Winter Park Chamber president has big dreams

When Betsy Gardner Eckbert was telling the crowd at the last Good Morning Winter Park what she was going to do for the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce a few Thursdays ago, the United Arab Emirates came up. Those in the audience still waiting for the coffee to kick in may have wondered if they walked into the wrong room by mistake.

Less than two weeks after her first day, she had already turned ambitious with her new job.

Global business was the former focus of the energetic businesswoman who’s now bringing a local chamber up to speed with rapid changes in the world economy and how customers are reached. How to focus her business knowledge and channel it down Park Avenue presents a unique set of challenges for the former principal of a London-based multinational company.

It all starts with the Chamber reaching out in new ways, she said, leveraging social media to find new members and getting businesses started inside the Chamber building itself.

“We’re building something special here,” she said. “We’re going to innovate in tiny Winter Park.”

It’s a new Chamber under the new president’s watch, and with a new focus that goes from event-heavy to delivering more value for members. That doesn’t mean Winter Park’s favorite festivals are going anywhere, but you can expect some updates, and maybe a different focus.

“It makes you look at the Art Fest in a whole new way,” Chamber Senior Communications Director Erika Spence said. Last year’s Autumn Art Festival was cancelled due to Hurricane Matthew. Given the time to revamp it, it could become something new. No specifics yet, Gardner Eckbert said, but they’re coming.

For all the talk of newness, Gardner Eckbert has deep roots in Winter Park. If her name sounds familiar that could be because her mother, Lydia Gardner, is the namesake of the Chamber’s Citizen of the Year award.

When the elder Gardner started her new job as clerk of Orange County Courts in 2000, she pushed for new online record keeping and search systems that modernized the court system while battling state spending cutbacks. Her office won the state’s Governor Sterling Award in 2008.

“My mom’s playbook is in my top drawer,” Gardner Eckbert said, saying her mom knew how to motivate a staff to make change happen.

Managing change is a big theme for the new president, modernizing the way the Chamber works with the hope of bringing in some future entrepreneurs with her.

On Jan. 13, as she stood among a sea of current and potential chamber members who still remember the pet rock, she said, “I want to see people in here whose ages start with a two.”

She’s going after “the maker generation,” investing in a partnership with the Winter Park Public Library, which has a “makerspace” including a 3D printer and video production equipment for nascent entrepreneurs.

“We’re all about change here,” Library Executive Director Shawn Shaffer said. “A stronger partnership with an energetic chamber is something we look forward to.”

That partnership includes talk of a “maker faire” showcasing young entrepreneurs’ ideas and products that might jump start even more innovation.

“We’re really excited to see what she does,” Shaffer said.

Innovation is a big priority for Winter Park’s newly returned native daughter, who spent the last three years in London establishing her clothing and swimwear startup. That company eventually spread to 14 countries, she said, including the UAE, under her leadership.

In that time, and her sales and marketing career before it, she pushed herself to be proficient with making connections. She said she realizes that people can make connections on their own now, compared to the need to go through a chamber 30 years ago.

“You had to dance with the chamber before; now you choose to,” she said.

Now she wants to make the Chamber be the connection source that can launch a business from the local level outward.

“We want to start on the micro-entrepreneurial level,” she said. “We want to connect the makers with people who want to spend money.”

That includes a transformation beyond a few well-placed handshakes. Inside the lower deck of the ever-churning ship at 151 W. Lyman Ave., in a side room visitors often pass by en route to events in the back, she sees a co-working space where businesses are born and grow. At the very least, she hopes it brings in new faces.

“That brings people into the building who haven’t been,” she said.

A few days after Good Morning Winter Park, inside Gardner Eckbert’s Lyman Avenue office on another hot January afternoon, her new social media guru, daughter Lucy, extends her hand. She’s 13 years old.

“She can do this in her sleep,” Gardner Eckbert said, only half-joking.

“I want 18,000 Instagram followers as soon as I can get them,” she said a few minutes later.

For the Chamber’s new president, soon doesn’t seem soon enough. But her eyes are already well off on the horizon.

“In the year 2020, I want to win the [Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives] Chamber of the Year award, and I want people to find out in a way we’ve never reached them before.”