Siekerka’s Decade of Diligence at NJBIA

On Oct 2, 2024

When Michele Siekerka interviewed to lead the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, she was told the organization just needed a little window dressing.

But in 10 years as president and CEO, she has instead led an entire transformation of NJBIA – all through the most dynamic of times.

“I’m always saying, ‘If I could just get through the next two weeks, things will calm down,’ Siekerka says with a laugh.

“But then Heather (Hansberry, Siekerka’s executive assistant) always reminds me, ‘Michele, it hasn’t calmed down in 10 years. So, stop saying that!’

What people can say about Siekerka is that she has led a metamorphosis of the organization, which included a transition in its longstanding relationship with NJM Insurance as it began marketing outside of New Jersey. 

Through it all, NJBIA would maintain its standing as the state’s largest business association, but also see a shift of emphasis to non-dues revenue derived from more valuable products and services and more compelling events.

And she did this just as the COVID-19 pandemic reared its head, providing the entirety of New Jersey’s paralyzed business community – not just NJBIA’s membership – with the most vocal, tactical and tangible support in the state when it needed it most.

To achieve any and all of this, Siekerka says, it needed to start with a change on how the organization worked together.

“My very first day at NJBIA, I had a town hall where I invited the whole staff,” she recalls. “And I said, ‘I want you to know the type of leader I am. I want to talk to YOU.’ 

“And it was interesting because I was learning about them. But at the same time, a lot of them were learning about each other because the organization, for as strong as it was, really worked in heavy silos.”

Strategically, that meant New Jersey Business Magazine would become part of NJBIA, not just serve as a separate publication for the association. Vertical departments of NJBIA like Government Affairs, Events, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Communications and Facilities would all integrate horizontally to yield a better result through greater input and consensus.

“From the beginning, I really wanted to start bringing people together and achieve actual horizontal synergy across the organization, not just vertical,” she says. “And that was a massive culture change.

“For some people, it was difficult. Some people didn’t survive it. But there were people who were very happy on the other side of it. It was really just a change in the way we do business. And we are a different organization for it, culturally.”

That cultural shift set up NJBIA well for what would be the most defining moment of the last decade for business – the government-imposed shutdowns and restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic starting in March 2020.

The mass closure of businesses deemed as non-essential and the strict regulations that followed for another two years left New Jersey’s business community reeling, with many still recovering to this day.

Siekerka, by and large, was the face and voice of advocating for the reopening of businesses in countless media reports. She quickly convened the New Jersey Business Coalition, banding together more than 100 business and trade groups to join on policy positions to help businesses reopen or survive. 

She successfully championed the partial openings, with restrictions, of indoor youth sports, like gymnastics, martial arts and dance classes by July 2020.

She also ensured that NJBIA worked with the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the Murphy administration, and the federal government to inform businesses what financial assistance was available to them, and how and when to access it.

But what was not so front-and-center was the daily individual help Siekerka and NJBIA provided to struggling businesses that called or wrote in for help – literally around the clock, seven days a week.

“I remember saying to the team that, at a time like this, membership is secondary,” Siekerka recalls. “We need the whole of the business community to be healthy so that our members can be healthy, so that the state can be healthy and so the economy can be healthy.

“So, membership, quote unquote, was out the door. It wouldn’t be right in an emergency situation to say to someone, ‘Are you a member?’”

Siekerka has also strengthened NJBIA’s Government Affairs function by keeping it at full strength during her tenure, covering more areas of legislation than other like organizations, and not holding back herself in fighting anti-business policies that continue to plague the state.

“I think my kitten mittens have become more like boxing gloves at times,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m always punching. It’s more about preparing to defend a position from a point of strength, and with data behind it.

“And sometimes you do have to punch. But you never have to do it below the belt.”

Siekerka says her boundless energy and proactivity is the result of wanting to see NJBIA succeed, but also in seeing New Jersey businesses succeed.

“I could never take a job I didn’t have a passion for,” she says. “And I have a lot of passion for people who create opportunities for others – which is what a job is.

“There’s something very personal about helping to enable a business not just to profit, but to create that next job and have a prepared workforce for that job.”

Siekerka says it’s difficult to pick what she’s most proud of in leading NJBIA for a decade – although she’ll reel off the growth of the Women Business Leaders Forum into the largest women’s business event in the state, the strong support of manufacturing and workforce development, and the association’s overall strength in advocacy off the top of her head.

But she says none of NJBIA’s successes happen without the team behind her.

“Having 30-plus people behind you, carrying the same mission with you is invaluable,” Siekerka says. “There is absolutely nobody who has a better team in Trenton and in the state for what we do.

“This didn’t come easy. This team was built over time. But I do believe it is very much the cultural representation of who we are and how we do it. We don’t just look at words of culture that hang on a wall. We set out to do things and we accomplish them. When you work to the values we have, the results come naturally.”

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