Annual Meeting 2022 was a major success! With over 500 business and community leaders filling the Convention Center, we were thrilled to share the many accomplishments of the business community over the past year! We also welcomed a dynamic speaker from the Governor’s Cabinet, Secretary of Finance, Stephen E. Cummings.

From sharing the excitement of a new website launch to a year that was full of events, the Annual Meeting highlighted all that was accomplished in 2022 and took a look forward at all that is to come in 2023! We were honored to be able to recognize outstanding leadership including our 2022 Board Chair, Chris Stone, and those incoming board members for 2023.

As always, we were incredibly honored to be able to present this year’s update on all that YOUR Chamber is doing for you and the business community! We proudly shared that each of 2022’s KPI’s were met, that we continue to maintain our distinguished 5 Star Accreditation Rating, our programs and services ranked in the top 1% nationally and that as always, we continue to be unapologetically pro-business out here working for all businesses to succeed!

Not only was it a banner year for the Hampton Roads Chamber, it was also a record year for our programs, partners and affiliates! We are excited to share that tHRive continues to be the premier young professionals program in the 757, that 45 new leaders graduated from LEAD757, that our affiliate partner, VOLUNTEER Hampton Roads, provided over 1 million dollars in value of volunteer services and that our Small Business Development Center is thriving under the new leadership of Jolie Spiers.

We have much to be proud of in 2022 and are looking forward to doing even more in 2023. At the Annual Meeting, we announced that we have been working with TechArk over the past 9 months to develop a brand new website. We know the recent launch of this new website will help us to continue to serve our members and the business community and are thrilled with the new look! We also shared our most recent Chamber story-telling video produced by Intellect Media that showcases who we are and what we do. In addition to these exciting updates for 2023, we shared with the business community how we will continue to work for them in making Hampton Roads the place to live, work, and play.

Annual Meeting 2022 was also full of surprises for some very deserving individuals. We honored Tom Marsden with the distinct honor of being our Volunteer of the Year and named Paula Hill as our Ambassador of the Year! Both Paula and Tom have provided countless hours to the business community and this was just a small token of our immense appreciation for them.

We also took this opportunity to thank our 2022 Board Chair, Chris Stone for all that he has done for the Chamber and our entire community. Chris selflessly gave so much of his time this past year to help us meet and exceed all of our goals! He was instrumental in our success this past year and we cannot thank Chris enough for all he has done for us. Chris is passing the gavel over to Jim Bibbs for 2023 and we are very much looking forward to another wonderful year of success under Jim’s leadership as Board Chair.

We also want to thank all of our outgoing board members for their service and welcome those incoming to the board. We continue to have such wonderful leaders serve on our boards and appreciate these individuals for giving their time, talents and resources to us.

Finally, it would not be an Annual Meeting without having a distinguished Keynote Speaker and we most certainly had one in our Secretary of Finance, Stephen E. Cummings. Secretary Cummings did an outstanding job sharing with our business community about all that Governor Youngkin and his cabinet are doing to propel the Commonwealth. Sharing that, “Our partnership is critical in making Virginia the place to live, work and raise a family,” Secretary Cummings spoke on the many wins that our state has had while also touching on the challenges that we face and what the Governor is doing to combat these. He reflected on their being many great things about the Commonwealth and shared how Hampton Roads is playing a major role in many of the successes. We thank Secretary Cummings for informing our business community on the state of the commonwealth as our keynote speaker.

In conclusion, we are proud to say that the Hampton Roads Chamber means business and that business is booming in Hampton Roads! We thank everyone for joining us for this year’s Annual Meeting and look forward to working with each and every single one of you in 2023!

Thank you to our Annual Meeting sponsors:

Presenting Sponsor: Old Point National Bank
Host Sponsor: Virginia Beach Convention Center
Member Spotlight Sponsors: Chesapeake Regional Healthcare and Bayport Credit Union
Gold Sponsors: Chartway and Sentara Healthcare/Optima Health
Silver Sponsors: Dominion Energy, Langley and the Hampton Roads Workforce Council
Bronze Sponsors: Bank of America, Verizon, Truist and Bon Secours
Photos by: Stellar Exposures