Leading from a roundtable is a necessary challenge for community leaders, who must collaborate, build consensus, and compromise to achieve their goals. Andrea Helart, president and CEO of the Lake Havasu Area Chamber of Commerce in Arizona, exemplifies this collaborative leadership approach in her commitment to doing well for her community.
From Educator to Community Connector
Andrea grew up in Lake Havasu City, watching the population grow by approximately 25,000 people in the last thirty years. Almost two and a half hours from Las Vegas and three hours from Phoenix, Lake Havasu City is a rural scenic area that experiences seasonal tourism. With these unique sets of challenges and opportunities for their business community, Andrea and the chamber work to keep businesses strong and locally supported.
Working for 14 years as a teacher, then another seven as an administrator at the Lake Havasu Unified School District, Andrea’s education background helped expand her insight on what it means to be an agent for change in a community. During this time, she recognized that community members often see positive changes happening around them without realizing the organizations and individuals who work behind the scenes to make them happen.
Good relationships and timing opened the door for Andrea to begin working at the Lake Havasu Area Chamber of Commerce nearly two years ago, and she’s enjoyed the new challenges and servant leadership this role has provided. As President and CEO, she has been a force for service, connections, and advocacy in the area.
The Community Collaboration Challenge
Andrea knows from her personal experience and talking with business leader peers from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Business Leads Fellowship Program how important it is to bring committed people with you in building solutions:
“People in the community are all working hard on our community needs. We're figuring out how all of our efforts fit together. We all work pretty closely together, but it still sort of feels like people are trying to do everything in silos, working really hard to try to do the same thing. So, we’re trying hard to improve on that collaborative effort.”
Building On Momentum
Lake Havasu City has been ripe for innovation and momentum for years. In 2017, Lake Havasu City came in second place in the America’s Best Communities competition. The recognized community revitalization plans included five pillars for change: economic development and job creation, education and talent supply, tourism and place development, water, and community engagement.
The $2 million in seed funding awarded from the competition allowed the chamber’s foundation, the Lake Havasu Chamber Foundation for Education and Leadership, to expand their workforce development portfolio and continue their impactful leadership development program: Leadership Lake Havasu. This leadership development program is designed to identify resources and educate individuals for leadership roles in the Lake Havasu community. The funding also allowed the foundation to develop a partnership with local school districts for the Career Exploration Internship program, designed to connect local students with businesses in the community to gain experience in their chosen field of interest. The stipends are paid by the foundation to remove the barriers for participation. The program has expanded from six students in the first year of 2016 to 52 students graduating from the program’s most recent class.
Now the Lake Havasu Area Chamber and Lake Havasu Unified School district work with other school districts and chambers throughout the region to expand on the internships and coach others on how to create their own internship programs in the surrounding communities throughout Mohave County.
Learning and Leading Forward
Andrea was motivated to apply for the Business Leads Fellowship Program to extend the work her chamber was doing in education and workforce. Reflecting on her motivation to join, she said:
Learning with the cohorts of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Organizational Management and the Foundation’s Business Leads Fellowship Program, she has worked to approach community problems in education and workforce with a long-term framework. Throughout the experiences, she valued learning from other leaders around the country.
In her cohort experience as a Business Leads Fellow, she became motivated to expand her local apprenticeship partners. Andrea went back to her community with a mission to expand relationships with the two local colleges and industry leaders. After hearing from peers in the cohort about best practices—how they had designed their own partnerships with local institutions—she knew how successful expansion could be. She also now had a community of fellow chamber leaders to turn to for guidance as she built her community partnership out.
She graduated from Cohort 9 of the Business Leads Fellowship Program in 2024 and is now serving as a homeroom facilitator for Cohort 11. Homeroom facilitators, who are previous cohort members, lead small group discussions with similar-sized chambers of commerce to inspire conversation, share best practices, and be a connection extending beyond the six-month program duration. Andrea is leading the discussions for more rural, small to mid-size chambers of commerce. She enjoys getting to know and sharing ideas with committed education and workforce leaders across the nation. Many of these communities are facing similar challenges to keep their local talent in the local workforce, and the group is discussing career and technical education programs and college partnerships to work on this challenge.
The Business Leads Fellowship Program, hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, equips business leaders with resources and training to improve the connection between education systems, students, and workforce opportunities in their communities through workshops covering education and workforce topics.
About the author
Caitlyn Aversman
Caitlyn Aversman is associate manager of K-12 education programs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
