Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce names new CEO

The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce’s committee of directors connected Tuesday named J.J. Ament, caput of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., arsenic the chamber’s caller president and CEO.

Ament, 49, replaces outgoing president and CEO Kelly Brough, who announced her departure successful aboriginal June aft 12 years of starring the concern group. Her last time was Sept. 1.

After netting what it called 425 “highly-qualified” candidates, the board, successful the end, decided the champion idiosyncratic to regenerate Brough was already successful the chamber’s office building, moving the group’s economical improvement limb for the past four-and-a-half years.

Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce

J.J. Ament was named the caller president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce connected Sept. 7.

“J.J.’s intimate cognition of the Chamber, the concern assemblage and the portion is invaluable for bringing stability, continuity and consistency to a analyzable organization,” Mark Spiecker, president of the chamber’s committee and president of STAQ Pharma, said successful a statement.

Before joining the EDC successful 2017, Ament was president of the Colorado Economic Development Commission, which oversaw the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade and voted connected inducement awards, a station helium held for six years. He is besides committee treasurer astatine Careerwise Colorado and trustee of the National Western Stock Show Association.

A autochthonal of Logan County and postgraduate of the University of Colorado Boulder Leeds School of Business, Ament worked for years arsenic an concern banker successful municipal finance, including stints astatine RBC Capital Markets, Citigroup and UBS.

“Denver is astatine a crossroads — facing an ongoing pandemic, dilatory but dependable concern betterment and a precocious magnitude of turnover successful some companies and section leadership,” said Ament, successful the release. “It’s a captious clip for our concern assemblage to coalesce astir the needs of the system and workforce. I look guardant to moving with our partners successful a shared effort to code the issues we look and program unneurotic for the roadworthy ahead. It’s important that we get this right.”

Jennifer Kostka, a spokeswoman for the chamber, said a hunt would statesman instantly to find a caller CEO for the EDC, which has amassed its biggest firm imaginable database successful six years. Sam Bailey, who was the group’s vice president of economical improvement and would person been a imaginable successor, near successful June to caput up Amazon’s economical improvement efforts successful the Rocky Mountain region.