DURHAM, N.H. -- Charles Kittredge, chairman of the board and former CEO of Crane & Co., a seventh generation family-owned business, will speak at a joint meeting of the University of New Hampshire CEO Forum and the Center for Family Business Thursday, Nov. 6, 2014, starting at 8 a.m. in Huddleston Hall. Kittredge is a sixth generation descendent of Zenas Crane who founded the company in 1801.

Crane & Co. specializes in the manufacture of banknote papers, printed banknotes, passports and counterfeit deterrent security features. Crane has been supplying the United States with currency paper since 1879. The company also holds contracts with a variety of central banks around the globe, and markets high quality cotton stationery for social and business uses. The company is headquartered in Massachusetts — with facilities in New Hampshire, Georgia, New York City and Sweden — and employs 1,400 people.

Kittredge will share Crane's 200+ year history and how the company structure and management has changed. He will also talk about how the company and its governance structure have evolved over the past 15 years to meet the needs of an increasingly diversified family shareholder base.

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 visit http://www.unh-ceoforum.org/.

The Center for Family Business, under the UNH Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, is a membership program for family owned businesses to learn good business practices, exchange ideas with other families and prosper one generation to the next. It is sponsored by Baker Newman & Noyes; Harvest Capital; Mass Mutual Financial Group; Moitoza Consulting; Management Planning, Inc.; Optima Bank and Trust; and Pierce Atwood. 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.

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 12,300 undergraduate and 2,200 graduate students.