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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. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.
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Becki Womble 1:03
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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Beth Rhinehart. Beth is the president and CEO of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce serving both Bristol Virginia and Bristol Tennessee. The Bristol Tennessee and Virginia Chamber is a five star accredited organization and has been a leader in economic advocacy since 1909. Prior to joining the chamber in 2015, Beth spent the previous 10 years as Director of Government Relations for wellmont health systems, building key relationships and oversight overseeing Virginia legislative processes as they applied to hospitals and health care. Beth currently serves on the boards for several or local organizations, also including the Virginia Association Chamber of Commerce executives. Beth is a native of Bristol, Virginia, and earned her BS degree from Mary Washington College Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Masters of Arts in Teaching and Masters of Science in Counseling degrees from John Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and an MBA from King’s College in Bristol, Tennessee. She’s a 2010 graduate of the Sorenson Institute political leadership program and earned her IOM certification in 2018. She is currently a fellow of the ACCE foundation economic mobility cohort. She completed a fellowship in the ACCE education and talent development division in 2019. And recently completed a business leads fellowship with the US Chamber of Commerce in 2022. She’s a member of the US Chamber of Commerce distinguished committee of 100. And she recently earned her CCE being one of only 172 nationwide out of over 7000 chambers of commerce. Beth, I’m excited to have you with us today here on chamber chat podcast, I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the chamber champions who are out there listening and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.
Beth Rhinehart 3:53
Good morning, Brandon, and thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today. The chamber world is an amazing world to work in and to find so many collaborative partners to work alongside. So it’s always an honor anytime we can work together. And this is a great platform to be able to do that.
Probably some that would say probably of most interest would be that have no background and what people would most often think of as a chamber leader. I don’t think any of us wake up or grow up thinking I’m gonna be president of a chamber one day, it’s not one of those sought after careers that most people even don’t always know what a chamber does. So it’s one of those evolution careers in my opinion, where I think the toolkit that you develop and the skills and relationships you build throughout your life lead you along this path and I encourage anybody who’s not a chamber employee to always consider that the the opportunities The exposure, the growth that you experience, because of all the places you touch, as a chamber organization, I highly encourage anybody to consider that.
Brandon Burton 5:09
Yeah, absolutely. So I know, you know, there’s some chamber leaders out there where you can look at him and say, Man, they were really born to be a chamber leader, you know, chamber executive or CEO. And I, and that may be the case, but usually it isn’t evolution and you kind of grow into it. So you might have been born for it, but you still have to grow into it. So good point well taken. Why don’t you share with us a little bit about the Bristol chamber. In your bio, we shared the uniqueness of you covering Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia. So kind of having that literal border through your community. But um, tell us more about the chamber size staff budget scope of work, just to kind of give us an idea before we get into our discussion.
Beth Rhinehart 5:53
Absolutely. So we are 114 years old this year, we were established in May of 1909. We our five star credited chamber, which we’re extremely proud of. If anyone’s gone through an accreditation process, you know how challenging and grueling that can be, but it’s certainly worth every minute of time you put into it. We’re the oldest accredited chamber in Tennessee and the second oldest in Virginia, we we serve to one community, we say it’s one Bristol, but across two state lines. So our downtown historic Main Street, which is called State Street, the yellow lines that run down the center of our community, that’s the actual state line. So businesses on one side, you can be eating in a restaurant on State Street looking at folks in our restaurant or bar on the other side of the street, and they’re in a different state. So pretty unique opportunity that has its challenges for sure. You can imagine we have two local governments to fire departments, to school systems, to police stations, all of the above. So as a chamber, we often become that convener and facilitator for issues that impact the entire community, whether it’s the community at large or our business members. But we you know, that convening role, and the collaborative nature that we bring is critically important, I think, for all chambers, but especially for a community like ours. We have our budgets around one and a quarter million if you include our foundation side. So we have our chamber side of the house, we also have a foundation that owns our facility, but also houses, our leadership and education programs to name just a few. We have seven full time staff and have about 525. Members. All
Brandon Burton 7:49
right. So I’m I’m curious, I don’t know if you’ve ever looked into it to see how many cities there are across the country where there’s literally have the state line going through the middle of the city? Have you ever looked into that? Or is Bristol one of a kind? And I think
Beth Rhinehart 8:04
we’re I think we are one of a kind in the respect that our our remain thoroughfare and our historic downtown that those center lines are the state line. I know there. Are there plenty of border communities and, for example, St. Louis and others that, you know, you you have on both sides of a state line. But I think for us that downtown uniqueness is unique to us.
Brandon Burton 8:32
Yeah, absolutely. It is very unique and intriguing. Just to see how that works with like you said, having to local governments and to fire departments and police it, it just is very interesting to say the least. I would
Beth Rhinehart 8:47
if I could add one quick thing. You know, talking about how times we’re doing COVID, which I hate going back to again, but I think it speaks to the uniqueness here. We had two governors, one in Virginia, one in Tennessee, who approached those safety measures and closures very differently. And so for our downtown and our business community that was very disruptive. And so we played a large role in in helping make sure that everyone could continue to be successful and thrive. When you’re looking out your window at somebody else who’s open till two in the morning and serving customers and their cash registers are ringing when you’re shut down. So it brings about some interesting dynamics.
Brandon Burton 9:33
Yeah, well, it puts you in a tough spot as a chamber leader to at trying to advocate for those businesses with two different governors and two different approaches, but definitely some choppy waters to navigate. So as we get ready to kind of dive into our topic for conversation today, we decided to focus our discussion around economic mobility And I know you guys were recently awarded a grant from ACCE to focus work around economic mobility. And I’m excited to dive in much deeper on this topic as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Brandon Burton 12:53
All right, Beth, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re focusing our discussion today around economic mobility. And maybe before we get too deep into the conversation, I know there’s a lot of newcomers into the chamber world and specifically chamber staff who are listening. When we talk about economic mobility, what does that mean to you? What what is that covering in that scope of work before we go down that path and the discussion
Beth Rhinehart 13:21
started laying and my you know, very high level definition of that would be it’s allowing and supporting and finding ways to promote folks to greater, greater sustainability but personally, professionally for, you know, life stability, it’s it’s, for example, if you have low income workers who by by their own situational background and current situation, need to find a better way to sustain themselves and their families. economic mobility means that you’re supporting them moving from what I’ll call, not necessarily instability, but maybe a point that’s not sustainable to a point of greater grounding and funding and sense of self to where they’re able to live in a manner that that’s the quality of life for them and their families. Right.
Brandon Burton 14:26
So maybe tell us a little bit about the the application process for this grant that I mentioned, you guys were awarded from ACCE and kind of what went into that and know the the work is specifically around low income earners in the community. But what went into that application process and ultimately qualifying you for the grant.
Beth Rhinehart 14:48
Certainly. So a lot of the work that went into this was talking about what we do here from the chamber and in partnership with some Any new work in this field, because as we know, we don’t do this alone. We are a collaborator and a convener. And so we look to really partnering with a lot of folks, especially being that we serve two different states through the bristal lens. So I think it’s really working to find the data that’s available. So we had to do a lot of data mining to find, you know, what’s the average and median salaries, what programs are currently in existence? What are we doing as a chamber to really help folks find the skills they need to maybe to build that pipeline, find opportunities for people to upskill or rescale, and move to different jobs, what jobs are currently available in your community where the skills gaps needed to be supported? So a lot of the work was research and collaboration and finding who those best partners would be to help us throughout this grant process. So writing the grant, of course, describing all the demographics of our community in our greater region, and then goal setting for, you know, are we going to get be able to get people across that finish line and how we’re going to do that? So
Brandon Burton 16:14
you had mentioned goal setting? How do you set goals around this objective of economic mobility? What are some of those key indicators and and benchmarks to show that you’re succeeding in this work?
Beth Rhinehart 16:27
Force? And you’re asking the toughest questions? That is, the toughest question to answer really is, how do you put a number on how many people you’re actually going to get across that finish line? And what defines whether you have been successful? Maybe you don’t fully cross the finish line? If that’s a benchmark, or, you know, how do you get people moving in the right direction. And I think a lot of those, those those key performance indicators for us, included, you know, how many students are we able to fully engage, and I’ll call it graduate from some cohort programs, for example, our manufacturers Excellence Program, which is a boot camp for high school students to go through in partnership with all of our manufacturers, where they end up with at the end of that program, exposure to the manufacturing jobs in this community. And also to have a toolkit of things, they might need to start on the job once they graduate, for example, steel toed shoes, protective eyewear, and ear protection, things like that. So I think that’s one of the ways we look at it and successfully completing programs, how many students have done that, for us, you know, the, the cohort that I ended up in the grant itself is broken into several subgroups, the subgroup that I am in is actually creating a community wide strategy for how our community collectively and collaboratively finds a solution and a path forward. And that was really important, I was really pleased to be able to end up in that group, because for us across that state line, that collaborative necessity, is really at the top of what we need to be working on. So
Brandon Burton 18:18
let’s talk strategy. You had mentioned working with students and exposing them to some of those manufacturing jobs. And I know that would play a part into that strategy. And you’ve mentioned these partnerships and collaboration. But as you approach this work, I mean, are you identifying the individuals that you’re going after to try to help improve quality of life? Or are you presenting the program that hopefully attracts them and draws them into it? How do you approach it? And what does it look like?
Beth Rhinehart 18:50
And great question. And, you know, if we if we go back to the foundation of the group that I’m in, it’s really to create the strategy. So we’re rather than creating specific programs, the identification of programs, and the implementation of those programs is part of this. But the most important goal of the committee or the cohort that I’m in, is truly creating a strategy for how we as a greater community and region define the pathways for folks to move through economic mobility. So the really the goal of the work we will be doing is identifying what programs currently exist. Where are the skills gaps, or the the gaps in the programming for example, for those who are all the players that need to be to the table? As I mentioned earlier, we don’t necessarily do all the work. We are often the facilitator and collaborator for those who do the frontline work, for example, community colleges and four year higher education institutions. As our K 12, our workforce investment boards, our economic developers, all the folks that that have an impact on the population that we’re trying to serve, I think our goal is to create a strategy that has a defined pathway from beginning to success.
Brandon Burton 20:19
So, at what point did you guys jump in with both feet, so to speak, in this work of economic mobility? Is it a newer venture is that something that’s been on your mind, and then you’ve got more gas to throw on the fire? How’s that developed?
Beth Rhinehart 20:38
It’s a little bit of both of those. And I will say that this grant and fellowship application, it was, it was the sweet sauce we’ve been looking for, because it really gives us a focused approach to doing that with the funding attached. And, you know, all of us are resource limited to some degree, you know, we know what work gets done is the work that’s funded. So to have this opportunity of funding by ascending through a CCS Foundation, was really, it couldn’t have come at a better time, we’ve been focusing for a long time in our community on looking at generational poverty that exists. And for our youth, you know, if you have a lot of, of youth in your community, who are third and fourth generation, poverty, situational, they may grow up in a family where they’ve never seen an adult get up and go to work during the day versus living on public assistance. So the key to that mentorship and showing students that pathway, showing our youth that there is a different way, and the value of that and then how to achieve that is critically important. So that’s one piece of it. The other piece, we work very closely with our United Way here, and and they’re very focused, as I know, United Way’s across the country, if you partner with them, they talk a lot about Alice, families, which are asset limited income constrained, employed. And that breaks down to a lot of families who are living at or below the poverty line, are in that ballpark anyway. And very often they are working two to three part time jobs, to try to pay their bills. And the stress that that creates on families, the the inability to afford childcare, that’s quality childcare, you know, access to a lot of the things health care insurance. When you live in that Alice population, there are many challenges to overcome. And the choices that those families have to make are not choices any of us would want to have to make. So that that population of folks who have a lot of those struggles are also a target for folks that we want to try to move to that at average or above salary, which for our community, means you’re able to sustain your family. So there are going to be a lot of different approaches we look at. And I have to you know, give a little disclaimer too. We just started this. So we’re literally fresh on the heels, we just got our award letter. And the last month we’ve had our first kickoff meeting, as a cohort, there’s 11 of us from around the country who were selected for this project. And so it was beautiful to be able to receive that letter and to know that we get to participate in this. So it is very fresh on the front lines of this. So we have a lot of work to do. And I don’t have a lot of the details of what this will look like at the end. But I can tell you that we’re committed and excited to get to work.
Brandon Burton 23:53
Yeah. Now I’d love the idea of helping to create a vision, especially with these youth that don’t have that example to look to of what their real potential can be in what they can do is you know, career and to be able to support a family instead of you know, living off of assistance, like you mentioned, but I see it right now in my own son, you know, he’s finishing his junior year right now, as is looking to college and everything and, and just some of the limiting factors in a vision that an individual youth has for themselves. There’s so you know, bias really on what they’ve seen. And they they’ve lived a short life up to that point. And if they haven’t been exposed to different opportunities or know that some of these opportunities exist, they’re going to be in that same rut as as some of their predecessors. It still blows me away. Sometimes when you hear somebody being a first generation college graduate and their family. I mean, it makes me smile every time I hear it, but it blows me away that you still hear it as often as you do, and helping to grow Right, that vision, I think is, is instrumental in helping people realize their potential and moving forward. So hopefully you guys have some innovative ways that you can roll that out as the program develops. I’d like to give you an opportunity for anybody out there listening who is interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what tip or strategy might you offer for them?
Beth Rhinehart 25:27
I think you know, for us here, I can speak to my experiences here. One is, make sure that you have an extremely engaged and supportive board. I am so blessed here to have that opportunity. You know, we have that doesn’t mean we always agree 100% on everything we’re working on. But I think having your board engaged to where they understand what you’re trying to do, they can provide that fiscal oversight and that strategic vision to help you move your organization forward. So you’re creating the greatest benefit and value to those members. I think that’s a really key part. And that there’s a lot of intentionality around that it’s there’s intentionality around having diversity around the board table. There’s intentionality around how you as a director of your organization, how you engage them. And I think building a very strong trusting relationship is critically important. I over tell if there is such a thing, I always make sure that my board members know more than they need to know really, if there is such a thing, so that they’re never blindsided, but that they know the good, the bad and the ugly, because that’s how we all get better in what we’re doing. And when you feel like you have to hide something, it never leads to a good place. So I would just encourage you, if you have challenging things you’re working on, bring your board and let them help you. Right,
Brandon Burton 26:56
you’d never want your board to be surprised by anything you’re doing. Yes. Well, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?
Beth Rhinehart 27:12
I would say and it’s something we’ve worked really hard on, moving from the traditional membership model into a tiered investment model, I think is critical. And the reason it’s critical, it’s not just about those investment dollars, it’s really being very mission focused, and how you are delivering benefit and value to your members. So I encourage you, if you haven’t looked at that, please do. So there are so many folks in the chamber world who have gone through it or working on it. There are consultants that are great partners, to chambers, who can help you navigate that, but also lean on each other. There are a lot of people, as I say, who who are happy to share and really help all of us become better at the end of the day. I think that’s important. But I think, you know, another important piece is advocacy. I firmly believe that government relations, advocacy as a business leader, focused community is also one of the greatest values you can provide to your members into the larger community and region. I think folks need to know how to do that. They need to know what the pressing issues are, how to resolve those, and they need that connectivity to the elected members at your local state and federal levels to help you so I encourage you to look to those areas is really your greatest resources and I think value to membership. Absolutely,
Brandon Burton 28:40
I think those are two great. Oh, I’m gonna say tips. But it’s part of that vision of the future of chambers is to if you haven’t already explored the idea of going over to a tiered use model for your membership. There’s, there’s a lot of businesses out there who are willing to pay more than what they are being asked to with the traditional membership model, because they see the work that you’re doing in areas such as advocacy, and they see the value that you provide to the business community and really just community building in general and they want to be a part of it. So I would agree with that part of the vision and and really having a focus there. But that as we wrap up here, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who would like to reach out and connect with you and learn more about things you’re doing in Bristol or about the discussion that we covered today with economic mobility, what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?
Beth Rhinehart 29:34
Of course and I welcome any outreach and hope that whatever we do here if it can be a value to anyone, my door is always open my phone is always available to be answered. So I’ve been blessed with a lot of people who have done that for me so my email is, brhinehart@bristolchamber.org and and my phone number is 423-989-4850 and our mailing address is 20 Volunteer Parkway, Bristol, Tennessee 37620. And more importantly, come and visit us we are door’s always open. We would love to have anyone if you’re ever traveling through our area please stop and say hello.
Brandon Burton 30:23
Absolutely and I will get that in our show notes for this episode so listeners can go and check it out and connect with you. But I appreciate you being with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast and putting out there your experience so far around economic mobility and and the the work you’re venturing into with it. I think it is such an important topic and for every community to really see those areas to really uplift and bring everybody to a higher level in their community as far as their living standards and economic status goes. So thank you for for sharing that with us and being with us on the podcast today.
Beth Rhinehart 30:59
Thank you for the opportunity. Love what you’re doing.
Brandon Burton 31:04
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