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• Chamber elects leadership team

As the new CEO for the Greater Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce, I want to share with you some of the exciting initiatives that the Chamber is working on.

The Greater Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce is 123 years old and is the premier advocacy organization for businesses in Nanaimo.

We work hard to enhance the quality of life in our community by providing opportunities for businesses to succeed. In fact, our tag line is: “Better communities through better business.”

I believe that Nanaimo is on the cusp of exciting changes and growth opportunities and we are here to help businesses survive and thrive.

The Greater Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce board of directors are business members in our community and are committed to making Nanaimo the place to live and conduct business.

As well, the chamber relies on the expertise of many business people in our community to sit on committees, act as speakers and ambassadors for the organization.

We at the chamber want to help you succeed in business by offering you opportunities to network, attend workshops, webinars, and by acting as an intermediary when necessary to help you through any bureaucracy you may encounter.

There is strength in numbers. For a chamber to be effective in its community, it needs the support of businesses so that it can effectively lobby on their behalf.

For example, the City of Nanaimo recently changed its zoning bylaw, which led to a number of our business members who were adversely affected by the changes.

We contacted the city to explain our members’ concerns and the city and chamber worked together to host a series of meetings.

We then invited our business members and the city to discuss these “unintended consequences” of the zoning bylaw changes.

These meetings proved extremely beneficial and the most of the unintended consequences have been dealt with in a timely manner to the satisfaction of our members.

This is just one of the ways we advocate on behalf of our members.

If you are a business and not yet a chamber member but interested in finding out more about our organization, please give us a call at 250-756-1191.