Click here for Part I, Part II & Part III

Connecting local businesses with the Frederick County community for mutual benefit, advocacy, and growth

Elizabeth Cromwell is the president and CEO of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce. Since 1912, the Chamber has acted as liaison between the Frederick County community and the region’s businesses. It was the first chartered Chamber of Commerce in the United States and, over a hundred years later, continues to be a vital contributor to Frederick County’s evolving economic climate. The Chamber’s mission is to advocate for local businesses and create public–private connections that improve both sectors’ economic welfare. Elizabeth has served as Chamber president and CEO since July 2014. Prior to her current position, she served as Corporate and Community Partnerships Director for the Frederick County Public Libraries for 12 years.

EDWIN WARFIELD: How would you characterize the Chamber’s relationship with other local public entities?

ELIZABETH CROMWELL: The relationship between the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce and our local, state, and federal legislators is a fairly close connection. We have ongoing dialogue between our elected officials. We often will ask our members for their opinions on certain issues—that’s come up fairly recently—and we usually work through our Public Policy Committee, which is a committee of the Chamber, and we make recommendations to our elected officials regarding pending legislation or things that we’d like to have come up.

We work very closely with both the city and the County Office of Economic Development. We believe we have a lot of parallel goals as far as attracting business and retaining business in Frederick. As far as the Arts Council goes, we do work with a number of arts and cultural entities, because one of the things that we hear most from our larger employers is that employee retention is really important and attracting people to come to Frederick is challenging. We have some world-class labs that are here in Frederick County, and when you’re talking about competition between labs in Paris and London and Frederick, it can be a challenge to get people to come here to look at the town. There are some companies here in Frederick that have stepped up in big way to enhance the quality of the cultural life here, in an effort to make Frederick an even more warm and inviting place to come.

You mentioned that one of your major initiatives is rebranding Frederick. What is that going to take?

One area of concern I have as far as the branding of Frederick County is the misinformation that’s out there. To give you an example of that, the head of our Public Policy Committee was in a meeting not too long ago in Baltimore, and a gentleman from the state got up—and they were talking about a big project coming forward, and everyone in the state wants this project in their county—the gentleman from the state said, “Well, we know we can take Frederick County out of the running. Let’s take them off the table because there’s a water shortage in Frederick County and there’s a building moratorium so they’re ineligible for this project.” The head of our Public Policy Committee raised his hand and said, “That ended over 10 years ago. That has not been the case for more than a decade.”

When I hear comments like that my much bigger concern is what aren’t we hearing? What is the perception out there? So, I don’t think it’s really so much competition among all of the other counties as it is let’s just make it clear that there’s world class work going on here. We have a relatively cheap cost of living here, compared to other parts of the state. We have a high school graduation rate here of 94%, which is amazing. Those are the kinds of re-branding, that kind of information I want to get out there. We are also, though, taking a more regional approach to this, and I’ve created an alliance with the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce and also the Gaithersburg–Germantown Chamber of Commerce. We’re really looking at the I-270 corridor as an opportunity for all of us not to compete with each other, but to try to work together to maximize the benefit there.

How do you balance your commitment to your members with the public objectives of the Chamber?

A. There’s no question that there’s sort of a dual role that we serve. One role that we serve is being the best investment we can be for our members. A lot of times, that includes, you know, the guy that sells hearing aids at the shopping mall or the shoe store. I never want to lose sight of the fact that their goals are immediate. We want to definitely show that being a member of the Chamber has rewards for them, but we also recognize that, being such a large and active Chamber, we have a lot of power. The question is how do we channel that in a way that improves the business landscape for all of Frederick County? So, we have those two parallel projects happening at the same time. I think some people are more aware of the first group and how—yes—we want to make sure that we have an energy co-op that, if you’re a member, you can have cheaper energy bills because you join—things like that. We have a lot of those kinds of benefits. It’s this other piece where I think there’s so much opportunity, and I try to be as apolitical as possible, because I think there are some dangers there. I think, from the conversations I’ve had, there are enough areas of common interest at least as far as goals go. How you get to those goals is going to be tricky, but that’s an area that I really want to work on and grow.

Connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn

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