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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 finalist series. And our guest for this episode is Heather Kasten. Heather is the president and CEO of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce in Florida, with more than 14 years of experience in the Sarasota region, Heather previously served as a President CEO of the Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance. She has a diverse background, having worked for Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals and six flag theme parks in various regional management roles. Heather is deeply engaged in the community, serving on the board of career source, Suncoast United Way Suncoast and the Education Foundation of Sarasota County. She is also active in several local advisory councils, including those for the USF Muma College of Business and the 26th West Entrepreneurship Center. Heather holds an MBA from Webster University and a business administration degree from the University of Iowa. Outside of her professional duties, she enjoys reading, boating, traveling and spending time with her family, but Heather, it’s great to have you back on chamber chat podcast. Welcome and congratulations for being selected. For those who may be familiar, they were chamber the year finalists in 2024 so this is two years in a row being selected as a finalist. So huge congratulations to you and your team. But wanted to give you a chance to say hello and to share something interesting about yourself so everyone listening can get to know you a little better.
Heather Kasten 2:42
Yeah, well, Brandon, thank you so much. It’s we’re so grateful to you for hosting this podcast, which is so informative. I really enjoy listening, and we are truly excited. Our team and board of directors are over the moon about us being a finalist again for ACCE, the Metro Chamber division this year. So we’re excited to go to Philly. We’ve got a good, good sized group of us traveling out there to attend the conference and the convention, and hopefully you’re going to bring something, bring that big trophy home. We’ll see that.
Brandon Burton 3:19
Yeah, yeah, there’s some. There’s something to be said about coming in numbers to the conference. I remember a few years ago in the Conway, Arkansas chamber one, and they had, like, I want to say, like, two full tables full, just packed full of people from Conway. And it was, it was pretty cool. So I’m glad you’re bringing a great representation. That’s awesome.
Heather Kasten 3:41
Yeah. And you know, as far as something unique about me, I feel like I’m, you know, a cat with nine lives in that I really have worked in many different industries, from theme parks, which we talked about last year, some of the funny duties work as a regional sales manager for six likes theme parks, and then in the pharmaceutical realm, through Lily and women’s health and the neuroscience division, and then landing in chamber work. And have been doing this, this work, for about 16 years now. And absolutely love it. Love just being able to serve and support the businesses in our community, which, let’s face it, they’re the engine that power any local economy, or the the local businesses,
Brandon Burton 4:26
absolutely. Well, give us some perspective with the greater Sarasota chamber. You mentioned being more regional, but give us an idea of size, staff, scope of work. You guys are involved with budget. That’ll kind of set the stage as we get into the programs that we talk about today.
Heather Kasten 4:43
Sure, we are 104 year old organization here in Sarasota, Florida. We work with a little over 1500 regional businesses throughout Sarasota and Manatee counties that represent. About 60,000 employees throughout the region. Our team here, I always like to say we’re a small but mighty team of 15 individuals who are just a committed, dedicated, passionate group of people who show up here every day working to support our local businesses. We have a very active Foundation, as well as as the chamber work that we do, and I know we’re going to get into some of those programs later. Those programs are truly funded through our foundation, very
Brandon Burton 5:35
cool. So I’m hopefully, as we go through the conversation today, we can pull more on the foundation. And I know there’s a lot of chambers out there that are trying to learn more about foundations, if they don’t already have one, seeing how they can deploy a foundation, how it can really be beneficial in their community. And so hopefully your experience will will be able to tap into that as we dive in today. So with these chamber of the year finalist episodes. I love to spend the majority of the time talking about the two programs that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. So when we get back from our quick break, we’ll dive into those programs and learn more about what it is you guys submitted on your application this year.
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Brandon Burton 9:02
All right, Heather, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re diving into the two programs from your chamber of the year application. I understand one of the programs is around career and workforce development. Do you like to tell us what that is and dive into what the I always like to know what the origins are and how it’s evolved to what it is today.
Heather Kasten 9:23
Yeah. So the exciting thing Career Edge is our workforce and talent initiative that has been around for coming up on 14 years. And this was really formed 14 years ago to address some, some tremendous gaps in our workforce, our local workforce. I always like to say career, just like a three legged stool. It takes funders to be able to fund the work that we do. It takes educational partners and providers to train and then it takes the participant, the individual, who is actually willing to go through the program and come out the other end. End the what we submitted this year for ACCE was just the work and the results of Career Edge. Every year we have a third party evaluator come in and really do a deep dive into, you know, the wage increases that individuals experienced. They validate all of the data that we that we provide. And so it’s not the Sarasota chamber beating our chests saying, Oh, look at the work we’ve done. This is, again, an independent evaluator looking at this work. Last year, we deployed over $330,000 in workforce grants and training and upskilling grants, and we train just shy of 500 local individuals. So, you know the So, what of that is you, if you think of someone working a job that really doesn’t have a career pathway, a minimum wage job, it could be at a fast food restaurant, and they, we put them through one of our trainings, which is in five industry segments. So the trades, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, transportation and logistics, automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, those are all the the industry segments that we serve. So think about someone working a fast food job. We fully fund putting them through the CNA training. They get their certification, and then we place them with a health care member of our chamber. So it’s a win for these employers too, because as a member of the Sarasota chamber, they’re getting first dibs at this talent. As far as the individual, you think about just the change in the trajectory of their income earning potential over the course of their lifetime, and the the economic impact, both to to their own family and to the community as a whole. It really does put them on a pathway, whether it be it healthcare or think of an electrician that has many different certifications and levels. Same thing with plumbing and HVAC, it really does provide a career pathway for these folks to make some really good money and and, you know, be able to live a wonderful life here in Sarasota.
Brandon Burton 12:16
Yeah, so I like how you talked about the three parts that go into a program like this, between the funding, the educational partners, or who’s going to teach what we’re trying to preach here, and then the participants. So could you speak to a little bit about how you pulled like, how did you gather the participants? How did you reach out to them? How did you recruit those who would be the educational partners and talk about the funding for it as
Heather Kasten 12:41
well, sure. And you know, the exciting part, and the Chamber’s role is really kind of the unifier and the convener of those three pieces, but for the chamber, you know that that convening would not be happening, and so we, we play such a key role in that. But let’s start with the funding, we go out every year and sing for our supper. We work with many local foundations, some national foundations, some bank foundations to apply for these grants, and that’s the money that we have to work with each year we’ve been really fortunate. We have two local foundations that absolutely believe in the impact. They’ve seen it directly in this community, and they are substantial funders to the program. The participants through our chamber, you know, we work with, we probably have 200 nonprofits that are members of our chamber, where, when we’re putting up one of these. We call them a fast track program, where in like eight to 12 weeks, someone can get trained. When we are about ready to launch a fast track for instance, we have one coming up in automotive, electrical, and we put that out to our nonprofit partners. We have used the press to, you know, put out press releases and and social media posts. We partner with our faith based organizations. We we get the word out pretty well, and then these participants log on to our website, they fill out an application, and then they’re vetted. And then, you know, we take a class, usually of about 15 individuals to put them through this training and the chamber we play a pivotal role in that we really do Shepherd these folks through the program. These are individuals that have, they have more things on their plate than than others. And, you know, car breaks down, childcare issues, things like that, and we, we really are instrumental in in helping them to get to class and to have child care so that they can participate in the program.
Brandon Burton 14:53
That’s awesome. So for the those that are participating, sounds like there’s an application for. Process you selected in this example, 15 for the the automotive certification. Is there any fee or anything for those participants, or is it fully funded through the foundation and the grants? Or how does that structured?
Heather Kasten 15:13
It is fully funded so they, you know, they’re they do have some skin in the game in that there are some fees. For instance, in healthcare, there’s some vaccinations and things that they have to get on their own. But for the most part, you know, 98% of this training is fully funded, and so we do it. That is a big job, is to really bet the people who are serious this can’t be, you know, Grandma Jones wanting her grandson to go through this program, you know, we we have to make sure that, you know, that these participants are committed. We have to be a good steward of this money that we’ve been granted.
Brandon Burton 15:53
Yeah, so you mentioned that having that third party evaluation and seeing the the wage increases. Can you share maybe just a couple success stories you’ve seen out of that third party evaluation.
Heather Kasten 16:05
Absolutely, you know, on average, last last year, we saw the average wage increase of folks coming through the program was over $9 an hour. And you start doing the math on that, you know, times eight hours a day. You know, just to make it round numbers, that’s $100 more a day that they’re making. You think of, you know, 2020, working days in a month. That’s 2000 more dollars. You just start doing the math, and it is absolutely exponential, the money that someone is earning because of these programs. And again, this is, you know, for a lot of people, this is their first generation of being trained. And when we host these graduations, Brandon, it’s, it’s just heartwarming. Their whole family comes. They might as well be graduating, you know, from an Ivy League school. It’s that meaningful for their family. That
Brandon Burton 17:03
is really cool. I love hearing that. I love hearing the life changing impact that programs like this can make. So programs like this, like Career Edge, obviously help employers in the community find that talent where they’re able to continue performing their you know, their mission as a business, whatever it may be, but that’s only one aspect of it. I know in certain communities, housing can be an issue too, where you may have people that want to work there, but they live too far away, that it doesn’t justify, you know, the commute coming in, but housing is makes it difficult to attract that talent as well. So let’s shift gears into your second program that you guys submitted on your application around affordable housing and how that plays into this big picture.
Heather Kasten 17:52
Yeah, you know, like many communities, Brandon throughout the United States, our community is no different. Starting back, you know, when COVID we had 1000 people a day moving to the state of Florida. It has softened a little bit to, you know, around 700 people a day. But when you have that big of an influx of people, it just the the laws of supply and demand. It made it really hard. People were moving to the state, you know, cashing out in California, you know, one bedroom house for a million dollars, coming to Florida, paying cash and really pricing out all of our young professionals. And you know what I call our community heroes, the teachers, the firefighters, the policemen not being able to to find affordable housing here in our community. And so in 2022 our chairman of the board, you know, we really, he really had made it, you know, laid down the gauntlet that we are going to take a very proactive approach to affordable housing. And what we did was we hosted our first affordable housing Summit, and that would have been back in 2023 we partnered with our largest employer, Sarasota Memorial Hospital. We had over 200 business leaders attend. And really that summit was really focused on drilling down on the needs. This is not we’re not talking about folks who are on federal aid. These are working individuals, and so that was from that summit we took, okay, here we know we have a problem. It’s now the business community’s problem. So now what are we going to do about it? The Chamber went about we really wanted to drill down to investigate, like, who are having these struggles, we surveyed our young professionals. We had over 300 responses to a survey, and the results were just really disheartening. We had numerous over 30% of our young professionals saying they were contemplating leaving the area because they weren’t able to find affordable housing. We had over. 40% driving 40 miles a day to come to work, and as you know, that clogs up our roads and causes transportation issues when people can’t live by where they work. So we went about putting together a second summit, again, hosted back at Sarasota Memorial, where we brought in some experts. We brought in someone from the Florida Housing Coalition to assess what are some best practices. We brought down someone from Pinellas County, Florida, who is probably about five to 10 years ahead of us in the proactive nature of of tackling affordable housing. We hosted a second summit, and then we also took a very intentional approach with our city government and fought very hard hundreds of hours into attending City Commission meetings to back some zoning text, amendments, change, changes that would allow for greater density those after Many, many, many, many hours of meetings. The City Commission did vote to allow for greater density. And what that means is that a developer on one acre of ground, instead of being limited to building five units, of which he needs to charge $5 million a unit, when you increase the density, you could have 100 units at 200,000 and so we’ve already seen over 202,000 units, just because we fought for those zoning text amendments of affordable units that’ll be coming online here in the next two to three years. They’re going through, you know, that permitting process, they’re starting to come out of the ground. So again, if not for the Sarasota chamber, would these zoning text amendments have have gotten over the goal line. We also
Brandon Burton 21:48
go ahead. Go ahead.
Heather Kasten 21:50
I didn’t wrap up with we also partnered with four local foundations who commissioned a study to look at what is our current need, like, how many units do we really need? You know, you can’t, if you’re not keeping score, you’re really not playing the game. And so we had this study commission to look at how many units do we currently need, and how many will we need in 10 years, so that we can start planning, you know, for that. And then also took a look at the type of units needed? Do we need studio apartments? Do we need one bedroom, two bedroom? Or these families that are struggling? And so we just got those findings back, we have a program coming up in two weeks where they’re going to really go through the findings very descriptively, so that policy makers and developers so that we know what we need here in the future.
Brandon Burton 22:44
Yeah. So I guess that was going to be my question as to the type of housing. I would assume, something like condos or, like you said, the studios or the, you know, one or two bedrooms would depending on what those needs are. But also those young professionals today that are having those needs, you know, in 10 years. I’m glad that that’s that vision is being extended out to, what is that going to what’s that need? How’s that going to shift? You know, in the next several years? I know one of the other obstacles cities is communities look at solutions like this is the NIMBYs in the in the community, right? Those that don’t want it in their backyard. Has there been land identified for the more high density housing, and has that been approved, and has there been pushback from the community? How do you guys address that and overcome that?
Heather Kasten 23:34
Yeah, well, it’s fascinating. Nobody that you talk to is against affordable housing, just not in their backyard. Yeah, just not in my backyard, right? And so the uniqueness of the zoning text changes that that we worked on is that they’re along our major corridors. So these are very well traveled, you know, you’re not going to build a million dollar house on, you know, next to a four lane highway. And so the city was able to identify ground along these major corridors, along major, you know, retail, mixed use projects and and the exciting thing too is now, as developers are going before our planning board and our City Commission to get their projects approved, many of them are coming with an affordable housing component, and so they might be building, you know, they still might be building, you know, $2 million units, but they’re coming and saying, Okay, well, 15 of these, we’re going to go, going to make affordable, and with that, then they can build more units, so that, that’s Where that density thing comes into play the density bonus. And so we we have seen that is working. We are seeing projects that are coming online with an affordable component. So they’re going to be mixed in with the $2 million units. They might not be as big as the $2 million units, but they’re going to be in the same building and no. Is really going to know, you know, are you the $2 million homeowner? Are you the, you know, $250,000
Brandon Burton 25:07
homeowner? Yeah, I like that. I like when it can be blended in there and and you can’t tell, right? There’s so many interesting dynamics when it comes to housing, when there it comes to, you could maybe argue income inequality in certain communities, and when you get the higher density next to others, it just creates a lot of dynamics, but that chamber is perfectly positioned to be able to help navigate through those dynamics. So sounds like you guys are making a great impact there, and a lot of good headway. Is there anything else on the affordable housing front that you want to touch on before we move on?
Heather Kasten 25:48
Just you know that, you know, we’re still fighting that fight. Of course, there are some market factors. The influx of people moving to Florida has slowed, and certainly the market has cooled a little bit, which that is good for supply and demand and brings us down. It brings the market to more of a steady state. You know, for two and three years, it was on a left to right upward curve of pricing and lack of availability that, you know, lack of things on the market. And so that has cooled a little bit too. So I think it’s all of those things working together that are going to, you know, really help position our community to be, you know, more affordable for especially those key workers, like we talked about,
Brandon Burton 26:34
yeah, I’m in Texas, so we’ve seen a lot of that same, you know, type of growth. A lot of people leaving places like California and coming to places where they can buy a home for cash, and it prices a lot of people out, and then you get the congestion with the, you know, the traffic. And so it’s a continual problem, but we don’t have as many of the nice beaches that Florida has. So I mean, that just really compounds your guys’s problem there. So, but Heather, I wanted to ask, on behalf of those listening who want to take their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them towards accomplishing that goal?
Heather Kasten 27:13
I would say one thing that we have done that has really made a difference is really being intentional about taking care of your team. And we have put together the last two years a we call IT staff engagement committee that meets once a month to plan various things for us to do. It can be things like visiting, getting a behind the scenes tour at the airport. It could be touring, you know, an attraction here locally, it could be just going out for a happy hour, being very intentional. And we’ve also made a pretty significant investment into what I call like a team coach, someone who is working with us as a team, helping us to work together. You know, chamber life. It’s, it’s awesome, it is super fun, but it’s also exhausting. It’s always one thing, you know, one event to the next. It is, you know, you’re constantly out there hustling for for members, and it’s a lot on an individual and a lot on a team. And so one of the best things that I feel like I’ve been able to bring to the table as CEO is for us, for me, to really support and and not just put my, you know, it’s more than just, you know, ordering pizza once a month kind of thing, just being very intentional with what we do with our team and our staff. And just for instance, we had a monster event, probably our biggest event of the year last week. It was our Sarasota business awards of 600 person lunch with 10,000 moving parts. And you know, going into this week, I just was like, You know what we’re I’m going to call close the office on Thursday too. So this week, the team is going to have a four day weekend. And I think you can never invest in your staff. You the payback on that is tenfold.
Brandon Burton 29:12
Yeah, I love that. The whole idea of having a staff engagement committee, I think, is very intentional to make sure that their needs are being met, and making sure that burnout doesn’t kick in sooner than it should.
Heather Kasten 29:27
And also just the flexibility, you know, I will say that our chamber, I have someone who likes to get here at 5am every morning. Now he’s out earlier in the afternoon, and then I have people that come in at 830 and go till five. And so just the offering people like true flexibility in how they do their job, and that has also been, I think, really rewarding and really helped to keep people here and engaged. Yeah,
Brandon Burton 29:55
that’s great. I love that, that piece of advice, I like asking. Everyone we have on the show about the future of chambers, and how you see the future and purpose of chambers going forward.
Heather Kasten 30:08
Well, I absolutely believe in the work that we do. I do feel like the model has to constantly be evaluated and tweaked. And so, you know, the days of kind of just doing the rinse and repeat and the networking events. I just don’t know how relevant some of those things are. And I’m constantly challenging our team to look at how we’re doing things and what we’re doing, why we’re doing them. I think you know really going back to, how do you best serve a business? What does that look like? Because it looks different than it looked five years ago, that and looks different than 20 years ago, for sure. And so I think just really being up on the wheel as to what your business community needs, and then being able to provide that, and also looking at some of the things that maybe in the past have just been done, like, oh, that’s just part of your membership. You know, are there ways to monetize some of the work that, that that you’re doing? And in being able to put $1 value to that, and that’s good that, that’s what keeps me up at 3am is, you know, what does that look like? How do we continue to grow and and all of those things?
Brandon Burton 31:24
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Well, Heather, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, so that way listeners who may want to reach out and learn more about these programs or how you’re doing things at the Greater Sarasota chamber, what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you
Heather Kasten 31:41
sure. Uh, my email. Super easy. Just hkasten@sarasotachamber.com, that’s going to be the best way to get a hold of me. I’d encourage anyone to check out our website, which is just SarasotaChamber.com It lists all of the programs, all of the initiatives that we’re currently working on, but I’d love to hear from you, and would love to learn from you as well. That’s a great thing about chamber business, is that we can all share ideas and best practices and and, you know, all really encourage and help each other to grow and be better.
Brandon Burton 32:18
Yeah, we’ll get that in our show notes, so it’ll make it easy for people to find it and reach out to you. But it’s been great having you back on the podcast again. Big congratulations to you and your team for making those big impacts in your community. I wish you guys the best of luck in Philly, and we’ll see what happens.
Heather Kasten 32:38
All right, thanks so much. Brandon, I really, am truly honored to be on the podcast. Thanks for all you do.
Brandon Burton 32:45
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