The FENG Princeton, NJ Chapter

Next Meeting

No upcoming meetings.

About the Princeton, NJ Chapter

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The Financial Executive Network Group began in 1991 with a circle of friends around a table in Connecticut. As membership expanded outside of the tri-state area, there was a need to create the same personal and direct contact for FENG members in other parts of the country. That is how the local chapters developed. The Princeton Chapter is no different it is now 1 of almost 80 local and worldwide FENG chapters. Its primary mission is to be an extension of the national organization. The Princeton Chapter follows the governing tenets established by the National office and has the same expectation and rules of conduct from its members.

It is therefore a subset of the national chapter and a circle of friends within a circle of friends. First and foremost, it is a networking group decentralized and driven by the needs and interests of the Chapter members themselves. By its very nature, the Chapter is focused locally and connected geographically. It serves as a link to the Route 1 and Einstein Alley business community and provides a source of information and advice for all FENG members who want or need contacts and help within Central New Jersey.

The Chapter provides a forum for members to meet. Chapter meetings are held monthly on the first Monday of the month. Saturday breakfasts, which are more informal and targeted to individual needs, will meet once or twice a month. Both meetings are designed to be a Forum for Sharing Experiences and Feedback.

The monthly chapter meetings will focus on/serve as a:

Networking: both within our membership and to the outside Route 1 and Central NJ business community. Our success in this endeavor will be a collective affair.

Informal Gathering Place to facilitate Member interaction: In the structured networking portion of the meeting, we will employ a more open and interactive approach to help members develop their brand, improve on their commercial, and tighten their interviewing skills. Discussions will address what is working, where do members need help, and who do you know and how you can help other members.

Career Source: both for career development (e.g., Sarbanes Oxley, industry knowledge, business trends, etc.) and search activities including new trends and job search information related to a search including research techniques, information sources, interviews, 30 second commercials, etc.

The Saturday breakfasts are:
Conceived as a more informal forum for sharing, from experience, what is working or not in a job search. They will focus specifically on individual problem solving in specific aspects of job searching: resume and cover letters, interviewing challenges, making cold calls, developing a target list, winning techniques and success stories, etc. Sharing and discussing what is working and not working will be a major discussion point at each gathering.

They are designed for an exchange of ideas by all attendees and will serve as a skills clinic. Since everyone can improve and learn, we hope that everyone including experienced members will attend. The breakfasts provide an excellent forum to meet other members in a relaxed and mutually supportive setting. In general, the organizer of the breakfasts may suggest one theme for the meeting (resumes, cover letters, etc), mostly the content of the breakfast meetings will depend on the needs and problems of the attendees. Bring your paperwork and be critiqued.

In addition, the chapter heads serve as a conduit of information to the members of the chapter. Please remember that we are all volunteers with family and work commitments of greater importance. Just like everything else, the strength of the group is the sum of the energy and efforts of all its members. It is true that what goes around comes around. Everyone in the Chapter will try to make membership a rewarding and meaningful experience.

REMEMBER:
-Each job is just the gap we have between looking for new work
-The key to finding new employment is NETWORKING.

Chapter Leadership

Jim Hockenberry
[email protected]
(609) 683-0382
Jim Hockenberry has been a member of FENG since 1997. He graduated with a BA from Lafayette College and has an MBA from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. A CPA, he started his career with Ernst & Young, and moved to W.R. Grace where he held a number of financial positions including 16 years in its Lausanne, Switzerland European HQ. His last position was the Director of Financial Planning and Analysis for Grace Europe’s $900 million Specialty Chemical operations. He led a multi-functional team to reengineer Grace Europe’s financial operations, and the team was nominated for the Chairman’s Award for Excellence.

Returning to the United States, he worked as the Division Controller of Ivex Corporation’s Packaging Division. Working through Resources Global Management, he was the Director of Finance for PSE&G’s Energy Technologies deregulated division, and Elizabethtown Water’s Director of Revenue. He left Resources to become the Director of Finance for Mistras Holdings, a privately held high-tech company, and later the Director of Finance for Integra LifeSciences, a medical device company in the Princeton area. He is now an independent consultant and Financial Executive, committed to improving a company’s execution and financial performance through of range of financial, operational and analytical processes.

He has redirected his life to suspense writing with his award winning “World War One Intrigue” trilogy. The change has allowed him to interweave three of his long-time passions: history, literature, and his German-American roots. Over Here, the first novel is set in 1915-1916 and dramatizes the little known but extensive German sabotage campaign in New York. The sequel, So Beware, is set in 1919, portrays the events and turmoil of the climatic Paris Peace talks and German revolutions. He is working on his third book, Send the Word (scheduled for publication in 2019), set in 1918 which will focus on the U.S. military experience in the Great War and the U.S. home front.

His books are character-driven, page-turning thrillers, grounded in exacting research. Both Over Here and So Beware have won a silver award from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association (FAPA), and So Beware was a finalist in the Book Excellence Awards competition.

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