President's Viewpoint

Hopefully as you read this your webbed feet will be disappearing and the two-by-two animal line that formed outside my office will have dispersed. Despite the very wet surroundings, the CCC has been moving right along.

Starting with our annual Awards Dinner on June 3—what a night! Many thanks to the fantastic cast of characters including our honorees and award winners. Each year I am impressed and proud of the accomplishments that our businesses achieve. When I stand on the stage and survey the crowd, I see such a diverse and magnanimous group. As I said that night, you should all celebrate what you do for your organizations and this community. Cambridge is very fortunate to house such success stories.
Our evening would not have been complete if not for two very important groups of people. First our event sponsors—our lead sponsor Amgen and our contributing sponsors Cambridge Trust Company and Microsoft. All three organizations are such great corporate citizens and major supporters of this community. Thank you.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, our dinner attendees. We cannot forget all of you who make this evening what it is. You create the unbelievable energy in the room, take part in the program and do so much to support each other. Your impact is felt in this city and within this chamber. We couldn’t do it without you.

On a personal note, I was humbled by the presentation from the Massachusetts Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives (MACCE), recognizing my three years as president. MACCE is an outstanding organization and provides so much to the 106 chambers of commerce it governs. I was so surprised that night, I feel I didn’t appropriately thank my staff for supporting my time away from the office and the amount of non-Cambridge work I took on. To my board, I thank them for their encouragement and support during my time at the MACCE helm.

As we “floated” through June into July, one bright spot was the completion of our new building sign. For those of you that hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing our over-thirty-year-old sign, it was being held up by two bricks and a garden gnome at the time of demolition. It wasn’t pretty and basically fell apart in the installers hands. Next time you drive by or stop in, check out our new sign.

As we move through the summer, we will provide some great networking opportunities. Our fall agenda will also be packed, but let’s not dwell on that right now. Enjoy the summer, take some much-deserved time off and come back relaxed and energized. I look forward to seeing you soon.


Connections is the newsletter of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce. The CCC reserves the right to edit submitted materials and is solely responsible for editorial content. Please address press releases and letters to Lisa S. Cohen.
Publisher:
Kelly Thompson Clark
Managing Editor & Ad Contact:
Lisa S. Cohen
Published by the
Cambridge Chamber of Commerce
859 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 876-4100
www.cambridgechamber.org

Chamber Staff
Kelly Thompson Clark
President & CEO
Lisa S. Cohen
Director of Communications
Caryn Saitz
Director of Community Relations
Terrence F. Smith
Director of Government Affairs
Tom Vance
Manager of Business Development
Daisy Bowler
Office Manager

Officers of the Board of Directors
Chair
Michael O’Connell
Mount Auburn Hospital
Vice Chair
William Sage, Sage Hotel Corporation
Treasurer
Arthur Spears
East Cambridge Savings Bank
Clerk
Sarah Gallop, MIT

Members of the Board of Directors
Rick Appleton, Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company
Joseph Barrell, Acorn Realty
Carl F. Barron, CARU Associates
Robyn Bell, Cambridge Office for Tourism
Brian Burke, Microsoft
Dennis Carlone, Carlone & Associates
Sheldon Cohen, Community Mapping
John DiGiovanni, Trinity Property Management
Andrea Gabrielle, Neptune Web, Inc.
Penny Garver, Sovereign Bank
Kathleen Granchelli, Draper Laboratory
Mary Ann Jarvis, Harvard University
Sandra Lagrega, WT Phelan Insurance
Jeffrey Lockwood, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research
Joyce Mathon Trotman, Hildebrand Family Self-Help Center
Norman McIver, Cambridge Trust Co.
Neal Mizner
Metropolitan Moving & Storage Corp.
Amy Reilly, Biogen Idec
Rachael Solem
Harding House at Harvard
Ann Stanesa, Genzyme Corporation
Robert M. Wilson
Cambridge Savings Bank
William Zamparelli, NSTAR
James C. Hawkins, Director Emeritus