Cooper ends tenure as chamber president
Will be moving on to take same role in Pleasanton
James Cooper is ending his sixyear run as the President of the Vallejo Chamber of Commerce to accept the same role in Pleasanton.
Cooper, whose last day with the Vallejo Chamber was Friday, took on the job in 2016, replacing Rich Curtola, who retired from that post. Cooper had previously been the President of the American Canyon Chamber of Commerce.
Cooper says the long hours spent in isolation after contacting COVID in January gave him a chance to rethink his life moving forward.
“Like a lot of people during the pandemic, you spend a lot of time thinking,” Cooper said. “I think it was the combination of getting COVID along with the stress of working six or seven days a week starting to pile up. I love this job, I love being in Vallejo where I first had the chance to own a home. My wife's business is right here. But with a dream comes limitations. I needed more free time for myself and I turned 55 in February. My youngest is graduating high school. I needed to find something that was close but also give me a higher income so I wouldn't have to work quite as many hours.”
Cooper is excited about the new opportunity, but wonders if the new job will feature a citizenry with the same passion he experienced in Vallejo.
“This job has a lot of responsibility and I've been lucky to have a lot of people around here help out and be supportive of myself,” Cooper said. “A lot of people have given me the time and energy so we can do good work here.”
Cooper said his main focus in Vallejo was helping out the city staff.
“Helping out city council, yes, but even more than that the city staff,” Cooper said. “The communication has to be very clear and transparent and we need to be provided commen
tary. The question was always how do we support the staff and keep them engaged and keep everyone's spirits up? It's a character issue. We're all in this together. It's important for people to share community ideas and be positive about the city and keep believing in it. We don't always necessarily need a pat on the back, but we need input. The chamber and the city staff members are not going to always agree on everything, but we still want to both see success.”
Cooper said his work during the pandemic stands out among the proudest moments of his tenure in Vallejo.
“During that time we became a communication hub for businesses,” Cooper said. “We would tell them, `OK, here is how you can survive.' We would have around three messages a week to our members telling them about health codes with masks, PPE requirements and laying out timelines for them. When members were saying this stuff was valuable to them then boom, we would continue to do that for them.”
Cooper, who starts in Pleasanton on June 1, doesn't know who his replacement will be with Vallejo, although he knows the chamber has already begun the process of finding his replacement. Cooper said he has no input on the decision.
In the meantime, he said there is plenty he will miss about the Vallejo job.
“When you look at that (points to boxes being packed in his office) then it starts to hit you that it's becoming real,” Cooper said, with a laugh. “First and foremost I'm going to miss the people here. There are very passionate people here. I mean, this organization creates passion within passion. There are such rich and colorful personalities here in Vallejo and I'm not sure if I'll get that in the new job. Only time will tell.”