Sue Nicholson is retiring from the Monroe Chamber of Commerce this week after decades of work advocating for businesses and working to drive economic development in northeast Louisiana.
Nicholson has had a long career of service. She's worked with the Ruston Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Boy Scouts of America, acted as president of the West Monroe-West OuachitaChamber for nine years and served as the Assistant Vice President of External Affairs at the University of Louisiana Monroe.
That was going to be my life, " Nicholson said. "I loved working at ULM, loved the academic setting. Was there for a year and half, and the Monroe Chamber position came up.
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"And I kind of thought, well, maybe I'll do that. And didn't. And then I had somebody come and say, you really need to apply, we really want you to apply. So they recruited me, and the rest is history. Here I am."
Up until about 1990, she said, Chamber leadership was mostly white males. Since then, the board has invited more diverse leadership. She said the chamber started nailing it starting around 2000 and since thenhas had Black and women presidents.
The board, she said, is more reflective now of the business and leaders in the community, and she thinks her groundwork to continue with that diversity, equity and inclusion is part of her legacy, as is her efforts for workforce development.
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The Chamber has three primary goals, she said: Business advocacy, infrastructure and workforce development. It's been important to her to maintain clarity and choose projects that will continue to serve businesses.
At the time, she said, the West Monroe Chamber was on North Seventh Street. As of 1995, they'd been without a president for about a year, and the office didn't have a computer. They manually tracked deposit slips to see who had paid dues to determine who was a chamber member. She said she's really proud with the work done to build that organization up.
When she came into the Monroe Chamber, the previous president had been gone for eight or nine months. She said there was a regrouping time right after she came on, and it took effort to make the organization financially sound.
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"Ifwe're taking a lot of money from a governmental body, who do we represent? Well, the answer should always be, we represent business. We are a business advocacy group. And if we can't say that, then we have to really rethink who we are, " she said.
From there, she said, they had to determine what businesses really needed from the chamber and how to connect them with other, similar businesses and how to work with governments to meet those needs.
Nicholson pointed to the Kansas Lane connector project that's shovel ready and in early days of the work. It's been a long-term effort for the chamber to push it forward.
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She said there's a tremendous amount of development ongoing, and she pointed to Gov. John Bel Edwards committing $20 million in federal funds to widen Interstate 20 for 2 miles andLouisiana Department of Transportation and Development working on the Garrett Road interchange.
"All of these things around this one little project, that, you know, my goal is to keep assisting with that, to get that done, " she said.
Early in, she said, they had businesses say jobs were open, but they couldn't find candidates with the right skills. And candidates were available but in need of training.
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She said it started with Time Green saying he couldn't find accountants. They wanted to go into high schools and let teens know about the profession. They started with an accounting tech program that drew two students.
Matt Dickerson, who works for Monroe City Schools, said the district was usingYouScience to assess what students want to do with their lives.
"Shockingly, 40% of the students, so they wanted to open their own business. So we're like, OK, they're going to need accounting, but they don't want accounting. So how can we kind of address this?" she said.
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Before Ron Berry was president of ULM, he was dean of thecollege of business and social sciences. He and his team helped develop a six-course program for college creditthat launched in the fall with a $150, 000 Chase grant, which is mostly for teacher training.
They had 200 students sign up. Berry and his team wrote a grant proposal and got $1.1 million from the federal government’s Workforce Opportunity for Rural Communities initiative.
The money will help expand the program to any high school in northeast Louisiana that wants it and training them. The courses also can be taken online.
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Her many hobbies include art and genealogy. She's traced her father's family back to Scotland via Nova Scotia and wants to make connections with a genealogy project from that region to help others make connections and expand their family trees.
And she still plans to work with community projects. She's still on boards that highlight workforce development and draw tourists to the parish.
Nicholson still plans to serve, but now she gets to spend as much time as she chooses on projects that spark her passion.
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