Bailey to lead White County Chamber

CLEVELAND - The White County Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors has approved a new president for the organization.

Chamber Board Chairman Stacy Hall said the board unanimously approved the recommendation by the president search committee to hire Dahlonega resident Cindy Bailey as the president.

"We are very fortunate to have someone of Cindy's experience and skill set to lead our chamber," Hall said. "She is a veteran chamber executive with knowledge of our community and has many key contacts at the regional and state level."

The position has been vacant since October, and Hall said they were happy to complete this process.

"Most importantly, we want to hire the right person - you know it is a long process," Hall said. "There is a lot of people involved in this process, because we need broad representation from our membership but we believe, more importantly in getting the process done, we believe we've hired the right person."

Bailey has 20 years of chamber experience, including time as director of the Convention and Visitor's Bureau for Calhoun County, president of the Dahlonega/Lumpkin County Chamber of Commerce, and for the past nine years she has worked as the sales and marketing director for an international manufacturing company.

She currently is planning to move to White County from Lumpkin County as soon as possible.

"We received 17 qualified applications from all over the country," Hall said. "The search committee decided to interview three candidates. After the in-person interviews, the search committee unanimously recommended to the board of directors to hire Cindy."

According to Hall, with Bailey coming on board they can focus on the true mission of the chamber,

"We, as a board representing in our membership, we have decided we want to get back to our true mission statement and vision statement and that is very simple; to help every business flourish and grow and to encourage new and quality industry into our community and to provide jobs to everyone able to work," Hall said. "Now we are not going to get away from doing a lot of community-type events we host, but we want to get back to our historical mission and vision that our membership has set for us."

Bailey will begin her duties as president next Tuesday.