Board Members

Chairman’s Message
A Message from the 2022 Golden Chamber of Commerce Chairman
Dean Valdez

Golden Chamber of Commerce Members,

For the past couple years we have focused on achieving our overarching goal to provide value to our members by being an advocate and promoter of business.  This year I’d like to provide a summary of what we’ve accomplished to date.

• Conducted a business survey to get your feedback on how we can better support your business.
  • This is the foundation of how the Chamber supports a thriving and engaged business community. You will learn more about this in our feature article “Bringing Business Together To Bring Golden Forward.”

• Hired a membership manager to better serve members and recruit new members.
  • Our Executive Director, Nola Krajewski, hired a Membership & Communication Manager (Ali Stofflet) and a Program & Events Manager (Lora Knowlton). These two valuable employees have helped the Chamber grow and improve our service to you. We look forward to continuing this momentum in 2022.

• Restructured our sponsorship and member pricing levels to provide more marketing opportunities for members and a better ROI on your membership.
  • We added investor levels and have improved our membership benefits for the different levels. We plan to continue refining this in 2022.

• Created a member business advisory council to provide a unified and strong business voice in the community.
  • We kicked this off in the 4^th quarter and have representatives from 10 organizations.  We are in the process of expanding this group to 15 – 20 to ensure we have representation across different business types.  Our purpose is to improve communication and involvement with city council and city management on policy and business issues.

The key question we want to answer is “why should I remain a member and/or join the Chamber?”  We want the answer to become obvious! This year you will see even more headway being made to provide you with a Chamber that is a critical contributor to your success.

I personally have invested time, money, and energy into helping the Chamber add value for our community because I believe that a strong chamber of commerce, with an engaged business member base, is good for the community.  It’s a circle of support; chamber provides value to businesses to help them thrive and in turn businesses provide value added goods and services for the community, which in turn supports all of us.

The Chamber is here to provide value for our members and being a member:

• brings credibility to your business
• increases your visibility in the community
• creates networking opportunities
• allows you to gain a voice in government issues
• provides opportunities to make business contacts, and
• provides you with information on legislative and other business issues via our newsletters and emails.

Lastly, the Chamber brings key events and programs to the city that businesses benefit from via increased visitation and dollars to our city.

In closing, I’d like to acknowledge the strong Board of Directors we have as well as our Chamber employees.  The work that has been done the past year has been rewarding and in 2022 you will see more positive changes.  We look forward to working with our members to create an even better business climate in Golden; the Chamber is the Gateway to Golden for our business community and I encourage you to join if you are not already a member.  If you have ideas for the Chamber to consider, please email me at [email protected] with Golden Chamber Ideas in the subject line.