Each year about this time, we bid adieu to our outgoing chair of the board of our chamber. It is often a bittersweet moment, as we also are welcoming our new leadership to the helm and there is much excitement associated with this transition.
Yet, I promise you this is not a goodbye or farewell. It is more of a homage to the past year and hello to better business, better community and a better you.
For more than a year Martha de la Peña Rojas has helped us do just that! She has made us strive to be better at everything we did, including being a better chamber and better leaders to steward our organization.
I once (okay, maybe more than once) heard Martha say, “If you can’t measure it, it did not happen.” Well, by any measure of our imagination, this past year measured up to be one of our best and, well things sure did happen!
We are a more relevant, more transparent, more focused organization because of her leadership. She lives by this, both personally and professionally, and made sure we all embraced this value proposition every day.
During her tenure, we saw the completion of the Miracle Mile and Giralda Plaza Streetscape project. We completed our new strategic plan. We engaged around topics like Corporate Social Responsibility, poverty and leadership. We did the hard work and she did the heavy lifting.
We left no stone unturned in our efforts to engage and involve our members, stakeholders, partners and colleagues. We knew that our long-term survival in the community and in our local neighborhoods is never a guarantee.
Even at 93 years of serving the City Beautiful, we have seen many of our peer chambers struggle and lose focus and become less relevant because of their conscious movement away from their members. Away, not toward them like we do every single day.
Florida Blue, Martha’s teammates and her generous foundation partners represent the largest corporate entity that has ever backed a chair of our board in Coral Gables. We were the direct beneficiaries of this amazing relationship and are eternally grateful for their generosity.
To get a new “boss” every year occurs only in the non-profit world for the most part, and during my tenure at the chamber, I have had 14 different chairs I have worked directly with, most a year at a time. This may overwhelm many, but for me, it is a challenge I enjoy.
It means new ideas, fresh energy, collaborative discovery and, of course, an opportunity to do and be better. Imagine how much more effective you would be in your job if you had this structure at your workplace. Trust me, it can be quite invigorating.
Martha patiently waited her turn to be our chair of the board, and in doing so, honed in on her priorities, her messaging, and her overarching goals for the year. We accomplished many and set into motion many more.
It will always be her smiling face in the official photo as we cut the ribbon on Miracle Mile, a project that took more than two decades to come to fruition. Leadership is not always easy, but standing up in praise of the outcomes is universally grand.
In all sincerity, I will miss our chats, our revealing discussions and our many laughs. While we met some time ago through a community leadership program, the opportunity to get to know someone even better is a gift wrapped in grace and bestowed with genuine love.
All the best, Martha!
