The Airdrie Chamber of Commerce elected a new slate of directors at their Annual General Meeting yesterday (May 17).

The ten member board is an equal mix of newcomers and veterans with five new people on the board and five returning.

The new board members are Rafael Gomez of Daystar Mechanical, Heather Crippen of CrossFit 403, Warren Kearns from Oranj Fitness, Sheila Nielsen of Raintree Financial, and Meghan Tudor of Sign Concepts.

Returnees include Wendy Potter from RBC Insurance, Sheila Bitz of BMO Bank of Montreal, Darcy Forbes of Vitreous Glass, Ron Zuke of Air 106.1 FM / Discover Airdrie and Sandi Christensen of Goodmen Roofing, who last year served as First Vice President of the Chamber.

Linda Bruce is back to serve another one year term as Chamber President.  She's joined on the executive by Vice Presidents Glenn Smaha of Davis Chevrolet and Carman Thiessen of RBC Investments and Treasurer Melody McClain with MJ McClain Professional Corp.

Bruce said new directors are very important to the Chamber.  

"The idea of getting on as a director is that you can understand what the Airdrie chamber is about, that kind of advocacy work that we do and, hopefully, we see directors moving up into the executive positions.  By moving up it allows for new members to come on representing different businesses and allowing us to have a good representation of both small and large businesses in the city."

Bruce is anxious to get started with the new board, doing things like advocating with various levels of government on behalf of Airdrie businesses.  

"Sometimes we get the chance to have some face to face with the leaders of the various parties which is always a good chance for us to make sure that business issues are front and centre and we'll continue to do that this year as well."

One challenge the chamber faces is continuing to find affordable space for those businesses that want to expand into storefronts.  

"One of the big issues is finding storefront space that, really when it comes down to it, is cheap enough for small business to move into. That is probably one of our biggest issues for our local small businesses."

The new board will meet one time before the summer break.  Bruce said that meeting is used to "get to know what each other's passions are and what they're hoping to contribute to the chamber for next year."

 

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