This story appears in the June 2026 issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.
If you haven’t found your way into active chamber participation, let me say this plainly: we need you. Joining a chamber is the easy part. What we actually need is you: your industry knowledge, your relationships, your willingness to engage. Active participation in your chamber is one of the most direct ways a business leader can shape the state their children and grandchildren will inherit.
Not long ago, I sat in a meeting where a business leader raised a concern many Utahns now recognize: employees struggling to afford housing near their work. Everyone in the room understood the issue. What became clear was not whether housing was a problem, but how differently it was affecting each industry. For some, it meant unfilled positions. For others, longer commutes, higher turnover or stalled growth.
What followed was not immediate. It took time, conversations, coordination and persistence. But that shared recognition helped shape a more sustained effort to align business needs, local planning and public policy around housing. That is how this work happens. Not through a single voice, but through a unified voice of people willing to show up, speak up and stay engaged.
That story is not an exception. It is the pattern. What most Utahns do not see is how much of Utah’s success is traceable; not to a single policy win or economic report, but to the accumulated weight of people choosing to participate.
Utah’s economy is not resilient and strong by accident. It requires sustained, coordinated advocacy and business leaders willing to spend a morning in a legislative subcommittee hearing instead of at their desks. And it certainly does not happen without the relationships and trust that chamber participation builds over time.
The Salt Lake Chamber has been building that foundation for more than a century. What strikes me most is not just the policy victories, but the continuity. There is an unbroken line of business leaders who decided, year after year, that Utah’s future was worth their time. That conviction did not fade when the political environment was difficult or the work was slow. It persisted. And because it persisted, Utah became what it is today.
These are leaders who want to be more than beneficiaries of Utah’s strong economy. They want to be architects and builders of Utah’s continued prosperity.
In 2025, the Utah Chamber was created to extend that continuity statewide, bringing the same seriousness of purpose to all 29 counties and ensuring that the business voice in Utah is genuinely unified rather than geographically fragmented. The stakes for getting that right have never been higher. The 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will place Utah in front of the world again. The investments, policies and relationships being built right now determine what the world sees when it arrives and, most importantly, what kind of state our children inherit.
The work ahead is significant. Housing affordability is one of many pressing economic challenges in the state. Transportation infrastructure demands sustained investment. Energy reliability is not a given. Workforce development must evolve as industries change faster than our systems. These are not new issues, but the urgency is real.
What gives me confidence is the people who call Utah home. Utah has a deep supply of leaders who understand that their success and their community’s success are not separate; building a thriving business and building a thriving Utah are the same project, pursued in the same rooms by the same people.
You are those people. Find your local, regional or state chamber, get involved and lend your voice. Then keep showing up because the future of our state is built by you, the people in those rooms.
