Heidi Walker is the new chief operating officer of the Salt Lake Chamber

We’ve made a few enhancements to the Chamber staff recently and I want to take this opportunity to tell you just how excited I am about where we are as an organization and for where we’re going.

We’re very pleased to welcome back one of our own, Heidi Walker, who now serves as the chief operating officer. Many Chamber members will remember Heidi from her time here from 1998-2007 when she was vice president and oversaw membership, events and business development.

When Heidi left the Chamber, she moved to Washington, D.C. where she stayed busy working as vice president of operations for Association Management Group and as executive director of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Disassociation.  Heidi played a significant role with us before and has gained valuable experience that will make us an even more efficient and productive organization.

Bringing Heidi back to lead the day-to-day operations of the Chamber allows us to even better utilize the extraordinary talents of Natalie Gochnour, who will now serve as executive vice president of policy and communication and chief economist. Natalie worked as an economist for 16 years and will now apply this experience by advising Chamber members about economic trends and current conditions.

These two changes help us even better play our role as Utah’s business leader. Our membership now exceeds 6,000 companies, which represents more than one in every three jobs in Utah. We have members in all 29 counties and ten states. We’ve formed strong partnerships with the Downtown Alliance to represent our interests in the central business district, and with the World Trade Center Utah to further strengthen Utah’s booming export numbers. We’ve also worked to unite the business community by partnering with other chambers of commerce and various business organizations.

We embrace a new era of Chamber leadership and look forward to further enhancing our ability to serve our members.