A Q&A with Matt Morrow, new Chamber of Commerce president

Early last Monday, as most people were still drinking their morning coffee, Matt Morrow began his first day as president of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce at a local news/talk radio station, KWTO.

It was a fitting start in a familiar setting for Morrow. After all, working in radio launched him on a communications career path that would transition into leadership and advocacy roles in Missouri, Washington, D.C. and Birmingham, Ala.

The Ozarks native was selected earlier this year to lead the chamber after Jim Anderson retired from the position in June.

Morrow's wife, Rachel, and kids Anna, 10, and Alex, 7, are still in Birmingham. In 2012, Morrow left his position as CEO of the Home Builders Association of Greater Springfield to take a similar job at the larger Greater Birmingham Association of Home Builders. Sometime early next year, his family will make the transition back to the Ozarks where plenty of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins eagerly await, according to Morrow.

Recently, the News-Leader sat down with Morrow to learn more about him and what he envisions for the chamber. Here is an except from that conversation.

One message he repeated frequently is that the chamber's mission is to grow the economy, expand jobs and create economic opportunity for everybody who lives here.

NL: Why did you take the job as president of Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce?

MM: Springfield is a community that is special, unique even, and the Chamber of Commerce here is one of the most outstanding organizations I've ever had the privilege of being a part of. And that's before coming to work here. I was an active member of this chamber for years and had the privilege of serving on the board for a time. ... This staff team is fantastic. The people who are members of the boards of directors here, and other volunteers in the organization, give of themselves in a way that is also uncommon. ... One of many very compelling reasons to want to do this is the membership mix at the chamber of commerce and the outstanding team of professional staff that is here.

My predecessor use to say this is the best job in Springfield and I think he's probably right.

NL: Do you plan any immediate changes?

MM: No radical changes, I can promise you that, because this community and this Chamber of Commerce are built on a very strong foundation, so I hope to be part of a team that will build on that.

We are in the process ... finalizing what will be a three-year strategic plan, and that is scheduled for final review and adoption later this month. It allows us to focus on immediate and long term goals.

It will be on our website so everyone will have access to it and see what we have in mind, and what we are doing on our part to make this a better community.

NL: What's it like to follow someone as well-known as Jim Anderson in this job?

MM: Jim Anderson did an amazing job. … He was outstanding at putting together a great team so I have that benefit, also. I can't think of a better person to follow than Jim Anderson.

NL: Any concerns about comparisons?

MM: Well, we're not the same people. And nobody would be. If I am here for 26 years, whoever comes in after me will be different than I am too.

NL: What main goals do you envision for the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce?

MM: I hope that everything we do will be about growing the economy, expanding jobs and creating economic opportunity for everybody who lives here. …We are involved in a whole bunch of stuff in the community, but all of it, our purpose, from membership drives to our efforts on diversity and our efforts to curb poverty and a variety of things we are involved with in the community — all of those are, for us, helping to promoting and advance that vision.

NL: How does the Chamber's mission mesh with the community's social concerns including hunger and poverty?

MM: The most important thing we can remember is we are one community striving for success collectively as a group.

Each organization, each person, has a role to play in that. As the Chamber of Commerce, the thing we are most qualified to do is to really focus on expanding that economic opportunity.

If we can bring in new business, bring in new industry, if we help the businesses here become as strong as they can possibly be and to expand and grow, and provide those opportunities, if we can work with our educational institutions to properly match and equip a workforce for tomorrow's needs in this economy ... If we do that, and do that effectively, a lot of the other challenge that sometimes face our community, even social challenges, societal issues, those big problems will become much smaller, much more manageable.

NL: What is the biggest economic challenge facing our community?

MM: What we hear most from employers in terms of their biggest unmet need … they are having a hard time finding employees to match up with the skills that they need and the jobs they need to be done. …While our unemployment numbers have come down, they are still higher than they were pre-recession so we know there are people who are out there looking for work. And we know there are employers out there saying they are having a hard time finding employees. …

What I believe is happening is that we've come to a place where there is not a lack of workforce, but a badly mismatched workforce.

That's not surprising when you think about the changes in our economy over the last decade. There is a fundamentally different economy today than, not a generation ago, but 10 years ago.

NL: Can you share some examples?

MM: We hear a lot from our manufacturing employers, which is not a surprise given the rapidly changing technology in that industry, during the recession and after the recession. … Manufacturing industries have changed a lot and their needs have changed a lot. And so, that's a really big one.

I come out of the construction field and people think, how different can it be? You still build buildings. … Construction is a field we don't normally think of as a rapidly changing , evolving field, but it's happening everywhere.

NL: What are some solutions?

MM: One of the real assets we have in Springfield is willing partners in the educational system. Whether you are talking about Springfield Public Schools, the four-year universities, the tech schools, community colleges, private schools, these are all partners … people we see multiple times a week that are constantly working together toward solutions.

Thankfully, there is some very innovative thinking going on with many of those partners.

NL: Where does diversity fit in the puzzle?

MM: We need to be a welcoming community. And I think we are a welcoming community. But like everything else we should always be evaluating ourselves. When I say we are a welcoming community that doesn't mean I think we are perfect or have everything just right.

From an economic development standpoint, from a chamber standpoint, we want global companies to move, operate and expand here. … Those are big companies. Big companies compete globally and to connect you need people all around the world. That's a compelling economic development argument for why that diverse workforce is important.

NL: What does Springfield do best?

MM: When we are at our best, we are best at collaborating. That demonstrates itself in a lot of different ways. And we are not always at our best. ... But when we are at our best, we are as good at collaborating as any community I have ever seen.

I think this economics and workforce development thing is a great illustration of that. There are not many communities where your institutions of higher learning and your schools, your business community and nonprofits all sort of agree on what the big picture goals are, and they each see and recognize they have a piece to contribute to that, that in the end will lead to big results. That's uncommon.

NL: How did you meet your wife Rachel?

MM: We met in college, at SBU. She grew up in Huston, Mo., and I grew up in Bolivar. And we were on the debate team together at Southwest Baptist. Two big nerds who spent their weekends doing that.

NL: How do you explain your varied career path, starting in radio, to leading a Chamber of Commerce today?

MM: My path is not anything I could have dreamed of for myself. The only way I can describe it is, the providence of God on my life and I believe on the lives of others as well.

NL: As a student, what did you want to do?

MM: When I was in college I wanted to be a radio sportscaster and grew up listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon on the radio, calling the St. Louis Cardinals baseball games and that's what I wanted to do. So in college I worked weekends and Friday nights at some football games and enjoyed doing it.

NL: Do you have a favorite memory?

MM: I always loved the play-by-play on football, baseball and basketball games. I always had a good time doing that. There was one year that I got to call a state championship football game and that was great fun, over at Faurot Field in Columbia.

It's one of the things that you look at the job and say, it must be a lot of fun. Well, it is a lot of fun.

NL: Could you call a game today?

MM: Well, I would probably have to dust a little bit of the rust off (laughs). Maybe a baseball game.

NL: How did you go from radio into politics?

MM: Right out of college my most immediate opportunity was for a small market radio station at the time in Buffalo, Mo., and you wear a lot of hats. So I was doing the sports but also doing a lot of the news and sales and marketing, and in the course of doing news began to have more interest in government and politics.

I had known Roy Blunt, who was president of Southwest Baptist University when I was a student there, and running for congress at the time, and I volunteered for him. He pointed me to John Ashcroft and Kit Bond. I got a job with them and because of my background in communication, I started doing communications with them. I became more involved in the advocacy game a little bit in Washington.

NL: You and Rachel lived in Washington – what brought you back to Springfield?

MM: We felt like if we were going to start a family we preferred to not do it there. We started looking around here, and friends of this Chamber of Commerce introduced me to Sam Bradley who was the President of the Home Builders Association of Springfield. And they were looking to get more involved in the advocacy of the industry here. … So they hired me to be an association manager, a job that I had never done before and didn't know how to do, but they were willing to take a chance on me because of my political background.

They asked me for a two-year commitment and I was there for 12 years.

NL: When you took the job in Birmingham, did you expect to come back to Springfield?

MM: Once you leave, you don't really anticipate the opportunity to come back. When this (chamber job) became available, friends encouraged me to apply. After a lot of prayer with my wife and our kids, we decided that we ought to explore it.

NL: When will your family join you?

MM: We expect it will be sometime after the first of the year. We have a house there we want to sell. Our kids are involved in a number of things and we want to at least get them to the end of some activities. My daughter is in the school play in February — some things like that.

We expect there will be some back and forth commuting. It's basically the move we did two years ago, in reverse.

The better part this time is, when they come to visit me here, they are also coming to visit family, and with the holidays, we would all be here anyway. So that will be good. We hope it will be a short time.

NL: How are your kids handling the change?

MM: They are very excited to come back. … For us, for me, I could not be more thankful that God has protected our family the way he has during this period of time and one of the great demonstrations of that is how well they adjusted and adapted and made friends in Birmingham, and that they are also excited about coming back. … That's a provision that I could never have provided for our family, and it has been provided.

Meet Matt Morrow

Current job: Started Nov. 17 as new Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce President

Education: Bachelor's Degree in Communication; Master's in Business Administration from Southwest Baptist University

Family: Wife Rachel owns independent consulting and market research, Morrow & Associates; daughter Anna, 10, and son Alex, 7.

Ozarks connection: Grew up in Bolivar; parents, younger sister and her family live in Bolivar; a grandmother lives in Clinton; wife Rachel grew up in Houston, Mo.

Career path:

•Started in radio broadcasting in the mid-1990s, moving into news and management

•Missouri Press Secretary and District Director for then-U.S. Senator John Ashcraft, working in Missouri and Washington D.C. for nearly five years; served as Communications Director for Missouri Republican Party during 2000 election cycle

•CEO of the Home Builders Association of Greater Springfield, working 12 years

•Executive Vice President of the Greater Birmingham Association of Home Builders, the fifth largest local home builders association in the nation

•Served as a member and later Secretary of Council (2013) and President (2014) of the National Association of Home Builders Executive Officers Council; recognized as New Executive of the Year (2002) and Executive Officer of the Year (2007)