In July, EDCUtah announced its combination with the Salt Lake Chamber as one of the Chamber’s family of teams. Derek Miller, president and CEO of the Chamber, shares his perspective on the combination and answers a common question about the Chamber’s statewide reach.

I hear the question quite often: “If you're a statewide organization and you have members in all 29 counties, why don't you change your name to the Utah Chamber?” My answer is, when an organization has been around for 137 years, its name acquires some brand equity.

The Salt Lake Chamber was founded in 1887, nine years before Utah became a state. There was no State of Utah when we were created. The Chamber does function as a statewide chamber, coordinating with regional chambers across the state. For example, we’re engaging with other chambers to augment the Utah Rising economic plan. 

I’m grateful for the opportunity for this close partnership with EDCUtah. More than three decades ago, EDCUtah had its inception inside the Chamber when business leaders came together and said we want to have an economic development organization here. The purpose was to bring more economic opportunity to Utah in a proactive manner. The Chamber incubated EDCUtah, and it eventually spun off and has done wonderful things. I have seen that personally in all the positions that I've held, and especially when I was the managing director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (now known as GOEO) for Governor Huntsman.

When I became Governor Herbert's chief of staff, I worked very closely with the team at EDCUtah, as the Governor’s primary focus was on growing the economy. One of the first projects I ever worked on was bringing Goldman Sachs to Salt Lake City. This transformed our downtown. We would not have what we have today had it not been for an investment from Goldman Sachs that was made possible because of the work of EDCUtah. 

When you go to the Point of the Mountain and see the hub of our tech community, you think back to what that area looked like 20 short years ago and just how much has changed. When Adobe purchased Omniture—which was located on the south side of the Point of the Mountain—Adobe was going to move the operation out of our state. It was because of the proactive work of EDCUtah that Adobe stayed here in Utah. 

EDCUtah essentially told Adobe, “When you find out what Utah really has to offer, we are confident that you will invest more in Utah.” This is exactly what they did when they built the Adobe campus. EDCUtah has a strong track record of convincing leading companies to invest for the long term in Utah.  

The last example I'll use was Procter and Gamble building their first U.S. greenfield manufacturing facility in over 50 years in Box Elder County. The company has expanded in Box Elder County several more times since that announcement. That happened because of the efforts of EDCUtah. So, I'm a fan, and I’m grateful for the chance I had to be participate in EDCUtah’s work. 

With that said, it is of utmost importance to me that EDCUtah continues to operate under its own leadership, under its own brand, and with input from its boards of trustees and advisors. That is my goal and my intent, and that is the agreement that we have made. Pending approval from EDCUtah’s Board of Trustees, EDCUtah would become one of eight other organizations under the Chamber umbrella with shared back-office services.

When I heard of the changes of roles and responsibilities between GOEO and EDCUtah, I received three phone calls – one from GOEO and two from EDCUtah board members – to discuss the possibility of a Chamber-EDCUtah affiliation. I mention this to illustrate that the important partners, the important funders, and the important leadership of this organization were instrumental in convincing me this was the right thing to do. 

Because of the great admiration and respect I have for EDCUtah and my sincere desire to continue to see it be strong and to grow and to keep all those good things – like Goldman Sachs, Adobe, and Procter and Gamble – rolling. 

I mentioned the Utah Rising plan. Until now, all we could do was to create the plan. Now we have a team that can go execute on the plan. I'm really excited about bringing these things together: first, developing a great strategy and vision, and then deploying an expert economic development team to act on the plan. We look forward to becoming stronger together as we leverage our statewide missions, resources, expertise, and capabilities.

Questions? Want to learn more? Email us at connect@edcutah.org.