Business leader to speak at university graduation

The school will award nearly 400 undergraduate degrees.
SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. -- New Castle business leader Georgia Berner will deliver the commencement address when Slippery Rock University awards more than 460 diplomas at winter graduation ceremonies next Saturday.
Berner, president and chief executive officer of Berner Intel-national Corp., was named one of 2004's Fortune Small Business Magazine's Best Bosses.
The ceremony will be at 1:30 p.m. in Morrow Field House and will include the presentation of nearly 400 undergraduate diplomas, 71 master's degrees and two doctor of physical therapy degrees. Dr. Robert M. Smith, SRU president, will give opening remarks and introductions as well as confer all degrees.
Other honors
Berner also was this year's co-winner of Pittsburgh Tech 50 Chief Executive Officers of the Year, the Small Business Administration Business Person of the Year for the region and Pennsylvania, holder of the first runner-up title for the United States, one of Pennsylvania's Best 50 Women in Business and a Team Pennsylvania Ambassador for the commonwealth.
She also spends time working with local and national work-force development programs and is a participant in Slippery Rock University's Women's Leadership Initiative, which brought women business leaders to campus last year to lecture and mentor students interested in professions in business.
At the helm of Berner International since taking over as president in 1984, her firm manufactures air doors/air curtains -- rectangular boxes that contain motors and fans at doorways to blow air across the doorway keeping the two sides separate, but allowing people to pass through.
Under her direction the company has more than doubled in size.
Before joining the firm, Berner taught English literature in Japan. She completed her master's degree in English literature and social psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Hollins College.