Mike Held

Board of Trustees - Board Member
Mr. Mike Held has spent most of his career in executive finance positions for global manufacturing companies. His responsibilities have included the integrity of financial reporting, ensuring the capability of finance organizations, supporting the optimization of operational performance, and the effective execution of merger and acquisition activities. Currently Mr. Held provides consulting services including financial and operational leadership, financial analysis and facilitating the implementation of lean processes. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions and is a member of the Board’s finance committee. Mr. Held was a member of the board at Heartland Agri Partners (d/b/a Insta-Pro International). As the first Audit Committee Chairman, Mr. Held established the audit committee structure, developed the committee’s charter and calendar, improved relations with the external auditors and ensured appropriate insurance policies and cybersecurity controls were implemented and maintained. In addition, Mr. Held improved the process, and retained qualified independent advisors, for the preparation of the annual fair market valuation for the company. Recently, Mr. Held was Senior Vice President at Steel Partners Holdings, a public holding company, with financial oversight responsibility for more than a dozen manufacturing companies. For a period, he served as the interim Group CEO. As the Chief Financial Officer at Grain Systems Inc. (GSI), he was a member of the executive team that represented the business through the auction and eventual sale transaction of the private equity owned company for $1B. Other accomplishments at GSI included playing a leadership role in the rapid growth of the business in China, improving cash flow and financial analysis processes. Mr. Held was the Group Vice President of Finance at Danaher where he was involved in over $3B in acquisitions and drove several initiatives that improved cash flow and profitability by millions of dollars. His career began at AlliedSignal (subsequently merged with Honeywell) where he held several different finance leadership positions over business units with global operations. Mr. Held earned a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in finance from the University of Michigan and a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in finance and accounting from Michigan State University. He and his wife, Stacey, live in Connecticut and they have two grown children. Mr. Held enjoys golf, hiking, and spending time with his family.