Page 8 - BusinessWest November 24, 2021

outreach to Hispanic business owners, said Hart, adding that, historically, that population hasn’t felt as if the chamber represented them.
“It was really important to me to become a more inclusive organization, fostering not only our current members, but growing that and extending that into the Hispanic business com- munity, which has really not had the same oppor- tunities that the chamber has offered to other businesses,” she told BusinessWest, adding that she considers 2021 to be a comeback year for a beleaguered chamber. “I don’t want to continue
“Throughout all of this, chambers have really shown their relevance. It’s like having health insurance in some respects; you don’t ever want to use it, but you’re glad that it’s there when you need to use it, and we’ve shown what we can do and what our value proposition is.”
to segregate the two different business communi- ties, but instead find ways to become more uni- fied and be the business community of Holyoke.”
At the East of the River Five Town Chamber of Commerce, which includes Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Ludlow, and other communities south and east of Springfield, there has been a
return to many of the gatherings staged before COVID, including the popular breakfasts, an important value-added service for members.
“There’s definitely a need for these kinds of networking events,” said Grace Barone, who came on as executive director of the chamber in June. “Everyone needed to know how folks were doing, how to adjust sales, and how to move forward in this world, so we set out to do that, to bring people together again.”
For this issue, BusinessWest talked with several chamber lead- ers about this process of ‘moving forward,’ and all that this phrase entails. As with businesses in every sector of the economy, it means pivoting when necessary and find- ing new and sometimes different ways to be relevant and present value to members.
Meeting Expectations
As she talked about her cham-
ber’s recent trade show and fundraising event, the ERC5 Talkin’ Turkey Table Top 2021, Barone said she took a page from the playbook BusinessWest used at its 40 Under Forty gala in September — the one that called for spreading people out to help reduce risks during a surge in COVID.
“We utilized all the different spaces at Twin Hills Country Club that we could,” she explained. “We had some vendors outside and in the lobby — we provided people with more room. People had to do a little more traveling through Twin
Nancy Creed says area chambers certainly proved their relevance during COVID, and the challenge now is to maintain that relevance.
Hills, but it happened, and it was a success, and everyone was very happy.”
It was the same at an earlier networking event, staged outdoors in another nod to COVID, at the Apple Place in East Longmeadow, which boasts a creamery and a number of farm animals. It wasn’t
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8 NOVEMBER 24, 2021
FEATURE
BusinessWest