Chamber president resigns

Fore Note: At the June 21st meeting of the chamber board when the resignations were submitted, the board was told that there had been some misappropriations of approximately $13,000.00. No money was missing but had just been moved from one account to another without proper authorization.

The resignation letter submitted by the administrative assistant and read to the board stated her reason for her resignation was that she could not work with Visitor's Bureau director, Rachel Baker. The Visitor's Bureau is a branch of the Loudon County Chamber of Commerce.

Jonathan Herrmann news-herald.net

The Loudon County Chamber of Commerce is looking for new leadership after two staff members resigned Thursday.

Michael Bobo, chamber president, and Stacy Grubb, administrative assistant, both stepped down from their positions.

Jack Sims, chamber board chairman, did not give a reason for either resignation.

“He’s resigning and moving on. I’ll leave it at that,” Sims said. “He was with the chamber for a long time and did a lot of good things for us. We’ll miss him and wish him the best.”

Bobo also declined to comment on specifics related to his departure from the chamber or when he made the decision to step down.

“I really enjoyed my time working for the chamber,” Bobo said. “We did some great work while I was there and I’m really excited to see what’s next for the chamber and Loudon County under new leadership.”

Both resignations were immediate, which left the chamber to quickly look for an interim president. Clayton Pangle, former Loudon County Visitors Bureau executive director, accepted the interim position Friday.

“My real thoughts were total surprise that the position was vacant and secondly, the immediate thought was the chamber’s present board of directors is such a fantastic group of people,” Pangle said. “The chamber has a great membership base that is becoming more involved in our community. How could you not be happy to step in on an interim basis to move it forward?”

Pangle’s plan in the interim will be to make sure the chamber keeps course.

“I think the thing to do is make sure stability continues and when opportunity presents itself to improve things for the business members and for the chamber as a whole (take it),” he said.

Sims is confident in Pangle’s ability to run the chamber in the interim as a long-term director is sought.

“He has a lot of experience in that regard,” Sims said. “… We feel that we’ll do well under Clayton’s leadership. We will form a search committee to try to find the best person we can for that job.”

The search committee will determine what criteria will be used in searching for Bobo’s replacement. There is no timetable for hiring a new president.

“We feel confident with Clayton Pangle and also Sandi Campbell (member services coordinator), who has a ton of experience for us,” Sims said. “I think we’ve got good people in place so we’ll take the time we need to make the right decision.”