Alex sits down with Kennebec Valley Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Katie Doherty.
Podcast Transcript:
AS: Thanks for joining us on Serra Speaks where we talk with women about business not about women in business and our very first guest is none other than Katie Doherty the president of the Kennebec Valley Chamber of Commerce. Katie thank you for joining us.
KD: Thank you for welcoming me.
AS: I am so excited that you're here. We met 5, 6 years ago now.
KS: Probably 5 years ago, yeah.
AS: I think I was there when you were first announced that's the first time I met you when we were at the Senator
KD: It would have been February of 2017 when they officially announced me
AS: Okay so that's when we first met
KD: Wow
AS: Yeah, it’s flown... what? They’re so lucky to have you.
KD: Thank you
AS:I think people... Everybody thinks you are just bright and have taken the Kennebec Valley Chamber to the next level and tell me about what the organization was like when you arrived and kind of where it is now
KD: Yeah so when I first started with the chamber I got hired on as the program and events director so I was there for about a year-and-a-half before the board promoted me after this role so I was just I enjoy doing the events working with businesses, getting people to come to the community. I loved it but I transitioned to this role and it was like a whirlwind. You never grow up thinking you’re going to be the president of a chamber and even when the board approached me about this position I was kind of like well I work for the chamber now but really like what are the ins-and-outs? What does the president of a chamber do? And it's crazy to think everything that we've changed, we’ve adapted and changed programs. It was always just the same old thing that we always used to do. You know Chambers are always just known I feel like for it was like the man's world, it was like all the suits in a room and stuff like that and we’ve completely changed that around.
AS: How so? Tell me what are some of the changes you’ve made.
KD: Well, so we, you know just like Business Insider breakfast. 7:30 in the morning at the Senator. Society has changed so much now you know you have entrepreneurs who are the only person working in a shop. They can't not be there to unlock their door and meet the mailman, there's nobody else. Or societies change with single parents. Before it used to be just all the men working and they'd be home with the kids but these single mothers they need to get their kids to daycare and stuff like that it was just... Now we do 10 o’clock breakfasts, it's during the work day, it's a little bit more convenient for people.
AS: Right, that’s awesome. So where did you grow up? You grew up in this area.
KD: I did, I grew up in Waterville, went to Thomas college, graduated from there. I've only ever worked in Central Maine.
AS: That’s amazing. And what do you think are some of the opportunities right now? Like I see you really driving programming a lot at the chamber which I think is really impressive and I know all chambers try to do that. But you seem to have a really high level of engagement from your members. Everything from, I mean the Kenny Awards alone is so impressive. How many people come to that every single year?
KD: Non- Covid year?
AS: Every single non-Covid year
KD: We normally have about 1,200 people at the Civic Center.
AS: That’s amazing.
KD: And it’s amazing
AS: For a regional chamber. I mean that’s really impressive.
KD: Yeah, we cover 23 communities so we always say our staff is small but mighty. There's just four of us and the Kenny's it’s just a way to come together and celebrate all the great things our individuals and business are doing.
AS: So for folks that are listening and don't know, the Kenny's is this local chamber kind of award show in celebration of different businesses and what they do every year and it's just so professionally produced and wonderful and fun and it's humorous and it's just a really good night and everyone gets really dressed up once a year.
KD: So that was one of things that when I became the program director was my first event that we completely rehashed and changed everything. It used to be kind of you know the Civic Center lights were on still and there was a huge head table of all the awardees and we switched it up. We bring in a headlight and we use.. we set it up as a night out with your friends and family to celebrate.So we do like live voting and we wanted to bring it back to like a more updated event too.
AS: Yeah, so of your graduating class in high school or of your graduating class of Thomas. did most of your classmates stay in this area?
KD: No.
AS: Really? They left Maine entirely?
KD: They left Maine to go to college, a lot of them. Everyone thought it was really weird that I was going to first stay in Maine for college but say right in Waterville and go to Thomas College. I loved my experience at Thomas, it was great. And then Thomas we had a lot of people from out of state too.
AS: Really? Ok. So then once you left Thomas and by the way, I love Laurie LaChance, I just have to say that
KD: She’s amazing
AS She’s the president of Thomas College and she’s so…
KD: Speaking of an inspirational woman.. If you can ever hear her story…
AS: She’s kind.
KD: You should have her on the podcast.
AS: Yeah I’m totally like mental note. But she is just so kind and such a colleague to so many people
KD: Genuine, yeah.
AS: So you stayed in the area and what was your first job out of college? And did you know that you wanted to go into economic development? What brought you, what was your path like?
KD: So I have a weird path. I have never apply for a job. It is really connections and network and who you know. And so I was working retail in college, stayed in retail once I graduated, started my Master's and then worked my way up to retail. I loved it, it was operational I loved like the behind the scenes of it and then I went to higher education. They were like “hey, you'd be great” and I was like sure I'll give it a whirl. When anybody approaches an opportunity to you just don't say no try it give it give it a try it out. So I did higher education for a while and then when I was at that job I went for the Kennebec Leadership Institute that the chamber put on. So I did KLI and I was like oh my God this is great. It opens you up to so many networks in the region and then I learned the chamber was hiring so that it was just a perfect fit from there.
AS: That's so great. I always, so I laugh about myself because I went to law school, I actually graduated from law school. Just, not a fact that I share about myself a lot because I’m the least analytical person I think in a lot of ways, but I remember my law school entrance exam or my law school entrance essay I should say... I can't believe they accepted me.. Was about this Buddhist philosophy of walking through open doors and how when an opportunity presents yourself and I felt like this was and I was like.. I look back on it now and I’m like what geeky 22 year old kid writes that in their law school essay.. Like does one not belong somewhere? But, I understand the sentiment. Right, it’s something that I believe in too. Like if someone presents an opportunity to you especially if it makes you scared and nervous I think that's the best.
KD: You grow out of everything. Like, sitting in a podcast... never done one before but I'm like sure, yeah let's have the opportunity to do it.
AS: And it’s relatively painless.
KD: It's pretty easy, yeah.
AS: Just a chat.. So, for yourself we’ll have that one moment of being a woman in business. Do you see just initial thoughts, like for me I don't get up everyday and think of myself as a woman in business.. ever. I just go to work and I feel like people think that women in business think of themselves as women in business which is why I wanted to do this because I'm like we actually have things to talk about other than the fact that we’re women in business, right? We have business to discuss.
KD: So yeah, no II don't wake up every morning thinking that all. I just go to work and enjoy what we do and we get things done and we help the community, that's it.
AS: Right. Do you think that there is still a perception with men that we’re women in business or do you think they think of us as just colleagues?
KD: I want to say I hope they think of us just as colleagues. I think we're getting to that point but I'm sure there's still some people who think that, yeah.
AS: What do you think about the information, I don't know if you know this, that just came out a few weeks ago, maybe last week... women in Maine and nationally but we actually are the same but make $0.82 to the dollar that every man makes. But that's not for women of color, for women of color it's substantially less even. What do you think about all that? How does that…
KD: It’s crazy.
AS: Right.
KD: It shouldn't be like that still but we’ve got to fight for it too. I feel like as females we're not good, we're just good at like going along with the flow but we’ve got to fight for ourselves and we’ve got to show people what we deserve.
AS: It said on a CNN article I read, It said that it will level out another 40 years, we will be earning the same and I was like oh perfect I'll be dead.
KD: 40 years? That’s crazy.
AS: I think that’s what it said, yeah, I have to double check myself but I’m almost positive another 40 years it’s estimated to just level out kind of on it’s own.
KD: See, if I was a head of a company that did that, that paid different vs gender, like what are you thinking? You know what I mean?
AS: I need to understand all this better but I wonder if it's you know some of it is because women aren't in leadership roles and aren’t cognizant of that, right? If women aren't at the table…
KD: They don't know.
AS: Right. I mean…
KD: It’s true because you don’t know what your colleagues making and stuff like that.
AS: Exactly. So it’s who the decision makers are can affect… What do you see as some of the opportunities for the Kennebec Valley Chamber coming up? What would you like to see more of post- covid?
KD: Gosh, that’s so opened ended, I don’t know. I mean Covid taught us that we needed to change and adapt everything so we are just constantly... We're going to be digging into a huge strategic plan and figuring out the needs of our members and the community now. You know, we used to always do a business expo that started years ago. You know there's Facebook and everything now we don't need to do an expo anymore. Is that really what benefits our members the most? So we're really just kind of going into to detail on everything to see what we need to do and what's the next step.
AS: So Covid has presented an opportunity for you to kind of look at everything differently?
KD: Yeah, so we cancelled our expo because of Covid but then when we looked at it we were like, do we really need to be doing this? So I called a couple of our key stakeholders, our members, our sponsors and say “why do you participate in the expo?” “Well it’s what we’ve always done” … I don't want to put on something just because that's what you’ve always done, you know that's a lot for our members to get a booth, get the swag to hand out and then what's the traffic like? You have no guarantee of that, that’s really hard so that's not the best bang for their buck for our members.
AS Do you think that businesses are having a shared experience right now or do you think it's industry dependent? Like are your restaurant members having a similar experience to your retail members?
KD: I think they're all industry-specific but then as a whole everybody's adapting. I mean Cushnoc never delivered pizzas before but they quickly adapted because they needed to. I think a lot of people are going to be keeping things that they learned through Covid but then may be getting rid of some stuff that they used to do.
AS: Cushnoc, for those who don’t know, is an incredible pizza place restaurant- bar that we actually sit basically right on top. So around 4:00 everyday I can smell the pizza ovens getting re-fired and it’s torture. So I try to…
KD: I was going to say, how do you say no to that?
AS: Yeah… I don’t. It’s awful. There’s a back staircase that’s the door next to their front door so many times we’ll stick a little broom in their and run down the stairs to pick up a pizza and come right back up. Also not to be forgotten is Wander Pizza. They're amazing and they're right next door to you.
KD: Yeah, that’s what it is for us. We’re like, “oh no, it’s 2 and I haven’t had lunch, I’m just going to scoot over to Wander… pizza time”
AS: It’s so good. And they have a great farmer’s salad at Cushnoc and they have really good kale Caesar at Wander, I don’t know if you’ve tried that.
KD: I haven’t.
AS It’s really good. Excellent, in fact.
KD: We always get to food I feel like.
AS: I know, why wouldn’t we? So you have a daughter?
KD: I do.
AS: What are your hopes for her?
KD: That she doesn't have to deal with anything like this at all. I mean that's just another example to like when I became pregnant, we looked at our personnel policies... We didn't even have a maternity leave.
AS: Really?
KD: No, we did not.
AS: You just had your baby a year ago. Wow
KD: Yeah and it was just, you know, we updated our policies in 2017 when I came on board but I don't know if it's just because it wasn't in there or and I wasn't a mom yet, I never really thought of it but yeah it's so now we have a maternity leave and a paternity leave. You know it’s important just to celebrate that too as well. So yeah it's just those little things like that but it was just a different way in time back then.
AS: So one thing that I always make sure to say when I'm having kind of a gender conversation is I have to say I personally find the men in my circle to be incredibly supportive and welcoming and encouraging.
KD: Oh yeah
AS: and I don't feel gender considered as a, I mean they're truly like brothers to me, I'm very close with a lot of them, sometimes to my, you know eye rolling agony..Ya’ll are trying to kill me. No, but I I love them all and they've been really truly wonderful and supportive and value my opinion and want me to succeed as much as I want them to succeed.
KD: Oh, 100%. I agree.
AS: And so I feel like we’re lucky in Maine in that way. I don’t feel a lot of a heavy hand pushing anyone down.
KD: No, I agree. Especially and even like. SO my board of directors when we brought up that we needed to update our policy because I was going to go out on maternity leave they were like, “wow, we don’t have that?” So it’s not like it was ever meant to be forgotten about or not put in but yeah I have always.. I mean I have men mentors and stuff like that too. They’ve always been there.
AS: Absolutely. So do you think... have you had any experiences with young women kind of coming up to you and saying “hey, it's amazing that you're doing this or that you have your job you have”
KD: Yeah and it’s funny because, you know, I’m humble in a sense where I’m like, I’m just me. And they’re like but you’re the president of the chamber you know. I was the first youngest female ever to be the president of our chamber and I don't ever think of it that way so it's really it's really great when younger people come up to me like that.
AS: Yeah. Do you think there is a….. do you still have more men on your board than women?
KD: We're working on that. We’re trying to get it 50/50. I mean when I started my first like four board members I recruited were all female because I was like I need more female.
AS: I think a lot of Chambers are still working on that.
KD: Yeah.
AS: And I don’t think it’s only chambers, I think it’s medical association's, I think it's all kinds of you know you name it. It's more seats at the table. I love Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked, and this is not a political commentary for people who are going there in their minds, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked “when will it be enough? how many women on the Supreme Court?” and she said “when there are nine.” Like I love that and I was like what?
KD: Bold.
AS:What? What happened, you know, why can’t there be more women than men on these boards?
KD: Yeah, exactly.
AS: Is that ever talked about in like board management universe? Is that brought up?
KD: No and honestly it’s never... I would love to have a guidelines to be very like you need at least this much and stuff like that but we're not but anytime a female is brought up or a male is never a we can't have any another male of the table or anything like that.
AS: Yeah, value over…
KD: Yeah, for sure.
AS: What do you see as the opportunities we started going down that road but what do you see as the opportunities for the Kennebec Valley Chamber coming up? Like do you think it's there's more social media networking that's going to happen? Do you think it's more Zoom will continue? Do you think it's more one-on-one support for businesses as opposed to the Expo for example?
KD: So I think Zoom came into our world and we all probably hate it by now but it's a huge opportunity, it's been convenient for people, so I think we're going to stay in the hybrid model for a while. We're hoping this summer we’re going to get back to outdoor networking you know for after-hours and stuff like that. And then the fall I hope things are back to normal once people get vaccinated but we're going to really stay in the hybrid model for a while.
AS: We are starting to come back to the office here at Serra Public Affairs and we’re starting to, you know, wear masks out in the public space but like Ben and I... Ben is the producer of this show by the way. I’ll introduce the wonderful Ben Gagnon. Friend, colleague, and no podcast producer.
KD: Jack of all trades
AS: That’s right. Master of all. We actually, I’m going to out him a little bit, we call him Goldstar Gagnon at the group because everything he does is like on point. So I’m always like Goldstar Gagnon.
KD: Perfect.
AS: Yeah, so we we started coming back to the office a little bit. And it’s mentally been so good, just mentally not working in the home office and not, you know, just…. I love my bulldogs, I love my dachshund, I love my cat, and I love my husband… However, it’s been a long year.
KD: Yeah, so, when we went home, daycare got shut down too at the same time so it was my husband and at the time five month old and me trying to work from home and run a chamber was a little bit different because at the time there was so much unknown so we were getting calls constantly from business with guidelines and checklists and you know Department of Labor and DECD like trying to manage it all so it was really hard working from home...hearing my husband and my daughter downstairs and trying to figure it out. But, yeah. I’m so glad we’re back at the office. We went back in June, there's just four of us so we were our own space but now when we're together we unmask and stuff like that because we’re like “I think you’re part of my pod now”
AS: Well, Ben and I have been coming back to the office now for six weeks, four weeks, something like that and are totally in the similar social circle and all that so we’ve kind of been quarantine podding together for the whole year but it's mentally the greatest.
KD: And just, not physical but the communication with your staff, I mean we're very much like, “hey!” you know yell to the offices and stuff like that and before you’d be home and chatting on teams or something
AS: Or you call someone and you know you just can’t reach them or your texts and you’re in a group text and then you’re responding to different questions on the group text
KD: And everybody takes like emails and texts differently. Like oh gosh, don’t read it that way, it wasn’t mean
Alex: Yes, Yes a hundred percent. We, my first day back at the office I told my husband Harry, I was like, he’s like “how was it going back?” I was like “it’s like this magical land where you can work and the Bulldogs aren't like “mumma, but it’s time for a biscuit”
KD: Yeah
AS: It's amazing
KD: We can concentrate
AS: Anyone who's considering going back to the office…
KD: Do it
AS: Do it. I totally encourage it
KD: The staff morale, yeah.
AS: I think so too. Yeah and it’s just good. There is a physicality in work
KD: Yeah
AS:You know, hand mannerisms matter and you know reflection and all that matters
KD: I agree
AS: What are your goals? What do you want to do?
KD: Personally? I mean
AS: All of it. Personally, professionally.
KD: I don’t know, continue to be a good role model for my daughter. It’s crazy now you know I'm 33 and it's weird to be already in this you know executive role and how can I continue to change and adapt and help businesses to be able to be that next step so when my daughter is at that age we don't have to have this conversation, you know what I mean?
AS: I totally know what you mean. and I notice too, you know, there's just a lot not only two genders but all the genders you know what I mean are starting to and all gender identities are starting to hopefully find their more comfortable accepting places in America's Workforce, and I think those conversations…. that's why I wanted to do this was because I find myself looking for answers and I don't have them so I want to sit down with people that know more than I do to say what do you think?
KD: Technology.. that disconnect. You know when I had my daughter, before I had my daughter I was so used to constantly working, being my phone, email, you know it's everywhere so just disconnecting you know. I would say that’s like my one thing for advice from others out there just disconnect. Connect to the kids at home. Work will be there tomorrow, your emails will still be there tomorrow, it’s okay. Yeah, I have just had this mentality in my head that I always just had to be on response to everybody and you don't need to be.
AS: It’s a hard one to let go of.
KD: Yeah
AS: It's like that immediate response habit. I do yoga stuff in my personal life and people say in yoga stopping is a radical act and I love that because sometimes you just truly need to turn off the phone, turn off the TV and just be.
KD: Yeah, I wish I could do yoga. I have tried to do it but my brain won't shut off
AS: Then you're the one that needs it
KD: I know
AS: That’s me. That’s so me. That’s why I had to do it because I needed to find that way to just completely…. What's been hard is that in Covid I haven't been able to do it because my house is not set up for a whole lot of…. it's an open concept. All these wonderful open concept homes... so
KD: But then it becomes, too, when you’re working from home it was your office space, it was your family life, it was for yoga studio, there was no disconnect.
AS: Your restaurant
KD: Yeah
AS: And I hate to cook…. oh my God. That has been the worst. I just discovered a meal delivery service which we can talk about… I'm not endorsing anything like that but, a certain brand, but I found one that I love, I’m obsessed with. I’m like why didn’t I do this…
KD: During Covid? The whole last year
AS: Oh my God. Like what was I thinking?
KD: Yeah
AS: I should have listened.. my daughter-in-law I told me about it and I was like yeah… I should have done it. It’s awesome.
KD: And everyone's like mental well-being through all of this with having no disconnect this past year was really a struggle I think.
AS: Yeah. Are you seeing any seeing any effects on businesses because of mental struggles? Like are people slow to return to work? When you talk about like larger employee... employers with their employees?
KD: Nope, no. The hardest thing is just getting hiring right now with the unemployment and stuff like that.
AS: Talk to me about that just a little bit.
KD: So people need to hire their back of the workforce but they can't get back to full capacity or anything because people are making more money on unemployment.
AS: So…
KD: So that's the real frustration because you know we can guide them and tell them what they need to do but you know it's hard.
AS: Yeah.
KD: So we need to get people to move to Maine... Come here
AS: Come here.
KD: We’re great
AS: The water is wonderful. Come to Central Maine.
KD: Yes
AS: I was talking with someone who lives in Connecticut and just about their, you know, the value of their home and all that stuff. They're kind of blown away by housing prices here. As high as the market has peaked here it’s certainly not what it is in the tri-state area. So come to Maine.
KD: Yeah
AS: We need you and we're friendly.
KD: Especially with Covid it showed so many bigger businesses down, you know in New England and Boston and stuff like that
AS: and Manhattan
KD: Yeah you can work remotely from Maine. Yeah, come here
AS: I have vivid memories of my dad... Growing up as a kid my dad was in human resources and he worked in Midtown and I have vivid memories of going to his office to you know spend it was like a day...I’m doing air quotes. But like day at the office with dad.. It was probably like 45 minutes. In my like six year old mind it was the whole day though. And it's amazing for me to think about all that office space empty for the last year. I mean it's a lot of office space… It’s a lot and what's going to happen to all of it?
KD: I have no idea.
AS: There’s that whole controversy with Seinfeld. Did you see that whole thing?
KD: No
AS: Oh yeah he got totally into it, I love it. He was talking about how you know, is New York going to be okay?
KD: Yeah
AS: You know and someone had written some LinkedIn article about how New York was never going to recover and he's like “What? Are you kidding me?” Like I love him, I’m like go Jerry. KD: It’s funny because even when I look back at pictures and you see like tons of people around it’s like, will we ever get to that point where people are comfortable like on a subway packed again and stuff like that.
AS: I know
KD: It's so weird
AS: It is so weird or just conferences. Like how are we going to have and when are we going to feel… Are people going to have to show vaccination passes? I'm fascinated by that because I know there's a lot of people who don't want to get the vaccine and it doesn't fit their ideals and I respect all that. But how is that going to affect their ability to travel, to go to an expo, to go to a sporting event or concert?
KD: Yeah, that's been part of our conversation right now for our fall events we’re like what are our events going to look like? Are we still going to have to mask or are we going to have to check vaccination cards like we don't want to do that. I don't want my staff and volunteers to be mask mandates like, you know, being the mask police is not fun.
AS: Right
KD: So we have no idea what the fall will look like or what this new norm will be
AS: Right but the good news is the economy will hopefully
KD: Bounce right back
AS: Bounce right back and we're headed into tourism season in Maine so…. more important than ever to get there
KD: It’s going to be busy
AS: I totally agree. Well, Katie, thank you
KD: Thanks for having me
AS: Was this relatively painless?
KD: Yeah
AS: Totally
KD: I was like, not knowing what you would ask at all but, I don't know, it's just a conversation.
AS: It’s just chatting.
KD: Just chatting.
AS: Just chatting. Katie, thank you so much.
KD: Thanks.
AS: Thank you.
AS: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Serra Speaks where we talk with women about business not about women in business. Please be sure to hit subscribe and stay tuned for upcoming episodes.