West Durant Merchants Association held a reception last week at Stuteville Chevrolet for Kara Byrd, who is the new CEO of the Durant Area Chamber of Commerce.
Byrd became chamber CEO on Jan. 13 after the retirement of longtime director Janet Reed.
“I am so deeply honored and humbled to have been chosen to now be the new CEO of the Durant Area Chamber of Commerce,” Byrd said. “I love this community and I think that our people are the biggest assets in our entire community as you can see tonight.”
She said she is very grateful and thanked the West Durant Merchants for hosting the reception.
“This truly is a representation of us bridging the gap and creating partnerships that make our community flourish as we work together,” Byrd said. “We truly are more whenever we are brought together and we all have something that we’re working on that maybe is a piece from somebody else. So, the collaborative unity of who we are as a community is really shown here today as you can tell from Durant Main Street, West Durant Merchants, the City of Durant and the chamber of commerce. We are incredibly honored to be partners, to work together to move this community forth.”
Byrd introduced Chloe Hughes, who is the new director of membership and marketing for the chamber.
“She will play a very key vital role in making sure that our community is well represented in all of the things that we’re doing,” Byrd said.
Maddison Williams is the director of West Durant Merchants Association said it is a relatively new organization.
“It’s been here about two years serving our city and the merchants of westside and we decided to host a welcome event for Kara Byrd, who’s the new CEO of the chamber of commerce to show the partnership between the two organizations and celebrate the membership of the chamber to West Durant and West Durant to the chamber, and how we can all work together,” Williams said. “We’re really excited about the opportunities that are happening in our city to move Durant forward and we’re excited to be here on the westside representing our group.”
