A welcome reception for Kara Byrd, who is the new CEO of the Durant Area Chamber of Commerce, was held Monday evening at the chamber office.
Many stopped by to congratulate Byrd, who assumed duties Jan. 13 following the retirement of director Janet Reed.
Byrd is excited about this opportunity.
“So, the first few weeks were fast and furious, trying to get as much wisdom and knowledge as I could from Janet who was here for 19 years,” Byrd said. “I had my first week, last week, without her and Jen (chamber Executive Assistant Jennifer Brewer) and I have definitely found a rhythm. One of the things that I’m really looking forward to is finding out how we can serve our members better and more efficiently, and I’m just really excited about what’s ahead of us for the chamber of commerce.”
Byrd has been busy looking for ideas to improve the chamber and its services to the members.
“One of the things I’m doing right now is assessing all of the programs that we have in place,” she said. “I’ve reached out to a couple of different chambers of commerce throughout the state that have done really great with their best practices to learn how we can better serve our members.” One thing Byrd is planning is having a member portal on the chamber’s website so members can add their events that will auto populate to a calendar and an email newsletter.
“One of the things that I’ll actually being doing this week is I’m going to the capitol to start learning about different grants that are available for economic development, business development and tourism,” Byrd said. “I’m so excited to go and get those done as well and just see what we can do to grow our community in the right way.”
Byrd said she is loving the job.
“It definitely is exactly where my heart and my passion flows from,” she said.
Previously, Byrd was a Spend Life Wisely Ambassador at First United Bank and prior to that, the director of Imagine Durant.
“I’m very grateful for the foundation I had with Imagine Durant,” Byrd said. “It allowed me to have so many great connections within our community and our stakeholders to be able to pull us all together and go in one direction. But something else that’s really neat, is my dad worked for the department of commerce for the state for 20 years when he was a southeast field rep.”
Byrd’s father was Glenn Glass, who passed away in December.
“So, not only do I have the information from Imagine Durant, but I have the legacy and the learnings of what he did for 20 years for the state at the department of commerce level,” Byrd said. “He ended up bringing over $1.13 billion in economic development and over 3,000 jobs to the southeast part of the state in his tenure, and so I’m really grateful for that legacy that he has left me with and some of the connections that will help hopefully advance southeast Oklahoma and Durant in the direction that we need to go.”
Byrd expressed gratitude for the opportunity to be the chamber’s chief executive officer.
“I’m grateful to have been selected,” she said. “It’s a great day to be in Durant and Durant’s open for business.”
