Once a skeptic about associations, now a believer, he keeps trade group members of NAM together for lobbying and networking Paul Hartgen was a late convert to the value of trade associations. Hartgen Now, as executive director of the National Association of Manufacturers’ Council of Manufacturing Associations, he is keeper of a community he might have dismissed 15 years ago. “I was an anti-association guy,” Hartgen told CEO Update. “I never understood why busy executives would take time away from their businesses and employees and go to these meetings.” But Hartgen, at the time a New Hampshire hotel executive, began to change his view as he sat on the board of… Read More