The overriding theme of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Chautauqua County Chamber of Commerce was community building.

Chamber President and CEO Dan Heitzenrater opened the meeting by noting “We’re not your grandfather’s Chamber of Commerce. We are connectors, resource providers, and champions for local businesspeople.”

“Working with our many partners,” he added, “we hope to make a positive impact and grow our communities.”

Chamber Board Chair Heather Brown said, “With our strategic directions and organizational mission in mind, the board and staff have been hard at work evaluating our services, events, and activities to increase effectiveness and ensure everything we do is benefitting our members and the business community, which are at the heart of our mission.”

Over the past year, she added, “With the assistance of the Western New York Foundation we have participated in the Impact Capacity Assessment (iCAP) Program … taking a deep dive into organizational governance, staff capacity, and strategies for long term sustainability and growth. Already the process has helped us update the organizational bylaws, add updated value statements, and create a roadmap with key performance indicators to continue evaluating and updating our work moving forward.”

Aimee Rogers, the founder and president of Imagine Forestville, was presented with the Pam Lydic Coalition Builder Award. As a “hands-on” community builder, she was lauded for playing a lead role in developing a group of Forestville area residents dedicated to making substantive progress for their hamlet and making it a welcoming place to live, work, and play. The award is named in memory of Pam Lydic, the first President of the Chautauqua County Chamber, who had a vision 25 years ago to bring together a countywide coalition of business associations and Chambers of Commerce around a common goal to strengthen them all, financially and programmatically.

In his keynote address, former President and CEO of the Cleveland Foundation, Ronn Richard noted, “we’re not as divided as we think we are in this country.” With a varied career spanning foreign service, private business, and non-profit leadership, he recounted how community building was a matter of national security. He said, “we had to build relationships, while also recognizing that the United States was in direct competition with a number of foreign countries.”

He recalled the history of the Cleveland Foundation – the first community foundation in the country – and noted there are now over 900 community foundations nationwide and 1,800 across the globe.

He pointed out the Cleveland Foundation has played an enormous role in educational development in the Cleveland area, including providing free college and medical school for hundreds of students.

As for the state of the country, he said, the federal government has been “dysfunctional for decades and a lot of progress in the country has come from the local level. People live as neighbors and work together to get things done. That’s the nature of community, and that’s what helps us to solve problems.” He added, “We need to continue to find ways to come together to seize new opportunities.”

Elected as Board officers for 2026 were Chair Heather Brown, The Resource Center; Vice Chair Emily Reynolds, Cornell Cooperative Extension; Treasurer John Felton, Southern Chautauqua Federal Credit Union; and Secretary Robert Mazza, Mazza Chautauqua Cellars and Five & 20 Spirits & Brewing. New board members elected were Deborah Ferrer, Deborah Ferrer Design Studio; Angelo Marra, West Main Mercantile; Ken Morris, Brooks-TLC Hospital System; Dawn Murphy, Whizz-n-Smash; and Joe Sanfilippo, Sanfilippo Solutions. Returning board members are Jon Davis, Ashville General Store; Larry Fiorella, HBKS Wealth Management; Dr. Stephen Kolison, State University of New York at Fredonia; Vicki McGraw, Elegant Edibles Catering; Brian Pender, Northlake Development; Kris Sellstrom, Jamestown Board of Public Utilities; and Monica Simpson, Chautauqua County Partnership for Economic Growth.

In presenting the Nominating Committee report, Vice Chair Emily Reynolds noted, “The CHQ Chamber Board is made up of people who represent Chamber members from across Chautauqua County. They come from all geographic areas and a wide variety of businesses and organizations.”