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It is hard to believe but this April I will be entering the anchor leg of my chairmanship, the final six months as your Chamber Chair. The past 18 months have given me a renewed sense of pride in the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, its history, its accomplishments and many of the people that have contributed to its success. I have benefited from the support of the Chamber staff (from President Jerry Libbin, to our interim President Julio Magrisso, Enid Rodriguez, the late Danny Diaz, Leslie Reams, Charlotte Rigaud and Alicia Pardey), our past chairs, our council chairs and our new members. Each in their own way have helped to make my role easier, more fulfilling and more rewarding. And, of course, I could not have done all of this without the support of my family, especially my wife, Heidi, and my former law partners, Wayne Pathman and Richard Schermer, and the Boucher Brothers and their team.
During my time as Chair, I have come to appreciate (and hopefully encouraged) the way that the Chamber fosters active and inclusive leadership. While the goals of Chambers of Commerce include furthering the interests of business and improving community, our Chamber does an exceptionally good job of also identifying and cultivating leaders who themselves are active participants in our community. Besides being business leaders in their own professions and industries, many of our board members participate as well as board members of civic organizations, like Camillus House, where Paul Lowenthal serves as their Board Chairman. Another great example is one of our Vice Chairs, Linsey Lovell, who serves on one of our City’s Historic Preservation Board and Eva Dias, our newest appointment to the City’s Transportation and Parking Committee.
At the same time, we have strived to practice Inclusive leadership at all levels of the Chamber. Inclusive leadership in my view is one that leverages individual differences and collective talent to create and promote the key goals of our Chamber while remaining strong enough to engage in constructive discourse even regarding challenging or confrontational topics. In this way, the Chamber remains adaptive and resilient, while facilitating thoughtful, reasoned and impactful behavior. The camaraderie among your Council Chairs as well as strong leadership was certainly on display during our Quarterly Council Chair meeting on March 28th. Moreover, your Chamber leadership continues to work to improve our Chamber at large. Recognizing there is always room for improvement and change, I am confident that I will be able to turn over the leadership to incoming Chair-Elect, Richard Segal, who has a proven track record of leadership throughout or community.
Not everything at the Chamber is always so serious. In honor of April being National Humor Month, and my own upcoming birthday (April 1st, which many of people find ironically appropriate for me), I will leave you with the only Chamber of Commerce/lawyer joke I was able to find:
A man walks into the local Chamber of Commerce of a town visibly desperate for help. The man asks,”do you help people?” The Chamber staff member says: “Yes, as long as it’s good for business”
The man then asks: “What about if I need a criminal lawyer?” The man at the front counter says: “we have several but haven’t been able to prove any of them guilty yet.”
Have a great April and laugh a little along the way.
