Lakeland Business Guide 2019 Chamber Guide_2019 | Page 38
C
hamber President Cory
Skeates knows that this is a
great time to be in Lakeland.
When he arrived here four
years ago, he found a strong foundation,
and he has been working tirelessly to build
even more opportunities for training,
community events, and ways to provide
what investors expect from their Chamber.
“We’re seeing that Chambers are
having to evolve or they’re dying,” says
Skeates. “If we’re not providing a service
that’s helping members grow, and, at an
event, if they’re not able to take away
something that they can directly apply to
their business for success, then we’re not
doing our job. So that’s really where our
focus has been.”
Prior to coming to the Lakeland
Chamber, Skeates led the Oviedo/Winter
Springs Chamber for eight years. When
he started in that position, his background
had been in politics and law, earning a
degree from Barry University’s Law School
and working for the Florida Legislature.
He knew so little about Chambers that he
had to ask the friend who recommended
him for the position, “What is a Chamber,
and what does it do?”
“I kinda got thrown into Chamber
work — didn’t know much about it, kind
of learned on the job — but it’s become
a passion for me,” says Skeates. “I figured
I would be there a couple years, but I was
there eight years and loved it.” During
his time at the Oviedo/Winter Springs
Chamber, the organization grew from
around 200 members to 650 members and
got to the point that they were able to buy
their first building. They now have their
own permanent address. With so much
growth and success, Skeates eventually felt
like he had done almost all he could do
for that organization and wanted to make
the jump to another challenge. While
looking online one evening, he saw that
the Lakeland Chamber was looking for a
new president. After careful consideration,
he applied, and the rest is history.
“I was fortunate that, walking into
this job, unlike the previous one where
there were quite a few issues that had to
be dealt with, here [outgoing President]
Kathleen [Munson] had set a great
foundation for me to succeed,” says
Skeates. “They had just turned from
the ‘fair share’ to the ‘tier’ membership
levels, which we’re in now, so that was
something I had to learn immediately:
how to initiate tier memberships and get
everyone transitioned over. But we knew
we had a real opportunity here because
there were a lot of things I had done in
Oviedo/Winter Springs that I wanted to
bring here.”
Many of these initiatives focus on
trainings, education, seminars, and
community-focused events. “Knowing
there were opportunities here that hadn’t
been tapped into yet, and having the
opportunity to go around and speak to
CEOs and business leaders about what
they expected from their Chamber, gave
us the opportunity to come up with things
like our Nod-to-Nonprofit tour series,”
says Skeates. “To go out and explore
opportunities with our Foundation
to where we have hired our Chief
Development Officer Darla [Pettaway],
who has been working to transition our
private foundation to a public foundation
so we can do things with workforce
development, skills gaps, trainings, and
things like that.”
In addition to some of the time-tested,
beloved Chamber programming such
as monthly Business After Hours, the
Annual Meeting, EMERGE, Leadership
Lakeland, and more, a number of new
programs have been implemented
over the last couple years through the
Chamber and the Foundation. The
Nod-to-Nonprofit tour series highlights
a different nonprofit organization each
month that gets to showcase their
programming to Chamber members. The
New Business 101 initiative takes startup
or newer businesses and educates them
on a lot of different areas of business to
ensure they are successful. The program
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