Susan Davenport, President/CEO of the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce, will be GAWN's featured speaker at our luncheon on January 18.  Please join us for lunch and learn more about the Chamber's vision and mission for this area. Registration is available here.

The Gainesville Area Chamber is a five-star accredited Chamber of Commerce with more than 1,300 members. Susan oversees the strategic operations of the Chamber, and guides a team of vice presidents and directors in the oversight of the organization’s programs, initiatives and day-to-day operations.

In 2015, Susan was promoted to her current role after serving for two years as the Chamber’s Vice President of Economic Development. Since her arrival in 2013, the Chamber’s Council for Economic Outreach has announced the creation of more than 1,000 jobs and more than $400 million in new  capital investment.

Susan came to Gainesville in 2013 after spending 13 years with the Austin Chamber of Commerce, most recently as Senior Vice President of Global Tech Strategies. While there she served as a key team member for the Opportunity Austin strategy which created over 174,000 new jobs and enhanced regional payrolls by $8.7 billion over an 8-year period from 2004-2012. During her tenure in Austin she developed and executed Austin’s regional business retention and expansion program, Portfolio Austin, where over 4,800 regional retention visits were undertaken with 520 regional expansions tracked. She also developed and managed the Central Texas Regional Center for Innovation and Commercialization, which resulted in assisting 34 companies accessing $60 million in funding with an additional $30 million for local research and university projects. Susan also developed the Greater Austin Technology Partnership and Austin TechLive, which engaged over 100 regional technology executives in various economic development activities and supported entrepreneurism through a downtown co-working technology hub partner.

Susan received a Master of Public Affairs from The University of Texas at Austin and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from The University of Texas Medical Branch. She is also a graduate of the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma and is associated with the International Economic Development Institute.