Precision Metalforming Association Elects Batesville Tool & Die VP Gene Lambert as Chairman of the Board

CLEVELAND--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 18, 2025--

The Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) has elected Gene Lambert as its 2025 Chairman of the Board. Lambert is the vice president of sales at Batesville Tool & Die, Inc. in Batesville, Indiana. Chris Zuzick, vice president of Waukesha Metal Products in Wisconsin, will serve as vice chairman and treasurer. Both Lambert and Zuzick will serve one-year terms.

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Lambert succeeds outgoing PMA Board Chair Gregg Boucher, group chief operating officer of Wallingford, CT-based Ulbrich Stainless Steels and Special Metals.

“I am excited to be elected chairman and thank Gregg Boucher for his outstanding leadership this past year,” says Lambert. “I look forward to carrying forth Gregg’s mission for PMA to help its community of member companies evolve to meet the needs of the next generation of leadership.”

“I believe our industry will continue to pursue and integrate more automation into its processes to enhance quality and efficiency while coping with rising costs and workforce shortages,” shares Lambert. “Employees shouldn’t see automation as a threat but rather embrace it as an opportunity—to develop new technical skills that will, in turn, strengthen job security. PMA can play an important role through its robust educational training tools.”

“PMA must continue to evolve with its community—member companies, their management and executive teams, down through all levels of management,” continues Lambert. “We need to assess and address the interests of the younger leaders in our industry.”

Last year, PMA, under Boucher’s leadership as chair, assembled a team to survey its members and identify key areas the association should address. To guide these efforts, PMA brought on strategy consultant Paul Kessler, managing director of the Altus Group, in 2024. Kessler’s ongoing work in 2025 continues to support the PMA management team in developing a strategic approach to better serve its members and ensure the organization’s longevity.

Now, Lambert picks up the strategy initiative where Boucher left off. While expanding PMA’s membership remains a key objective, he is particularly focused on increasing member engagement and participation.

“Over the years, PMA has proven to us at Batesville Tool & Die—and to many others—that it can help member companies improve operations and grow. However, this value is realized only when members take advantage of the resources and offerings available to them. With that in mind, I will focus my efforts in the coming months on encouraging members to become more actively engaged in PMA.”

Learn more about Lambert’s plans during his term as chairman in the March 2025 MetalForming magazine article.

PMA is the full-service trade association representing the $137 billion metalforming industry of North America—the industry that creates precision metal products using stamping, fabricating, spinning, slide forming and roll forming technologies, and other value-added processes. Its more than 900 member companies also include suppliers of equipment, materials and services to the industry. PMA leads innovative member companies toward superior competitiveness and profitability through advocacy, networking, statistics, the PMA Educational Foundation, FABTECH tradeshows, and MetalForming magazine.

Gene Lambert, vice president of sales at Batesville Tool & Die, Inc.

NEW YORK (AP) — A Columbia University student activist detained by the U.S. government over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations can challenge the legality of his detention, but the case should be heard in New Jersey, rather than in New York or Louisiana, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Mahmoud Khalil, 30, a legal U.S. resident with no criminal record, was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8. He was held overnight at an immigration detention center in New Jersey before being moved to an immigration facility in Jena, Louisiana.

Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan called the legal challenge an "exceptional case" in need of careful legal review to determine whether the government “violated the law or exercised its otherwise lawful authority in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner.”

Furman said New Jersey was the appropriate venue because Khalil was detained there when his lawyers sued the government.

Federal authorities argued to move the case to Louisiana, saying Khalil was there because of a lack of available detention center beds in the metropolitan New York region and because of a bedbug infestation at a lockup in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Khalil's lawyers said the transfer was a “retaliatory” action separating Khalil from his lawyers and an effort to find a jurisdiction where judges may be more favorable to the Republican administration’s unusual legal claims.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Government lawyers had said that if the case wasn't sent to Louisiana, New Jersey was also a proper venue.

In a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union, Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, called Furman's order a “first step.”

“His unlawful and unjust detention cannot stand. We will not stop fighting until he is home with me,” said Abdalla, a dentist and U.S. citizen who is pregnant with their first child.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cited as grounds for Khalil’s deportation a rarely-used statute giving him sweeping power to deport those who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

The White House has accused Khalil of “siding with terrorists,” but has yet to provide support for the claim. President Donald Trump has described Khalil’s case as the “first of many to come.”

Khalil, an international affairs graduate student, had represented student activists in negotiations with Columbia University over protests of the war in Gaza. The Trump administration is acting quickly to make an example of Columbia as it demands stronger action against allegations of anti-Jewish bias on college campuses.

Haigh reported from Connecticut.

FILE - Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is on the Columbia University campus in New York at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on April 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, file)