History & Mission
Mission:
Our Mission is to Educate CEOs and Business Owners with Resource Speakers and Member Experience through Idea Exchange so they can grow into better managers and family members.
History of our Founder:
Chief Executive Forum™ is an organization consisting of small groups of CEOs (8 to 14 per group). The groups meet monthly, developing members' potential through EDUCATION and IDEA EXCHANGE. Chief Executive Forum works through Forum Leaders to mentor each group of CEOs.
Rene Fritz founded Chief Executive Forum™ and located its main office on the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington (a 15 min. drive to the center of Portland, Oregon, as well as the Portland International Airport).
Rene continues to lead/mentor one Forum himself as well as run the entire organization to make sure that Chief Executive Forum™ continues to meet the needs of its members.
Rene's Forum experience is approaching 30 years. Rene has been called a serial entrepreneur with his experience in the management, purchase, sale, bank financing and public funding of a number of firms including those in which he had ownership. He has personally managed, co-owned and/or founded and then sold 6 firms during the last 25 years and co-founded 8 other firms.
Rene is a results-oriented person with an outstanding achievement record in start-up and growth situations. During start-ups, he utilized "boot-strap" financing, New York Bank and Pentagon financing, private placements, limited partnerships, ESOP's, public stock offerings, as well as strategic joint venture partners from the top Fortune 100. In addition to running Chief Executive Forum for the past 15 years, Rene has started a separate business called Stormwater Management with two employee's and built it up over ten years then sold it for 60 million cash in the spring of 2005. While doing this, he also started two human resource companies called HC Oregon and HC Washington. He built them up to over six-million in sales and won an Inc. 500 award - 107th fastest growing company in 2004. He likes to sit on boards and is on the advisory board of Inc Magazine.
In building his own companies, Rene has developed into a skilled recruiter with successful experience in hiring and retraining qualified personnel for administrative and technical team positions. He has licensed technology into, as well as out of, his companies. He set up international manufacturing licensees in Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and France. Rene works with his clients regarding personal growth, financial planning, corporate debt vs. equity funding, money management, as well as estate and retirement issues.
Rene is listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in Finance and Industry. He serves on several corporate boards, including the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation Board of Trustees, Annapolis, MD.
Over a 15-year period, Rene served on a bank board. For 14 years he was an active member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO). He was co-founder and board member of the Oregon Innovation Council and was appointed by Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige to the Oregon Export Council. Recently, two of the firms Rene founded in the early 90's were both listed in the top 50 firms to watch by a national watch group looking at firms soon to enter the IPO market. Rene is a member of the international Licensing Executives Society, a worldwide group of 4,500 members who network, educate and assist each other in the licensing, buying and selling of technology. Rene is also a founding member of the Portland Venture Club. He has done many speaking engagements including a 30 min TV talk show, OSU and University of Washington MBA guest lecturer, a 1 hour life lessons radio interview on entrepreneurship in Detroit Michigan. He is also a co-sponsor and presenter on the Portland Saturday/Sunday radio talk shows, the "Weekend Business Coach", in Portland, Oregon.
