Betsy Mense talks about role as new Chamber CEO
New Joplin Chamber of Commerce CEO Betsy Mense stopped by the Morning NewsWatch to discuss her new role.
Mense has spent most of her career working in a staffing firm that oversaw Western Missouri, Kansas and Northeast Oklahoma working mostly with manufacturing plants. She has also spent seven years on the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors as well as serving on the CASA Board of Directors for seven years. Most recently, she was the Executive Director of the Children’s Center of Southwest Missouri.
“I think all the roles led me to this position,” Mense told Newstalk KZRG. “I absolutely love our community, I love Joplin, and have always been very involved and wanted to make our place a better place.”
As the new CEO of the Chamber, Mense said one of her main goals will be to help strengthen the business community by helping local entrepreneurs, major employers and new investors find resources, relationships, connections and visibility.
“One of the things that a lot of the business community leaders have let me know is they’re just wanting to be connected to resources,” Mense said. “Some of those resources we can connect them with. And some of them we can look at and see if we can make programs for that, one of them being leadership development. So, most of our members are actually small businesses and being so, they don’t have talent and development. They don’t have certain things within their businesses, but they still want to provide that to their employees. So, we’re looking at those things and what we can do to help move the needle for them.”
Mense noted the Joplin Business Expo is scheduled for late January. With over 100 exhibitors, it is a great way to get your business noticed.
“I think they’re very successful,” Mense said. “And my own story, when I worked for the staffing firm, I really got plugged into the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce because I wanted to grow my business. And I was able to meet so many people through the networking events, through the Business Expo and also share what we did. When I started at the staffing firm, not everyone knew who we were or what we did. So it helped us grow our business exponentially.”