Our Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber has had a transformative year in 2023, and over the next few weeks, I’ll be doing a year in review and a 2024 preview. Looking back is valuable — it gives us some great ideas for the year to come, and it reminds those who helped us along the way how much we appreciate all they have done to help us build community. Often, success has many stakeholders, and those people should be recognized. Here is the first part of our 2023 year-in-review series:

We became the name

The first and most noticeable change for many was in January at our Annual Meeting of the Membership (and January After Hours) marvelously hosted at The Brunswick Hotel. You may remember that we were the Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber for over 15 years, and we changed our name to the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber. We had been doing business as the new name for about nine months, but we needed the official name change to be accepted by the membership. That coincided with many adjustments to our bylaws, as the old name was listed in many places. This name change gave our team a chance to evaluate how our chamber runs, and we ended up making over 70 bylaw changes. Many of those were typos, but others had substance, and at the end of the meeting, we had adopted the changes.

Bylaw changes sound incredibly boring, but they’re an essential process for all organizations to go through. A time will come when we’ll need to lean on those guiding documents and making them usable for how our organization runs in 2023 is empowering.

Shannon ascends to president

Another big deal at the Annual Meeting of the Membership was presenting the new board of directors and officers. President Nick Favreau was succeeded by his first VP and new board President Shannon Anketell. Shannon is the branch manager of Bath Savings Institution and one of the most active members we have. Shannon has spent these last 12 months being a driving force for our team, and I look forward to what we can accomplish in her second year as president in 2024. She sets a great example for how community engagement should be, and her staff members are always volunteering and attending our chamber activities, too. You can meet Shannon and the rest of our 2024 board of directors when they’re announced at this year’s Annual Meeting of the Membership (which again is during our January After Hours) being held at Brickyard Hollow in Brunswick on Jan. 30, 2024.

The secret to our success: Anthony and Brittany

Of all of the things that have made our year successful, all of them pale in comparison to the emergence of my incredible team. I’ll be honest, I get a lot of credit for the work the chamber does, and I’m quick to point out the board members, committee members and community partners that make it all possible. Yet I don’t mention enough (though I do mention it) that the biggest reason for our success is because of our two staff people in Anthony and Brittany.

Brittany was first to join the staff during the setup week of the 2022 Midcoast Tree Festival, and oddly, Anthony’s first week was also during setup week for another major event, the Annual Awards Dinner in March 2023. I promised both that most weeks at the chamber aren’t as crazy and unpredictable as the setup weeks for events — that turned out to be untrue. They didn’t believe it for a second anyway.

I’m not the easiest guy to work with. I have big dreams and big ideas, and I overpromise on the vision and then strive to get over the already heightened bar that I set for us. I don’t give us enough lead time to complete projects on a regular timeline — usually because that would mean cutting something else out — so all of the timelines are run at 1.25 speed. For some people, my workstyle is too chaotic, and yet these two incredible humans have decided to take this crazy ride with me, and through it all, we end up producing some incredible work.

To be fair, they don’t do it for the money. They both do it because they genuinely want to build strong communities and have a positive impact on the region they call home. I’m beyond grateful for what they do.

If you liked the newsletters, the increased emphasis on brevity and the increased social media presence we had, that’s not me — that’s all Brittany. We discuss the content, but she makes it shine; she’s also one heck of an editor and sounding board for all the big ideas. She has taught me that a picture is worth a thousand words (where I used to believe it was better to paint a picture using a thousand words).

As for Anthony, he’s many of the things I am not. Organized. Precise. He makes lists. He creates systems and procedures rather than improvising. If you have noticed projects beginning sooner, better follow-up on messages and someone new representing the chamber at local events, that’s all Anthony’s impact. He’s my right-hand man, and there is rarely a project that doesn’t have his fingerprints on it, just as mine.

I’m very lucky. After years as a solo chamber guy, I can’t tell you how empowering it is to work with them. With a year under their belts now, I can’t wait to see the expansion of programs we’ll have in the year to come — it’s very exciting. Their passion for the community and their literal and emotional intelligence makes us better.

So, if you see them this holiday season, give them a thanks, a high five or a nod of appreciation. Let them know you see their efforts, too. They are, without question, the best things to happen to this chamber all year.

Cory King is executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber of Commerce.

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