The Hayward Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors has announced that President/CEO Kim Huggett will retire in June and that it has commenced a broad search for a new chief executive officer.
Huggett has served the chamber for 12 years, including maneuvering the organization through the darkest days of the pandemic when its budget remained sound and its membership was stable and able to access considerable services.
Huggett has attended more than 150 chamber board meetings over his tenure, working with 65 different local business leaders serving as members of the board of directors since 2010. As part of the chamber's commitment to government advocacy, he has attended, and often addressed, hundreds of meetings of the Hayward City Council, its various committees, and the planning commission.
Promoting Hayward as a city of international trade, he influenced the growth of the chamber's certificate of origin program for exporters, created an international trade luncheon series, and led a delegation of local business leaders to meet with chamber counterparts during a visit of city officials to Hayward's sister city of Funabashi, Japan.
Huggett arranged for the first-ever participation of life sciences companies on the chamber board of directors and set up an annual biomedical workshop for local firms with assistance from the City of Hayward and the Biomedical Manufacturing Network.
He created linkages between the chamber and regional, state, and federal business organizations. He was an active member of both the California and U.S. chambers of commerce and graduated from their professional development academies. He also serves on the board of directors of the Downtown Hayward Improvement Association.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Huggett has hosted as many as eight meetings a month with chamber affiliates. From March 2020 to October 2021, he issued 134 "crisis update" e-newsletters and website postings, in addition to regular monthly newsletters, that gave information about loans, grants, and business survival skills.
He kept the chamber office open six days a week throughout 2020 and most of 2021 to allow staff to assist members.
Incoming President/CEO Will be Busy
The incoming president and CEO will work with an 18-member board of directors that oversees a wide variety of chamber organizations, including the 16-member Government Relations Council, the Good Government Now political action committee, the Black and Latino business roundtables, the Ambassadors Committee, and the Hayward Nonprofit Alliance of more than 100 organizations.
The chamber also directs Leadership Hayward, the 32-year-old professional development program with more than 400 graduates who received continuing continuing education credit from the California State University, East Bay. Huggett has personally directed the program for the past two years.
Before the pandemic, community events the chamber coordinated included summer downtown street parties and car shows, the annual mariachi festival, Light Up the Season, and the annual Awards Celebration Gala, honoring the business person, educator, firefighter and police officer of the year. Huggett was MC of the gala and the annual State of the City event for 12 years.
The gala event was a mostly virtual celebration in 2021, and that format will be duplicated this year. Chamber staff is making preparations for the return of its traditional major outdoor activities beginning in June.
In retirement, Huggett plans to devote more time to the nonprofit boards on which he sits, traveling, and visiting his grandchildren. Utilizing his skills as a former journalist, he also plans to tackle organizing, editing, and publishing a collection of writings by his late father, the Rev. Larry Huggett.
Huggett will assist the chamber board of directors' search committee in a confidential, non-voting staff role. Interested persons can contact him at (510) 537-2424 or kimh@hayward.org.