Reconnect With Us

A Global Spring. This is the title of a new book being published later this month and authored Dr. Aziz, a New York University professor of International Relations. She has been dubbed a “a global thinker to watch.” According to the early publicity and releases of related essays, Dr. Aziz will take the reader on a journey out of the pandemic, beyond all of the on-going wars and strife, above the ear-piercing din of the markets, through the climate crisis and show us the global risks that we really need to pay attention to, sooner rather than later.

As soon as it comes available, A Global Spring, will be a must read. In the meantime, and as a spoiler alert, let me suggest to you that we all need to take time this spring to smell the lilacs. In other words, to slow down a little, step out of the constant spin cycle of news, and re-connect.

Reconnect with each other, to our communities, and to our natural world. Together, we need to shake off the fear and loathing that the pandemic has wrought. A good place to start would be refocusing on what brings us together, what we agree on, and what we can accomplish by working together. The dividers may have won a couple of battles, but they will never be able to claim victory. People are just too good to let that happen.

Our biennial survey of members has wrapped up and our 2023-2024 Strategic Plan is being drafted. Before I get into the details, let me sincerely thank the many Chamber members who put the thought into their responses and took the time to complete the survey. You literally have created the foundation on which things will get done in the Greater Susquehanna Valley.

As you can probably guess, workforce is the top concern in our valley. This has been a rising issue for the past decade and beginning just two years ago it became our top priority.

This year the workforce issue expanded beyond the standard concern of an inadequate number of qualified job candidates to now involve having no candidates at all, qualified or not. Clearly, this issue has become more complicated, stickier, if you will. Simply stated, we currently don’t have enough people to keep our economic engines operating.

The question: “Will my customers return?” was the next biggest treat to full recovery mentioned by survey respondents. We all know that the pandemic changed everything. This constant state of change is weighing heavily on the minds of Chamber members. Here again, we must work alongside each other and boost our Buy Local, Shop Small, Let’s Go Downtown efforts.

Broadband and high-speed internet kept their status of major worries. But, here again, this longer term issue has changed over time, and the survey responses indicate that while access has improved, capacity and compatibility gaps still need to be resolved.

2859 N. Susquehanna Trail Shamokin Dam, PA 17876 570-743-4100 / 800-410-2880

Hours: M-F 8:30am - 4:30pm gsvcc.org

It’s been said that Chambers of Commerce, such as ours, “do every day what most people think just happens.” It may not happen today, or even later this week; however, resolving the big concerns, gaps, issues, treats, and worries of our members and that which troubles the citizens of the Greater Susquehanna Valley are at the core of everything we do.

2023 Chair’s Circle Members

Aloysius Butler & Clark

BB&T now Truist

BJE Poultry

Bowen Agency Realtors

Coldwell Banker Penn One Real Estate

Contrast

Evangelical Community Hospital

First National Bank

Fulton Bank

GDK Development Geisinger

Hummel Station i3 Verticals

Jersey Shore State Bank

Kreamer Feed

M&T Bank

Member Choice Financial Credit Union

Mifflinburg Bank & Trust Company

National Beef

North Shore Railroad Company

Nottingham Village Senior Living Community

Penn State World Campus

PPL Electric Utilities

Purdy Insurance Agency

Service

1st Federal Credit Union

Service Electric Cablevision, Inc.

Stahl Sheaffer Engineering

SUN Area Technical Institute

Sunbury Broadcasting Corporation

Susquehanna University

The Daily Item

The Northumberland National Bank

UGI Utilities, Inc.

UPMC

Weis Markets

Board Of Directors

CHAIR

Aimee Buehner, Bowen Agency

VICE CHAIRMAN

Jeff Reber, Union County Commissioner

IMMEDIATE PAST CHAIR

Art Thomas, Meck-Tech Inc

TREASURER/DIRECTOR

Greg Zeh, Weis Markets

SECRETARY

Bob Garrett, GSVCC

Region Vice Presidents

Greg Zeh, Weis Markets

Leslie Temple, Fulton Bank

Phil DeRose, UPMC

Gene Welsh III, GDK Development

Sam Haulman, Service Electric Cablevision

Malcolm Derk, Susquehanna University

Directors

Fred Scheller, The Daily Item

John Kurelja, CSIU

Beau Hoffman, AxRunkle, P.C.

Rachel Smith, Evangelical Com Hospital

Steve Stumbris, Bucknell SBDC

Chad Evans, Stone State Entertainment

Sara Snyder, Shared Support

Melissa Day, LCCC

Roger van Baaren, Geisinger Health Plan

Ryan McNally, YMCA of GSV