This article answers:
1-What role do chambers of commerce play in regional economic development?
2-How are chambers helping small businesses navigate increasingly complex local ecosystems?
3-What does it look like when a chamber invests in digital infrastructure to scale its work?
TL;DR: Chambers of commerce sit at the navigation layer of every regional economy, and the work of helping small businesses find the right resources has gotten harder as ecosystems grow more complex. In EcoMap’s latest Ecosystem Talks, Ashley Engles-Ross of the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber and Chad Hamman of the Greater Cleveland Partnership shared how their teams are scaling that work through digital resource hubs, AI-supported member services, and a deliberate focus on convening regional partners rather than competing with them. Both chambers use shared infrastructure to extend their reach without growing their teams.
Across the country, chambers of commerce are absorbing more of the work of helping small businesses navigate increasingly complex local economies. The expectations small business owners bring to a chamber have shifted, and the tools chamber teams rely on are changing too.
In this Ecosystem Talks webinar, Ashley Engles-Ross, Vice President of Small Business at the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce, and Chad Hamman, Vice President of Membership and Product Development at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, joined Sherrod Davis, co-founder and CEO of EcoMap Technologies, to talk through how two very different chambers are meeting that moment. The discussion was less about the institutions and more about what it takes to support small businesses inside fast-changing regional economies.
Engles-Ross leads the small business office at a chamber of 2,100 members serving the 13 northernmost counties of Alabama, with reach into three Tennessee counties as well. The region has been reshaped by the aerospace and defense sectors and by recent announcements, including Space Command and Golden Dome. Most of her members have fewer than 50 employees, and many sit alongside major primes like Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen. Hamman represents a different scale entirely. The Greater Cleveland Partnership counts more than 12,000 member companies, roughly 11,000 of them small businesses, across 17 counties in a 3.8 million-person metro area.
What Does Member Navigation Work Look Like for a Chamber Today?
For both chambers, the work starts at the navigation layer. Small business owners don’t always know where to call first, and the cost of that uncertainty shows up in lost time, missed introductions, and frustrated founders.
Engles-Ross described what that looks like on a typical day. A business owner reaches the chamber with a question about a business license, a permit, or a specific program, often after working through several other organizations first. The chamber routes them quickly, sometimes to the city, sometimes to the Small Business Development Center, sometimes to a nearby incubator like the Catalyst Center.
“If I hadn’t talked to the chamber, I don’t know how many phone calls or messages I would have left before I understood who I really needed to talk to,” Engles-Ross said, paraphrasing a piece of feedback she hears often from members.
Davis described the role as playing air traffic controller. Hamman added that GCP plays a similar role for early-stage businesses across its 17-county footprint, often well before those founders become members.
“They come to us in the early stage, really before they’re considering us for membership. They’re coming to us for help with navigation,” he said. The chamber’s job, in his framing, is to know which county and which city has which resource, and where the best next step actually lives.
Why Has Connecting Small Businesses Gotten Harder?
The ecosystem has more pieces in it now. Nonprofits run programs that come and go, government agencies stand up new offices, universities launch new centers, and chamber staff aren’t the only ones trying to keep track.
For GCP, this meant a team working from a hand-maintained spreadsheet of regional resources that a summer intern would refresh every year. The growing volume of inbound questions, many from pre-member early-stage businesses, made the manual approach unsustainable.
“Imagine doing that without an AI tool,” Hamman said. “We saw the need for something we could put out there and really help the ecosystem.”
How Are Chambers Using Digital Infrastructure to Extend Their Reach?
GCP now uses EcoMap to index more than 900 resources across the region. Members, partner organizations, and government staff can all search the same library, find the next best step, and skip the half-dozen calls it used to take.
The Huntsville/Madison County Chamber took a similar approach. Engles-Ross launched the Small Business Resource Hub out of her office, with EcoMap powering the platform, to give entrepreneurs, founders, and members one place to find chamber programming alongside listings from partners like HAZBAT, the local SBDC, and the Catalyst Center.
“We’ve layered the resources we make available, not only through events but through listings on the Small Business Resource Hub, to help people find and navigate what’s available in the community,” she said.
Both implementations reflect a common insight. Chambers can’t keep up with regional resource information through manual processes alone, and they can extend their reach significantly by giving members and partners shared access to vetted, current information.
What Does Internal Modernization Look Like for a Chamber?
Beyond external resource hubs, both chambers are evolving how their teams operate. Hamman was direct about where GCP started. The chamber recently launched its first online membership application, allowing prospects to join in a three-page click process rather than through phone tag. He joked that GCP had “stepped into the 1990s” in some areas of operations.
The change has been meaningful. GCP is averaging 140 new members per month this year, a pace that would have strained the old workflow. That single shift opened the door to broader changes, including building dynamic content based on the products and events members engage with, and testing AI agents to handle routine member communications.
“We’re constantly being challenged with being lean on staff and efficient with resources,” Hamman said. “This is a new way that we’re changing how people come into the organization.”
The Huntsville/Madison County Chamber has been investing in programming alongside infrastructure. Engles-Ross described three additions over the past two years. The chamber launched a defense technology accelerator at Cummings Research Park, hosted Propel, a summit for small businesses and entrepreneurs, and built the Small Business Resource Hub. Each was designed to make it easier for founders and small business owners to see what’s already in the community, and to help longtime members engage with parts of the ecosystem they might not have known existed.
How Do Chambers Tell the Story of Their Regional Impact?
Both chambers think about credit in a similar way. Hamman described GCP’s strategic plan, named “all-in on Cleveland” and adopted in 2019, as a deliberate move to focus less on the organization and more on the region.
“We’re not all in on GCP, we’re all in on Cleveland,” he said. “We also stopped caring about who gets the credit for things.”
He pointed to GCP’s role in convening private sector partners for the 2016 Republican National Convention bid, ongoing discussions about Cleveland’s lakefront and riverfront redevelopment, and conversations about the city’s professional sports infrastructure. Most of that work happens behind the scenes. The headline gets written when the deal gets done.
Engles-Ross described a similar instinct in Huntsville. The chamber tells the community’s story through programming, video, and partnerships that highlight what’s happening across aerospace, defense, and small business growth. The national rankings the region receives for tech jobs and quality of life reflect collaboration across many leaders and many organizations. The chamber’s role is to help make that work visible, not to claim it as its own.
What Does It Take to Build a Thriving Business Ecosystem?
Both leaders had something honest to say about what makes ecosystem work succeed. Engles-Ross was candid about collaboration.
“A collaborative spirit is easy to have, and don’t get frustrated as you try to build it,” she said. “Collaboration is hard, but it’s worth it.”
Hamman framed GCP’s role similarly. The chamber doesn’t try to build the ecosystem in its own image. It listens to what businesses need, identifies gaps, and convenes partners to fill those gaps without duplicating work that’s already happening.
“We’re an invested supporter of the ecosystem, not really trying to build the ecosystem in our view of what it should be,” he said.
For chambers watching this work from the outside, the lesson goes beyond technology. The bigger shift is what becomes possible when an organization decides its job is to help the region win and then invests in the infrastructure that makes that possible. Digital tools handle the navigation layer at scale, freeing chamber teams for the relationship work that can’t be automated. When a chamber positions itself as a convener rather than a competitor, the ecosystem around it gets stronger.
Watch the full webinar on YouTube.
About the Speakers
Ashley Engles-Ross, MPA, IOM, is Vice President of Small Business at the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce, where she leads the chamber’s small business office and the Women’s Business Council. Her work focuses on curating programming, advancing entrepreneurship, and driving community engagement across one of the fastest-growing technology and aerospace regions in the country.
Chad Hamman is Vice President of Membership and Product Development at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, where he leads small business membership sales, member engagement, and the portfolio of member benefits for GCP’s small business arm, COSE (Council of Smaller Enterprises). He oversees the regional growth metrics for small and mid-size enterprises as part of GCP’s all-in strategic plan.
Sherrod Davis is co-founder and CEO of EcoMap Technologies. EcoMap works with regional innovation hubs, state economic developers, ecosystem builders, and industry leaders across more than 30 states and five countries, delivering a suite of solutions that centralize and update ecosystem information as part of the Ecosystem Intelligence™ product suite.
Frequently Asked Questions
What role do chambers of commerce play in regional economic development?
Chambers serve as conveners, connectors, and navigation points for the businesses in their regions. They help small business owners find the right resources at the right time, advocate for policy changes that affect the broader business community, and bring public and private sector leaders together around shared goals. The most effective chambers focus on regional outcomes rather than their own organizational visibility.
How are chambers using digital infrastructure to serve members better?
Many chambers are investing in shared resource hubs, AI-powered tools, and CRM-driven member engagement systems to extend their reach without growing their teams. The Huntsville/Madison County Chamber and the Greater Cleveland Partnership both use EcoMap to power resource hubs that consolidate hundreds of regional programs into a single navigable platform.
How does a chamber decide where to fill a gap versus collaborate with existing partners? The most effective chambers begin by listening. They identify whether a gap already has someone working to fill it, then either expand that work in partnership or convene multiple organizations to build something new. This approach prevents duplication and reinforces the credibility chambers earn by supporting the broader ecosystem rather than competing within it.
What makes a chamber’s resource hub more useful than a standard directory?
Resource hubs powered by AI and automation surface current, vetted information about regional programs, events, and support organizations. Unlike static directories, they reflect real-time changes in the ecosystem and connect users to the next best step rather than leaving them to navigate alone. When a chamber operates the hub, members benefit from the chamber’s vetting and convening role.
How can chambers measure their impact on regional growth?
The strongest impact metrics tie chamber activity to community-wide outcomes like business growth, income growth, and job creation. Chambers that focus on regional outcomes, rather than internal metrics, are better positioned to demonstrate value to boards, policymakers, and members alike. Effective storytelling pairs those metrics with concrete examples of behind-the-scenes convening work.