The BC Chamber of Commerce (BCCC) announced March 29 that CEO Jon Garson has left the organization a mere seven months after he was hired for the job.
Previous CEO John Winter had been at the helm of the BCCC for 17 years before he retired in June.
Incoming board chair Patrick Giesbrecht would not say why Garson left.
“I can’t comment on that other to say that he is no longer with the BCCC,” Giesbrecht said.
The BCCC started a global search for a new CEO a couple months before Winter retired and then hired Garson in September.
This time, however, Giesbrecht told Business in Vancouver “this is a recent development” and an executive search firm has just been hired to help with the search.
“These are early days and we need a bit of time to put a timeline around how long it might take to get the right candidate for the job,” Giesbrecht said.
The BCCC is looking for someone who is a good communicator and can lobby on the BCCC’s behalf to the provincial and federal government as well as communicate with the BCCC’s 125 members, which are chambers of commerce for communities around the province.
Those chambers combine to represent 36,000 businesses.
There will be no interim CEO, so the BCCC’s six employees are being left to continue operations without anyone overseeing them on a day-to-day basis, said Giesbrecht, who is in a volunteer capacity and expects to put in about three to four hours worth of work once he becomes the BCCC’s chair at the end of May.
Garson was the BCCC’s vice-president of policy before he assumed the president and CEO role.
