The Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce has tapped an Indiana chamber executive to succeed Lyn Taylor, who is retiring from the business organization after 17 years.
Mark Eagan will begin serving Oct. 7 as president and chief executive officer of the chamber, which represents 2,800 area businesses that employ more than 110,000 workers. He comes from the Chamber of Commerce of St. Joseph County in South Bend, Ind., where he has worked for the past decade.
The 43-year-old chamber executive will be moving to Tech Valley from an emerging technology market. In March, the University of Notre Dame announced plans to establish the nation’s fourth center through a Nanotechnology Research Initiative called the Midwest Academy for Nanoeclectronics Architectures. The nation’s third center was the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale and Engineering. Other centers are in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas.
Eagan said his appointment at the Albany chamber and South Bend’s designation as a nanotechnology center were a “coincidence,” though he said he could see “synergies” between the two cities being established. His first chamber job came in his hometown of Mansfield, Mass., in 1987. Eagan was named chamber executive of the year by the New England Chamber Association in 1996 and the Indiana Chamber Executives Association two years ago.
“My job is to build on their past success and continue to help advance the regional economy,” Eagan said of the Albany chamber’s leadership.
Taylor, who joined the chamber in 1991 as a program manager and became its president in 2002, announced in March her plan to retire at year’s end.
Categories: Business
