Embattled chamber of commerce names new interim CEO

The announcement comes six weeks after a racist campaign ad upended the organization

Six weeks after outrage over a racist campaign ad upended Silicon Valley’s largest chamber of commerce, the organization on Wednesday named a new interim CEO.

Robert Linscheid, past president and CEO of the chamber of commerce in both San Francisco and Chico, will lead the Silicon Valley Organization while the agency continues a nationwide search for a permanent CEO.

Linscheid, 67, of Danville owns the consulting firm Linscheid Enterprises Inc. and previously served as the chairman of the California State University board of trustees and as a special economic adviser to the president of California Polytechnic State University.

“Robert brings a wealth of advocacy, community engagement and strategic planning experience to the role,” the SVO board wrote in a statement on its website.

His appointment comes more than a month after the organization’s previous leader, Matt Mahood, resigned in late October as part of the fallout from a political campaign ad widely denounced as racist. Mahood served as president and CEO of the SVO — previously known as the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce — for the past 13 years.

Since Mahood’s departure, the organization has scrubbed the names of all employees and board members from its website and up until Wednesday had not publicly stated who was running the organization in the interim. The organization confirmed Wednesday that an SVO employee had posted the racist image on its website before the November election and that the board had taken “personnel action” — but how many of its employees were affected by the disciplinary action remains unclear.

Linscheid will be tasked with guiding the embattled organization, which represents about 1,200 business members throughout the greater Silicon Valley that employ 300,000 people, through a period of racial reckoning as it attempts to convince businesses that have left the organization in recent weeks that it is capable of lasting change.

The image that sparked intense public scrutiny and unprecedented response from the SVO was posted Oct. 26 as part of an attack ad against a San Jose City Council candidate who supported police reform. The blackand-white image featured a group of Black men in front of a cloud of tear gas overlain with the words, “Do you really want to sign onto

this?”

The SVO quickly took down the photo after serious backlash en sued and issued an apology acknowledging it as “insensitive and racist,” but a huge fallout followed.

In the days and weeks following the posting of the ad on its website, dozens of influential companies dropped their SVO board seats, many more nonprofit groups and businesses rescinded their SVO memberships and the SVO dissolved its political action committee, the organization’ s campaign arm that supported business-friendly candidates.

The organization hired a third-party company to determine how and why the image was posted on the website. Although the SVO has yet to release a full investigative report as promised, the organization did provide some more context Wednesday.

The organization has confirmed that an SVO employee — not a thirdparty consultant — posted the controversial ad on the website.

According to the SVO, a political consultant requested that the SVO employee source an image of a “Defund the Police demonstration or a riot scene” for the digital ad. The employee posted the image after believing that it had been approved by the consultant, though the consultant denies approving it.

T he board said in a statement that it has “determined that there have been violations of SVO policies and procedures” and therefore has taken “personnel action.” It did not explain what policies or procedures were violated nor what kind of personnel action was taken or the extent of said action.

SVO staffers are reportedly receiving training or implicit bias and diversity and inclusion principles. The board also has updated its oversight and supervision procedures to ensure that all items published by the SVO and on the SVO website are reviewed by multiple people before they are published.

“W hile we recognize that these actions may not be enough for some, the independent investigation has provided the context in which the incident occurred,” the board said in a statement. “The investigation provides a framework for which the SVO board of directors can reestablish governance and organizational values representative of our members and respectful of the community we serve. As a board, we pledge to ensure an incident like this never happens again.”