Press Release
Birkenstock USA CEO to Share Employee Ownership Insights at UC San Diego's Rady School of Management February 7
January 29, 2008
Gene Kunde, CEO of footwear distributor Birkenstock USA, will speak at the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego Thursday, February 7 at 11:30 a.m. as part of the Beyster Institute Employee Ownership Executive Briefing Series. Limited spaces are available to the public at no charge. To reserve a space, visit www.beysterinstitute.ucsd.edu.
Kunde will share his perspective and experience with various ownership structures, including startups, global corporations, freestanding independent companies and subsidiaries of multi-national enterprises. He will also discuss mechanisms for employee engagement and share the Birkenstock USA story.
Birkenstock products were first brought to the U.S. in 1967 by an American traveler who grew fond of the German shoes and founded what would become Birkenstock USA. The company remains the exclusive importer and distributor of Birkenstock products in the United States. Kunde is responsible for Birkenstock USA’s strategic business planning, corporate operations and financial performance. He joined the company in 2001 and also serves as chairman of its executive committee. As CEO and chairman of the predecessor corporation, the 100 percent employee-owned Birkenstock Distribution USA, Inc., he guided the sale of that firm through a transaction and subsequent transition that was satisfactory to all stakeholders including the employee stock ownership trust.
Prior to joining Birkenstock, Kunde was chief operating officer at Epson where he helped grow the company to more than $1 billion dollars in annual sales, and served on the board of directors for Epson’s parent company, Seiko-Epson. He also held various management positions at Ford Motor Company and The Toro Company before founding his own company, a successful wholesale distribution company that grew to sales of over $25 million in less than three years.
The Beyster Institute serves as the key center for entrepreneurial thought and activity at the Rady School and is the only such university-based center to integrate both employee ownership and entrepreneurship. More information is available at www.beysterinstitute.ucsd.edu.
The Rady School of Management at UC San Diego educates global leaders for innovation-driven organizations. A professional school within one of the top-ranked institutions in the U.S. for higher education and research, the Rady School offers a Full-Time MBA program, a FlexMBA program for working professionals, undergraduate and executive education courses. UC San Diego’s lineage includes 16 Nobel Laureates (former and current faculty) and eight MacArthur Foundation award recipients. The Rady School at UC San Diego transforms innovators into business leaders.
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