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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2025 ACCE Chamber of the Year Finalists Series. And our guest for this episode is Sandra Wilson, the President and CEO of the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce, representing them as a Chamber of the Year Finalists. But Sandra, she joined the Paducah Area Chamber as the President & CEO in 2013 after a 26 year tenure at New Page paper mill as a public affairs manager with a strong background in community relations, government affairs and employee relations. She has served on various local and statewide boards, including as the first woman to chair both the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce and the greater Paducah Economic Development Board. Sandra has also contributed to the Kentucky Manufacturers Association and leadership Kentucky, among others, Under her leadership, the Paducah chamber was named chamber of the year in 2017 by ACCE, and was a finalist in 2024 as well. They also hold a five star accreditation from the US Chamber of Commerce. She’s an IOM Certified Professional and continues to advocate for leadership programs in Kentucky. Sandra, I wanted to first congratulate you and your team is being selected as a Chamber of the Year Finalist. Again. What an accomplishment. But I wanted to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the listeners and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Well,
Sandra Wilson 2:38
great. Thank you, Brandon, I appreciate this opportunity to be on the show, and thank you for what you do for chamber professionals by hosting this podcast I am where our chamber is very excited to be a finalist for Chamber of the Year, and we look forward to seeing everyone in Philadelphia, as far as me, I’ve been in The Chamber world for 12 years now with the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce, but it’s really been in my blood for a very long time. And did a very the very beginning of my career. I did a short stint at the Chamber in an administrative type role, and then left for a different position in the community and came back to it eventually. But I’ve always been involved with the with the Chamber, the Paducah chamber, very much. So before I was chairman of the board, I served in many Vice Chair roles. And so then when this position came open in 2013 it was just like, Oh my goodness. This is perfect timing, I could see a difference in the way the paper industry was doing. Even though I loved where I was and with the company, I just thought this was a great opportunity. So I’ve loved what a chamber does for many, many years.
Brandon Burton 3:55
Yeah, that’s great. And I think we may have talked about it before, but my background is in chamber publishing, so with paper and and you see those trends kind of moving. But I think unless you have a very specific niche, paper industry is very tough these days. It is. Well, tell us a little bit about the Paducah area Chamber to set the stage for our discussion as a chamber of the year finalist. You know, of course, we want to know about the size of the chamber, staff, budget, scope of work you’re involved with to kind of set the stage for our discussion today.
Sandra Wilson 4:28
Okay, great. Well, the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce has been around, I think we’re approaching about 80 years. We have a membership about 950 right now. We’ll have a membership campaign in August and push back up to 1000 but right now we’re around 950 we have six employees. We added a six employee last year to be the executive director of our leadership center. So that is one of the synopsis that we’ll be talking about, I guess, later in the show. But we. We are also mostly known for our advocacy efforts for the region. We we are a Regional Chamber, but we are very local as well. You know, I guess I’d say that by being known as the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce, we focus on a lot of what traditional chambers focus on, small business, workforce development pressing issues in the community. We established our leadership center a few years ago and then really amped it up last year to hire the full time Executive Director and rebrand a lot of our programs and begin working with workforce and training. So that is has been a big focus for us. The other big focus for us this year has in the last year and a half has been a grant that we received from the Department of Energy to lead the study of the RE industrialization of our closed now Department of Energy site, the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant. So it really has been very time consuming for both of those programs, but very exciting for new opportunities. Our small business focus has really increased in the last couple of years, when we started a small business cohort and a small business focus at our big chamber breakfast every month, and we have one every month. But in May, we always do small business. So we just this year, I have to share this story, because it’s really very touching. We have a youth lead program, which is for high school juniors. So this year we focused one of our youth lead graduates from he’s about, that’s about three or four years ago. He’s now in college. He had started a business. When he started his business, one of the first things he did, because we had a close relationship with him, and he was in our youth program, is he joined the chamber, yes, and we focused him his business, and him in a panel with three other small business owners of all ages. And I will tell you at the end of that program, people were lined up to talk to him about his business and find out more about it. So, you know, we always talk about with the Chamber, the importance of connecting the dots, so that people that aren’t in the trenches with you every day know the importance and the reason why they should be supporting the Paducah chamber, or a chamber in general. And boy, when you can get someone that’s a high school junior to see the value of the chamber, and he pretend he continues that through his first business, and he has plenty of plans for second, you know, second and third businesses, it just makes it so worthwhile. So those are some examples of the Padilla chamber. We are five star credited by the US Chamber. We have been a chamber of the year, winner and a finalist. And just really look forward to being back in Philadelphia and seeing everyone this fall, that
Brandon Burton 7:55
is mid July. What a great story with the high school student comes back as a college student with the business, and hopefully you guys can capture some shorts, short, short form video, you know, that you can push out there and and really promote that program and tell the story just my mind, my mind’s going as you, you know, shared the snippet of that story, of how that can really be leveraged for that program in the future. But that’s, you know, helping to connect the dots. But what a great story. So we’ll spend the majority of our conversation on today’s episode talking about the two programs synopsis that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. You mentioned the Innovate West Kentucky, which is a kind of the revamping of this, this power plant, and also the Leadership Center, but we’ll dive in deeper on both of these two programs as soon as they get back from this quick break.
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Brandon Burton 11:38
All right, Sandra, we’re back. So before the break, we’d mentioned that we’re focusing on the two programs that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. Do you have a preference on which program you want to cover first?
Sandra Wilson 11:52
Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’d be happy to talk about both of them. They’re both exciting. So I’m gonna, let’s start with the leadership center. That’s perfect. So we saw the need, because we were doing a lot of different programs in leadership training, our lead, our leadership. Paducah, we just graduated class 38 and selected class 39 and they have an active alumni association. We, you know, haven’t had a lot of programs that we were that were connected to some way to leadership with our youth lead, as I mentioned, we administer leadership West Kentucky, which is a regional leadership program. We do educator externships for our teachers intern programs, and have a really active Paducah young professional program. So we wanted to bring all of those under one Brandon, but we also were seeing the need in our community for additional training opportunities, and we are now partnering with our community college, but we have a lot on our own that we’re offering to all of our companies. So we hired an executive director for the Leadership Center last May, and he has been really out working with local companies to find out what type of program that they need. His two most popular ones right now are supervisory excellence to help people that are just going into a supervisor position. Maybe you know you’re a great in one doing your job, so you get promoted to be over everyone doing the same kind of job, but you’ve never had any training in how to be a supervisor. That’s one of his most popular programs, as well as communications excellence, just bringing teams together to help better understand communication skills and communication styles, and that how those really make a difference in being a successful team, which ultimately helps you to be a successful business. So those are his two most popular ones, but we have a whole listing of training programs, and he will said with our community college to work with them on some of the training programs that they have. We hope and really feel like we’re getting close to the point where we’re going to need to either have some contract employees working with him, or possibly even bring in some other maybe another employee. That would be our goal would be to grow it where we would have even more employees. But for now, you know, we’re looking at how we can hire contract employees to assist with him.
Unknown Speaker 14:27
So at
Sandra Wilson 14:28
the scale of all of our leader all of our current programs that are under the branding of the Leadership Center, we really wanted to just see how they need to be improved. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 14:38
I love that kind of the the full scope of everything you know, leadership that’s under that umbrella. I love these programs that the supervisor excellent, saying the communications excellence. So is there, is there an application process for employees be accepted in this? Is it ongoing all the time? Is it do? It, who facilitates it? These are all questions that are coming to my mind. So what’s that format look like?
Sandra Wilson 15:05
It’s really a mixture. So we have some of the training programs here at our building. We have a large meeting room that we can do that we actually have three different size meeting rooms that we can facilitate that training in. So those are open to anyone, if they’re held here, anyone that the company will help support them to attend. He also goes to the companies and does training there. So that’s been, you know, we really want to do more of that, even if we can, so that, because that helps a team at a company to know better what they’re all learning at the same time. If two employees are coming to one and you know here, and I will tell you that is our best word of mouth training is if two employee one or two employees come from a company here, participate in the training, then we get emails from them about how they’ve gone back and they’ve told their HR professionals about the training and how awesome it was and how they see It would work for their company. Then Frank reaches out to them and has begun scheduling training at those companies. So it’s a mixture of both at on site, at the company and here, open to anyone.
Brandon Burton 16:12
Okay, what about the curriculum for these training programs? Is that something you guys are creating in house at the Chamber, is that something you’re sourcing from somewhere? How does, how does one for those listening, they’re like, hey, we need to do something like this at our chamber. How do you come up with that curriculum that you’re training upon?
Sandra Wilson 16:28
It’s a mixture, really. One thing that made Frank, Frank Bennett, is executive director of our leadership center, such a good fit for that position, is he had a lot of certifications. He had written a book on leadership. It was in the process of writing his second book on leadership. He’s written a lot of articles. He had been the director of a non profit organization here, our National Quilt Museum for many years. So we had all he had all of those credentials if they need something created. He has the resources to reach out, to find more information, to help create that whatever they might need.
Brandon Burton 17:04
Yeah, I love that. It’s great when you’ve got somebody in the community that has all those strengths that you can pull from and and really leverage. You know what the chamber has to offer? Is there anything else around the Leadership Center, the the programs that are offered there that you want to make sure we highlight before we move to the other program,
Sandra Wilson 17:23
I would just say one of the reasons why, also that we formed the Leadership Center, it was based on a study that had been conducted by a professor at a local university about our community was lacking in this area. And so after we started looking at that and reading their research and studying it, it just became really apparent that this was something that was needed in our community, and why wouldn’t we be the ones to be the leader in it? We had the established programs that were already very, very successful, and we were already doing leadership. Paducah already leading leadership, West Kentucky already had our established Youth League program. So those were things that helped us to really build to the next level. Because we had the reputation of delivering great results, we needed to take it to the next level, to expand that to companies that, you know, we leadership. Paduka, for example, you’re probably gonna a company’s gonna send one person every year. This is a much more accelerated type program to help them to get to where they want
Brandon Burton 18:33
to be. Yeah, and I, I would imagine that the companies that participate and send employees for these trainings, if there were a way to extract metrics from it, I would imagine that you would see higher employee satisfaction and even retention over time. By having these people in management trained in how to manage and how to communicate and how to do these things, it would eliminate a lot of the frustration that people have in the workforce,
Sandra Wilson 19:04
and we actually we use it to our advantage with our economic development organization, greater particular economic development we hope that they do that these programs are available, that you locate your company in our community. These are some great programs that can help you to train your employees to be more successful.
Brandon Burton 19:21
Yeah, I love that. Well, let’s shift gears over to innovate West Kentucky. Tell us what that program is all about, where the impetus, where that started, and how it’s progressed to where it is today.
Sandra Wilson 19:34
Well, if you’re in the chamber world, you can appreciate this the week before I started in this position, our largest employer, the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant, which had been here for about 6070, years, announced that they were ceasing production. Now they weren’t leaving the community, because they have this huge department of energy side. It was about 3600 acres, and they. They had been enriching uranium for, you know, all those years, but at that point, the country was making some, you know, decisions, and they were no longer going to be in production. So we had to shift our thinking on how that that would be. So that was, you know, at the very beginning of when this was all happening, they stayed in operation for another year, and then in 2014 changed from being full time production to and part of the Department of Energy Environmental Management, so it was just based on cleanup. So we had to adjust our thinking. And we, you know, started working with the Department of Energy to build a very close relationship. Our role at that time was simply with advocacy. We were going to the Department of Energy, working for more funding for longer term contracts. We got very involved in a national organization called energy communities Alliance. So then we started seeing what other doe sites who had already ceased operation, were doing, and they were re industrialized, having re industrialization at their sides with bringing in new companies and new operations. We weren’t to that point, so we applied for a grant from the Department of Energy to lead the RE industrialization study. It was probably, you know, pretty unique in a way, because we had, we weren’t, we’re not the economic development organization, full time, we have that we’re in the same building and share a lot of the same resources with them and have a great partnership. However, we knew our community was needing that study, and we also knew, based on a University of Kentucky study, that re industrialization is what people in our community wanted. So we took that, we made an application to the Department of Energy, and we were awarded a grant. And so that was in late 2023 and we were able to hire a local firm who partnered with another company out of Knoxville, Tennessee, who had been doing re industrialization studies at the other Department of Energy sites. So we were awarded that grant. We came up with our, you know, well, we had the whole plan what we were going to do. We were going to study, well, first of all, we were going to request land that’s at the site to be transferred back to the ownership of the community so that we could do more economic development with it. It would be like a new economic development park for us around the outside of the active cleanup process going on at the DOE site. And then we needed to determine what the infrastructure needs would be for companies that might want to come here. We’ve looked at the workforce the and that was the one part of our grant that was for now and for the future. We wanted to look at what the workforce needs are at that site, because it is one of our very top three to four employers in our community, and what their workforce needs are going to be, how many employees they’re going to be needing over the years. And then finally, the biggest part was we’ll start strategy. And then finally, economic development. So we’ve been working with our economic development organization. We’re working on them, with them on their website, to add a whole new portion about all of this land that’s available. We are working very closely with the Department of Energy on companies that would be interested in coming to Paducah, and we have a lot of interest, I will tell you, in the last three months, things have really changed at our site. It’s the need for energy in the country now is definitely at the top of mind for everyone, because we’re going to run out of energy if we don’t do something to create more through you know, through new companies that can be located. Artificial Intelligence is another big topic. Department of Energy put out an RFI proposal for AI companies that would be interested in locating in one of the six or locating at a Department of Energy site. We were one of 16 listed in that so all of this has really come together. It’s been exciting. It’s changed since when we started our study to where we are today. And you know, if you’re in the chamber world, you know, you got to pivot all the time. And boy, we have done some big time pivoting in the last couple of months, and it’s just really exciting, and I know it’s going to provide a great future for our community. So that’s the part I think that for us that is so exciting that we know we’re going to be delivering results for our community that’s going to be producing new jobs, new career opportunities, new companies that are coming here. And I firmly believe if we had not started the RE industrialization study, we our community, would not be top of mind for the Department of Energy to help promote I’ve had the opportunity to speak at several national conferences about it and about Paducah. And when you’re sitting there in the audience and you hear the Department of Energy talking. About the growth of Paducah and the focus on Paducah, Kentucky site, you’re like, yes, thank you so much. We are getting our word out that we’re open for business and just have a really exciting future ahead of us. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 25:14
So what are some of the timelines look like? You had mentioned the cleanup phases. I know that the land transfer would be kind of outside of the area that needs to be cleaned up, but that, I think that’s still kind of a factor going on in the community. So what does that timeline look like? And then what would the timeline look like to when you could realistically have, you know, businesses relocating and opening up on this land?
Sandra Wilson 25:37
Well, we already have one global laser enrichment. They have been actually studying the site for many years, but that one was not part of our study, but we have, I guess, connected with them a lot and are helping them now as much as we can to with all the work that they have to do to get ready for locating here, they’ve already bought purchased land and have done some announcement of their intent to locate in Paducah. There are multiple other companies right now, looking at the site, I would love, I hope one announces before we’re in Philadelphia in July. I don’t know that that will happen, because every a lot of this, the work that we’ve done, is very confidential, and if you work in the economic development world, you know that it’s super confidential until the very end and when you make the big final announcement. But things are moving so quickly now in the world, and with energy needs, with AI needs, with all of that that you know there, it’s moving at a fast pace, much quicker than we thought it
Brandon Burton 26:42
would be, which is great to see things coming together and to be ahead of schedule, so to speak. But I can imagine that the acceleration just adds that much more work. And you’d mentioned the pivoting right, the constant pivoting to make sure things are ready and make sure that you’re able to welcome these new businesses to the community so but how exciting, yeah, it is.
Sandra Wilson 27:07
And you know, ACC is horizon initiative 2035, catalytic leader was one of them, and being an instigator of change, and that’s why we really base this on we saw the need, and it wasn’t necessarily something that we knew we had the expertise in, but we had the knowledge to find the right people to help us. And so we really feel like we have been a super instigator of change and the way of the mindset, of our facility here,
Brandon Burton 27:41
yeah, way to take the lead. It’s awesome. Be a chamber being what a chamber is meant to be. I love it. Oh, Sandra, I wanted to ask for those listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them towards accomplishing that goal,
Sandra Wilson 28:03
I would say, for the a chamber, the chamber as an organization, really look at the horizon, 2035, initiatives. They can inspire you. And if you just look at those, look at how that they could apply to you and your organization, and beyond that, look around what the needs are in your community, because we all have unique needs, right? We don’t all have the same we have some of the same. I would say we probably all need housing. We probably all need more child care. They’re probably, you know, we’re all gonna need more energy. Those are things that we’re all gonna have. But what is something that’s unique to your community that you feel like you can be passionate about? I had never would have dreamed I’d be speaking about energy. I kind of compare it to I don’t really want to need to know how my car operates. I just want to make sure when I get in it, it starts. And it’s the same with this. I don’t really need to. I don’t have to know how you enrich uranium or how you would do this, but I do know that we have land that’s available that we should be capitalizing on and utilizing it, and we weren’t, and it was time for us to open our doors in our community, for that to be a really active park. And so look for that, and personally, for chamber professionals, you know, it’s really important to find a mentor, and if it may be someone in your own state that’s a chain has a chamber about your size that you can compare notes with, or one that’s larger that you can scale to your own chamber. And you know, you know the saying about ripping R and D for chambers. You know, it’s it’s great. I feel very honored if someone does a program that we’ve done, and we look at what other chambers are doing and scale them to us. So find a mentor that when you’re having a really bad day, that you can call and look to. For support and talk to them about your opportunities and challenges, and then on days that you want to celebrate, you can call them and they know what. They know why you want to celebrate that. And it’s just really important to have those relationships and those mentoring mentoring relationships,
Brandon Burton 30:18
yeah, and that’s why the show exists for that rip off and duplicate R and D research, but also building those relationships. So hopefully somebody’s listening now that’s hearing what Sandra is saying, and says, Yeah, I need to share some struggles with her and some wins, you know, in the future, as those things come together, or anybody else that’s on the show for that matter. So you made an interesting point about not necessarily feeling like you need to know how your car works, right? Do you just get in you want it to work, but understanding what your community can offer. And the kind of a real life example is, as I was thinking, kind of relate, trying to relate, what you were saying, like, I have no idea how the energy grid works, but in just, you know, getting a little exposure to, you know, more and more with, like, you talked about the AI, you know, computer or warehouses, you know, that process all this energy, you know, they’re going through so much energy. You got Bitcoin miners. You’ve got electric cars that are plugging into the grid overnight and and what I found out is it’s these transformers that are meant to, you know, up upscale the energy in a community. They were designed a long time ago, and they were designed to be able to cool at night when energy usage is much less well. Now our energy uses don’t really go down. They might even go up at night when you’re turning on TVs, computers, plugging in the electric cars, you know, all the different things. So there’s things like that that will be reinvented and as chambers can make those connections with businesses and opportunities and land in their communities to connect the dots, that’s where real answers happen, and chambers are perfectly positioned to drive that change
Sandra Wilson 32:09
we should be. I mean, look around. You know, when you turn your lights on, you expect them to work right? And you know when you’re trying, your community is trying to locate new companies there. You want to make sure the power is going to be there for them that they’re going to need. And so it’s just important that you look overall to what’s needed in your community and to address that. And a rural community, community, rural communities are very different from large urban communities, and so I just think it’s an exciting time for chambers, and that it’s important that we do connect those dots so that a local small business owner that owns a retail shop when they get their dues, just like our young gentleman, who’s that our youth league graduate, that’s owned and has his own business, now that he knows that we are making this community the great place to live and work and play, and it takes someone doing that, and your chamber of commerce is where to do that. So thank you for shows like this. Thank you to ACCE for bringing us all together. I can’t wait to be in Philadelphia, because I’m sure I’m going to come back with a lot of information. I always do. I always think, oh, we need to start that. And, you know, one of the ideas that we came back with last year was right before, like a bit, our big membership and total resource campaign. And we, you know, had some rooms in our building that we hadn’t, really didn’t have a sponsor for so we had a couple of sponsors, but we thought, well, let’s see if we can get that. And we did. We found new sponsorships for our building. And so you know, you’re always going to find tidbits of information that will help you, and just look at how you can make it work for your community and for your size chamber.
Brandon Burton 33:59
That’s right, I love it. So hopefully you didn’t already spoil this answer, but I was going to ask the next question is to how do you see the future of chambers going forward?
Sandra Wilson 34:10
I think we have a great future ahead of us. I think you have to be ready to pivot. I mean, you’re going to hear that. I would guess you’re going to hear that. In Philadelphia, every chamber is so different, because every community is so different. We have some of the basic programs that we all do, but just for even housing, it’s going to be different on how we would approach that here than what some other communities would so I think chambers will be more important than ever. But you got to be out there, and you got to be selling your relevance, and you’ve got to be selling the need all the time. You know you can’t. I think as chambers we we’re probably more humble than sometimes we should be, because we throw the credit to everyone else when we’re in the background leading that. And granted, I understand. And. Hear that, you know, it doesn’t matter who gets a credit, as long as their
Brandon Burton 35:04
success. Rising Tide, you know, raises all ships, right? And that’s so
Sandra Wilson 35:08
true if you’re not focusing on it however, you don’t want the chamber to be left out. You know that you were in a row, and a key role in that, in delivering it. And I think there are ways that you can make sure that people and businesses and your government leaders all see that and know that, and a lot of it is just really keeping those important relationships and helping to spark those programs in your community. Yeah, I love that. So
Brandon Burton 35:36
Sandra, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect with you and maybe learn more about either these programs or how you guys are doing things in Paducah overall. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?
Sandra Wilson 35:52
Really, there are two ways they can reach out to me at swilson@paducahchamber.org, or if you forget that, you can just send it to info@paducahchamber.org and it will get to me as well.
Brandon Burton 36:03
That’s perfect. We’ll get it in the show notes too, so it’ll make it easy for people to find it. But Sandra, I appreciate you spending time with us today on chamber chat podcast and really diving into these two programs on your application. You guys are making big, impactful change and movement in the Paducah area, region, we’ll say. But I wish you and your team Best of luck this year as chamber of the year. Thank you.
Sandra Wilson 36:28
We appreciate it. Look forward to seeing everyone.
Brandon Burton 36:32
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