 or visit http://oeockent.org.