Beth Henry is a long-time Windsor resident, and a long-time supporter of business, but in her new role as executive director of the Windsor Chamber of Commerce, she gets to combine all of those experiences.
Henry moved to Windsor in 1993 and raised two kids here, both of whom attended Cali Calmecac and Windsor High School. She was deeply involved with both Project Grad and the Boosters Club, and when it was time for her to return to work, she found a spot at the Windsor Chamber.
“(My work with those events) led to working here at the Windsor Chamber in 2012 after my kids graduated,” she said. “It was my first serious job as a returning mom, returning to the workforce. I was an office coordinator and marketing and events coordinator here and then I moved to The Windsor Times (the predecessor to SoCoNews) … It was all about establishing relationships with the business community and the Windsor Times helped to strengthen and deepen those relationships.”
Henry also worked in the nonprofit sector, “even then, it’s about building relationships with the business community and about marketing and about events,” she said.
“I see the common thread in my career as marketing and events. It’s always been about community ties and how to get the business community credit and exposure,” she concluded.
Henry’s tenure starts at a challenging time for the town, its residents and businesses and the chamber of commerce. The chamber board faced significant backlash over their choice to eliminate the position of CEO, and with it long-time chamber employee Lorene Romero, only to announce a short time afterward that they would be hiring for a newly created executive director position, which Henry now occupies. Henry is circumspect about the shadow those events have left over the chamber.
“It’s really difficult in these situations when you have a high-level executive in any company or nonprofit who has to step away,” she said. “It’s a personnel issue and the company cannot discuss it, nor should they, as it’s a private matter. But, then public opinion really gets to have a louder voice at the time.
“I think that time will show that the chamber will continue to exist to serve the business community,” she continued. “It’s my intention to go forward and continue in Lorene’s community service footsteps. She did a wonderful job with networking for the chamber and for the businesses and shepherding them through the time of COVID. She was a great communicator and did an exemplary job in getting information from all these disparate sources — the county, the town — and pushing that out regularly to the business community as a resource. She is much loved in this town, and I have worked with her for decades here at the chamber in and in other aspects of the community. I hope that we can continue to work together in whatever role she finds serving this town she loves so much.”
The town’s own challenges with the sexual assault allegations against former mayor Dominic Foppoli, the vacancies left on the town council in its wake, along with controversies over how to fill those vacancies have added to the challenges already facing businesses in the town.
“It’s not just COVID now, it’s fire and drought too, and maybe we can throw locusts in there too, right,” Henry said with a laugh. “The other challenge we have to face, of course, is the leadership change that is going on at the town level, and these things do have a profound effect on the community’s unity and quality of life going forward.
“I think that one of the good things about restrictions being eased is we can have these gathering events where people can casually exchange views … realizing we have more in common than differences. We all really do want what’s best for this town. But, our official position is that the chamber is apolitical. We represent the voice of the business community in all of its diversity.”
Henry sees this as an opportunity as much as a challenge, “It is kind of a brand new era for the chamber going forward, and we have that opportunity with coming out of COVID, with new leadership and a reactivated community that has woken up from the sleepy little town it used to be to revitalize ourselves and continue to move forward.”
Among the concrete plans Henry has in the short term is creating a business plan for the chamber and expanding the visitor’s center in preparation of the arrival of the SMART train, since the chamber and visitor’s center live in the train depot.
“Goal setting will be done between the board and its members and the general business community and me,” Henry said. “As I become more active in getting to know all of our members I’ll be able to bring their voices back to the board meeting. I’d also encourage them to contact the board members that they know — because Windsor is a small town and we all know each other — and make sure their opinions are being heard. That will help determine goals in the short-and long-term.”
Above all though, Henry has made unity a goal for her tenure.
“Unity is about compromise and about shared vision, it’s not about everybody thinking the same,” Henry said. “It’s about understanding our neighbor’s point of view, and realizing that we all really want the best for this town and our community. I’ve known all these people for 20 years, but now I’m in a new role reintroducing myself that way. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I’m excited by the challenge and I’m happy to be here serving the community. For the chamber, the focus is on business.”
