Julie Snyder of Kyle Chamber to serve
KYLE — Almost every community has a chamber of commerce and the role it plays in growing and supporting the local business community is vital.
The Kyle Area Chamber of Commerce’s very own Julie Snyder is continuing this mission on a bigger scale. Snyder, who has been in the chamber of commerce industry for 30 years and has served as the chief executive officer of the Kyle Chamber for a decade, was recently elected to serve as the vice chair of governmental relations for the Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives (TCCE) Board’s 2023 fiscal year. She will also continue with another three-year term on its board of directors.
TCCE consists of members from hundreds of chambers of commerce across Texas to provide chambers with educational programming to help their members and businesses thrive, which Snyder will do in this new role.
“We learn from each other; what they do, what might work for our community,” Snyder explained. “We want to make sure we’re [Kyle Chamber] continuing to evolve and create relevant programs and resources by providing tools to help businesses grow and be sustainable.”
“My job as vice chair is to develop educational programming for chambers of commerce to learn the importance of governmental relationships. … Developing educational programs to learn the good, the bad and the ugly helps chambers of commerce provide for their members,” she continued. “One of the main things that a chamber of commerce does is advocate on behalf of the business community. If there’s an issue that might impact a business, our job is to learn from them. We can reach out to the city council and provide them with information to help them make an education decision.”
The Kyle Chamber, Synder said, has been “pretty good” at staying involved like running political forums and supporting local elected officials and propositions.
“I was a little surprised they [TCCE] asked me to do this, because there are other larger chambers that may be more active in governmental affairs,” Snyder said. “But we’ve done a lot in Kyle over the last few years. We didn’t even have a government affairs committee when I started. Our relationship with the council has been effective and they [TCCE] noticed that. I can kind of speak on behalf of smaller communities and chambers.”
While Snyder will continue to help Kyle businesses thrive as chief executive officer, her role as vice chair with TCCE will allow her to share her expertise with chambers of commerce across the state.
“It’s amazing how much we learn from each other. When I first went to a chamber of commerce conference, I was hooked because chambers can share their successes and failures. We’re not competing against each other because we’re in different communities,” Snyder said. “I’m looking forward to working with other chambers, learning what works well for them and developing programming that can benefit all sizes of chambers.”
