DURHAM, N.H. - Gene Geiger, owner and CEO of The Geiger Group, which publishes the Farmers' Almanac, will speak at a joint meeting of the University of New Hampshire CEO Forum and Center for Family Business Thursday, April 17, 2014. The program begins at 8 a.m. at Huddleston Hall with a full buffet breakfast, followed by lunch and networking.

Geiger will discuss "The Good, the Bad, and the Sometimes Ugly of a 5 Generation Family Business." The Geiger Group is a five-generation family business, the country's largest family-owned distributor of promotional products and publisher of the 196 year old Farmers' Almanac.

Geiger will share the challenges, pleasures, and obligations of keeping a 135-year-old company in business and in the family, including the human drama of "entitled" family members who expect to advance and the nonfamily members who fill key roles and try to stay out of the line of fire.

Geiger joined the company in 1973. He is on the board of Hussey Seating, a six-generation family business. Geiger's son David, who has joined the management team, will join him for his talk.

Initiated in 1997, the UNH CEO Forum is an outreach program of the UNH Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics serving CEOs, presidents, and senior managers of companies in northern New England. The forum provides its members with opportunities to meet and exchange ideas with their peers in business and industry in an informal setting. The UNH CEO Forum is sponsored by the law firm of Pierce Atwood, Optima Bank and Trust, Sprague Operating Resources, and Crystalvision. For more information about the CEO Forum, visit http://www.unh-ceoforum.org/.

The Center for Family Business, under the UNH Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics and the UNH Graduate School, is sponsored by Baker Newman & Noyes; Harvest Capital; Mass Mutual Financial Group; Moitoza Consulting; Management Planning, Inc.; Optima Bank and Trust; and Pierce Atwood. It is a membership program to provide owners and managers of entrepreneurial businesses with an opportunity to exchange ideas and information and to discuss business challenges and solutions. For more information, visit http://www.familybusiness.unh.edu/.

To register or become a member of the UNH CEO Forum or Center for Family Business, contact Barbara Draper at 603-862-1107, or barbara.draper@unh.edu. Please RSVP by April 10, 2014.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.

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