The Elmhurst Chamber of Commerce and Industry Board of Directors elected three officers and approved one appointment for its six-member Executive Committee for 2024-25 at its regular monthly meeting held in the Hammersmith Community Room at Community Bank of Elmhurst on November 12.
Elected to serve one-year terms on the Executive Committee as follows were:
Chair— Angelas Villegas, Vice President and Retail Branch Liaison at Lakeside Bank (165 South York Street) in downtown Elmhurst.
First Vice Chair— Kristin Walker, Vice President of Commercial/Business Banking at Elmhurst Bank (150 East Butterfield Road); and
Second Vice Chair— Scott LaMorte, Vice President of Business Development & Commercial Lending at Community Bank of Elmhurst (330West Butterfield Road).
Appointed to serve a one-year term on the Executive Committee as follows was:
Treasurer—Ralph Pechanio, Chair of the City of Elmhurst’s Veterans Memorial Commission, former community banker and long-time Chamber volunteer.
Villegas, Walker and Pechanio will be joined on the Executive Committee by Immediate Past Chair Colin Dalough, Manager, Community and Governmental Relations at Endeavor Health, and ex-officio member John R. Quigley, Chamber President and CEO since 1999.
Villegas is the 13th female Board Chair in the Chamber’s 106-year history, all of them since 1982, and the 11th serving during Quigley’s 25-year tenure as ECCI’s President and CEO.
Villegas will work closely with the Chamber staff and oversee the policy-making work of the Chamber Board and its four standing committees (Marketing, Membership, Ways and Means, and Governmental Affairs), as well special committees and task forces.
Walker will serve as Chair of the Membership Committee after chairing the Marketing Committee in 2024.
LaMorte will chair the Marketing Committee on which he has served for numerous years.
Pechanio will chair the Ways and Means Committee for a 10th year in a row as the appointed Treasurer.
Quigley chairs the Governmental Affairs Committee in his role as the President and CEO.
Villegas has served on the Board since her appointment in 2022 and on the Executive Committee since 20023 first as Second Vice Chair and Chair of the Marketing Committee and then as First Vice Chair and Chair of the Membership Committee.
The former Director of Government Affairs at the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce, Dalough also has been a member of the Governmental Affairs Committee since 2021, when he was appointed to fill a Board vacancy.
Completing her fourth year of service on the Executive Committee was Past Chair Rita Borzym, Financial Advisor with Edward Jones Investments.
Borzym served as 2023 Board Chair, 2022 First Vice Chair and 2021 Second Vice Chair, and has served on the Membership Committee since her first year as a Director starting in 2016.
Established in 1918, the Elmhurst Chamber of Commerce & Industry is a voluntary organization of business and professional men and women who have joined together to promote the civic and commercial progress of the community.
The mission of the Elmhurst Chamber is to promote an environment that creates success for local businesses and our community.
The Chamber also serves the needs of its members through services, programs and events that provide opportunities for networking and referral, business education, development and promotion, governmental representation and community involvement.