Dear Fellow Chamber Members,
Our Chamber’s mission grew stronger in 2022 as we delivered on the promise to advance positive business growth and multiply community partnerships to promote a superior quality of life for all who reside in Forsyth County. We lived out our brand as we intentionally responded to our business community’s needs, collaborated with our partners to develop new programming and initiatives for our community and drove the quest for infrastructure solutions to enhance Forsyth County’s quality of life.
Building upon lessons learned, your Chamber is hard at work ensuring that our community continues to thrive by creating innovative programming and intentional initiatives to drive economic development, visitor investments and workforce development.
This year, Forward Forsyth will work with all economic development stakeholders in facilitating the creation of a new strategic economic development plan to propel Forsyth County into the future.
The Chamber’s tourism development entity, Discover FoCo, has growth plans on the horizon including new hotels, the launch of Forsyth’s Film Commission which will answer the requests of entities like Marvel, Disney and Netflix, and an enhanced celebration of National Tourism and Travel Week.
In 2022, the Chamber hired its first Director of Workforce Development and with these dedicated efforts, the FoCo Works initiative collaborated with Forsyth County Schools to develop the Launch career-readiness training program. The Chamber also initiated the Workforce Collaborative, a monthly meeting of community partners dedicated to enhancing Forsyth County’s talent pipeline. I know FoCo Works will only gain more momentum this year, ensuring our community’s talent pool remains at the top of the region.
In closing, I am grateful for the opportunity to serve as Chair of the Board of the Chamber. In 2022, we saw that the Chamber is our community’s venue to channel the incredible collective resources of great businesspeople to find new solutions and create economic opportunity. To achieve the Chamber’s goals, we require support from many sources, but it all begins with you. To that end, I extend my sincere gratitude for your commitment to the Chamber of Commerce, Cumming and Forsyth County and look forward to our continued collaboration in 2023.
Sincerely,
Andrew Walker
Chair
Forsyth County Chamber
