Message from President & CEO:
What can be said about 2016?
KEANIN LOOMIS
Personally, it has been a great year. Globally? Well, the most charitable thing to say is that we certainly do live in interesting times. As far as the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce goes, 2016 was a year that brought both progress and challenge. On the Events side of the equation, the team of Marie Nash, Julia Jarusauskas and Whitney Eames (with heaping contributions from Richard Allen) did an incredible job throughout the year. The highlights of the year were the record number of people attending our annual Mayor’s and City Manager’s Breakfasts, and the 2nd annual Bay Area Economic Summit, which culminated with an address from Premier Kathleen Wynne. This year also saw: 1) the establishment of our Policy Council, which will oversee all of the organization’s policy and advocacy work, and, 2) the launch of our CEOs of Hamilton initiative, which is bringing together the CEOs of the biggest companies and organizations within the Chamber’s membership. Both initiatives are subtle, but significant, restructurings in the way that this organization does business and serves its membership. Their impact will be enormous. The challenges I alluded to stemmed from the fact that we were not at full strength for a large portion of the year. In June, we experienced the departure of VP Scott McCammon to become the CEO of the Milton Chamber of Commerce, and got word from Membership Manager, Rachelle Cavanagh, that she would not be returning from maternity leave. Both Scott and Rachelle were high-performers that were difficult to replace. But replace we did – and with two excellent discoveries! James Meers started as the Chamber’s COO in October and Sherri Rinaldi began her tenure has Membership Manager in November. With no luxury of being eased into their roles, both have acquitted themselves admirably in their baptisms-by-fire. I look forward to them fully hitting their stride in 2017. I want to thank the Chamber staff – Diane, Karen, Whitney, Marie, Huzaifa, Julia, James and Sherri – and key contributor, Richard Allen, for their Herculean efforts this year. I also want to thank our membership for enthusiastically supporting our efforts – without your investment, we simply would not exist. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to everyone!