Committed to growing Cranbrook

For almost 30 years, the Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce has been headed up by Karin Penner

Karin Penner loves her job as manager of the Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce; she has been in that position for 29 years. — Marie Milner photo

Way back in the early days of the Cranbrook Youth Ambassadors Program, of which she is a founding member, Karin Penner became well acquainted with members of Cranbrook’s chamber of commerce.

“When the lady who was then manager of the chamber left the position, I decided to apply for the job,” Penner said. “Little did I know what that would lead to!”

Twenty-nine years later, Penner is still the manager of the Cranbrook and District Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s a career that I absolutely love,” Penner said. “The chamber had fewer than 100 members when we started. At the first meeting after I became manager, there were five people in attendance. Now our membership roster is at nearly 500 businesses and our meetings are very well attended.”

There have been many milestone achievements in Penner’s career. The first significant one occurred within the first few years of her tenure—Cranbrook was awarded the contract to host the 1986 BC Summer Games. A recent noteworthy honour was announced two years ago: at the BC Chamber’s 2010 annual general meeting, Cranbrook was named the province’s most outstanding chamber.

She’s a fan

Penner has high praise for Cranbrook’s business population—chamber members and non-members—for their unstinting support of community events, groups and organizations.

“The support of the business community is one of the reasons I love my job and I love this community,” she said. “Without the support of the business community, there would be lots of projects that just wouldn’t happen. Without sponsorship, there would be a lot of sports teams, for example, that would be unable to have uniforms, or to travel, or to compete in any significant way.”

Penner can’t say enough good things about the local Junior Chamber International (JCI) for the good it does in the community, especially for the youth who are our next generation of business leaders and voters.

“These young JCI leaders have energy, ideas and smarts," she said. "The Leadercast (event) that they put on in the spring was excellent, and I’ll be banging the drums to encourage everyone to go to the next one.”

Penner is grateful for the generosity of the core group of volunteers who support the chamber. She believes that it’s in the rich environment of personal relationships that the spirit of generosity and volunteerism will take root and flourish, and while she appreciates the time-saving convenience and long reach of social media, she has some concerns about it as well.

“These days, with everybody’s eyes directed downward to their devices, we may be losing our ability to meet people and communicate eyeball to eyeball,” she said.

The image we present

On a daily basis, people visit the chamber for a wide spectrum of information.

“The Internet may be taking part of the workload off us,” Penner said, “but there are still lots of people who want to come here and feel the pulse of the community for themselves. Anyone who is investing their money or thinking of moving here wants to see first-hand what they’re getting into. So they come into our office to get info about what to do, what to see, where to go.”

Penner paused to reflect for a moment: “You know how first impressions are really important? Well, in many cases this chamber presents people with their first impression of our community, and we aim to give a good one.”