Stroman hits the ground running as new CEO
Kelly Stroman, the new president and CEO of the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce. Photo
No school exists for Chamber of Commerce Executives. Business school might be helpful, but it won’t teach you about navigating local politics, much less community building. Nor will political science prepare you to advocate for a few hundred businesses and their very specific and occasionally conflicting interests. A law degree wouldn’t prepare you for any of the above.
But if there were a school to prepare a future executive specifically for the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce, it might look a lot like the last 20 years of Kelly Stroman’s life.
Stroman was appointed the Chamber’s new president and CEO in December and started work Jan. 7. She spent the last five and a half years as the executive director of the Downtown Manhattan Beach Business and Professionals Association, and in that capacity not only learned the fine art of small business advocacy but also the many-tentacled nature of local politics. Her background also includes several years working with the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation, five years in sales, marketing, and social media and 11 years with one of the best brand-builders in the world, the Estée Lauder Companies. Stroman has also lived in this community 20 years and raised children here.
“To be honest, she’s a perfect fit for the Chamber — an absolutely wonderful person, a great executer, and very well known in the community,” said Brad Sperber, chairman of the MB Chamber’s board of directors. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Stroman has hit the ground running. Her immediate priority is simply to learn the lay of the land. But her familiarity with the local business and political landscape has made the learning curve decidedly less steep.
“I know so many players already and have amazing deep working relationships with all the department heads and most city staff, city council past, present, and future — I know all of them,” she said. “I have relationships with a lot of the big businesses, small businesses, a lot of the landholders and landlords… I am still fact-finding, but I know I’d like to raise the level of the business acumen and what we can offer to the business community.”
“I don’t mean to get sentimental here, but it feels really natural,” Stroman said. “It’s been a few weeks and I did hit the ground running. I haven’t stumbled yet.”
Stroman has served on the MB Chamber board for the last three years and thus has had purview into the organization’s evolution and ongoing challenges. She admires the direction both her immediate predecessors, James O’Callaghan and Mark Lipps, took the Chamber and hopes to find a way to build on what they accomplished.
“When James was here, he rebranded and redid the marketing and logo and created some new events,” she said. “Mark reconnected the Chamber to the community, I think. Everyone brings to this position a different kind of experience and history and what have you. I am hoping to take all of that, add more, and take it to the next level.”
Stroman’s leadership at the DMBBPA raised both her own and the organization’s profile locally. She was instrumental in growing the Farmers Market from a fledgling, little-known event to one of the South Bay’s most popular and vibrant markets. Her ability to bring disparate groups together and to clearly articulate often complex issues during the city’s Downtown Specific Plan process made her increasingly a key player in local civic life.
“Here’s what I think is so valuable about Kelly,” said Councilperson Amy Howorth. “I think Kelly did a great job in terms of advocacy — she would represent her group’s needs and struggles to council, but she did so in a very intelligent way. She didn’t ever over-do it; she didn’t cry wolf, ever, and she always brought solutions to the table and always brought valuable information to any discussion we had. I came to really value her input. I like the way her mind works.”
Her fact-based approach is coupled with a natural inclination to work with and not against those who may have opposing viewpoints. During the Specific Plan process, she brought together groups who had very different interests in a way that helped establish some common ground.
“I brought the downtown business and resident groups together, and landlords, to sit in one room and talk…We brought that all together,” she said. “Does that mean we all agreed on every single issue? Of course not. But we agreed to disagree and treat each other with respect and out of that to try and strike some balance. We heard each other and were able to then understand why each party felt the way they did. Everybody left something on the table.”
Stroman is originally from Sacramento. She attended California State University Long Beach, earning a degree in speech communication, and then spent a decade with Estée Lauder. She rose from sales to become a spokesperson for the company.
“That is where my retail and branding background come from, working for an organization like that on so many different levels. The corporate branding, strategy, and messaging…It was just phenomenal,” Stroman said. “I learned a lot. I even got to work with Leonard Lauder. It was great training, and the work ethic was a great foundation for my professional life.”
Stroman came to Manhattan Beach 20 years ago, right before she had her first child. Howorth has known her for much that time; their sons were on the same first-grade soccer team. She’s observed Stroman both as a friend and a professional and can’t shake the feeling that the Chamber has found a perfect leader.
“The Chamber is at a really interesting point in time, I think — not just our chamber, but any chamber,” Howorth said. “They have an opportunity to define what they want to do and what their role is going to be. Wherever the board and its different members want to go, Kelly can take them there. I have a lot of faith in her abilities. Choosing her, I think, was both an obvious and a brilliant choice.”
Stroman has been thinking a lot of a quote by Bobby Unser, brother of race car driver Al Unser:
“Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.”
“I’m taking a lot of what I’ve known and accomplished and taking it to the next step,” she said. “It’s shifting gears and changing lanes and then off to the races. For the business community, for the resident community, for the city-level community — I’m hoping to pull all that together and be the voice that connects those voices.”
“I love making a difference for other people, and connecting people, and I think I’m really good at understanding needs, diving deep into issues or opportunities, and then connecting the dots. That comes from being involved in the community for a long time, but also really listening, and being able to know what questions to ask.”