March 29, 2024

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Sandy Parker, longtime Rochester small business community chief has died

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Sandy Parker, the longtime head of the former Rochester Business enterprise Alliance and a single of the most influential forces in the location, died Saturday. She was 75.

Mates and previous small business associates confirmed her loss of life and claimed it was unexpected.

Parker was a critical participant in forming what right now is acknowledged as the Larger Rochester Chamber of Commerce.

It was Parker, who as head of the nonprofit business organization, Industrial Management Council, orchestrated a merger amongst her team and what was then the Larger Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce in 2002. The two groups mixed the next 12 months to form the Rochester Enterprise Alliance, which was later rebranded as the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce.

The bringing together of the two groups was no smaller feat. Carrying out so expected the two teams to established apart bitter dissimilarities that in 1994 resulted in the head of the Bigger Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Mooney, staying taken out from the Industrial Administration Council board.

Melding the chamber, which encourages regional businesses, and the council, which offered human methods services and teaching to location businesses, successfully built the Rochester Enterprise Alliance a much better advocate for the area’s enterprise neighborhood and an influential power in a broad assortment of local community issues, including education and learning guidelines, publicly-financed construction jobs, and skyrocketing health and fitness care expenditures.

Mooney headed the newly fashioned Rochester Company Alliance through 2004, and Parker took in excess of from there in advance of ceding her title as president to previous mayor and lieutenant governor Robert Duffy in 2015.

All through her time at the helm of the firm, Parker was regarded as a facilitator and an astute diplomat who was qualified at coaching, cueing, and coddling a broad collection of Rochester businesses, from significant and modest makers to health care corporations, academic institutions, nonprofit corporations, and vendors.

In 2006, barely far more than a year into her phrase as president of the Rochester Small business Alliance, she brokered one more merger that noticed the alliance take in the nonprofit business collective, Rump Group, which was headed by regional developer and entrepreneur, John “Dutch” Summers, who she would later on marry.  

On Sunday, Jennifer Leonard, president and CEO of Rochester Space Neighborhood Foundation also referred to Parker’s capacity “to pull with each other different sectors of our local community, on behalf of the group.”

Leonard said that Parker constructed a coalition that went every 12 months to Albany with a established of unified requests. In terms of Parker’s leadership design, Leonard claimed that, “She was inclined to be out front when she necessary to be and she was joyful to be guiding the scenes creating items happen.”

When Parker retired from the Rochester Business enterprise Alliance, she explained to WXXI Information in a December 2014 job interview that when she experienced not understood she would be in her function at the RBA as extensive as she was, she would nonetheless overlook the operate.

“This occupation has been really satisfying to me, it is been excellent from the standpoint that just about every working day, it is been some thing diverse. I’ve gotten to meet many various, just genuinely thrilling and attention-grabbing folks at all amounts throughout the point out, I’m going to pass up that,” Parker mentioned.

Later in her tenure at the Rochester Enterprise Alliance, Parker would co-found Unshackle Upstate, a coalition of business groups that has given that been renamed Upstate United and advocates for lessen taxes and fewer polices in New York to spur financial growth. 

On Sunday, Duffy produced a assertion calling Parker, “an unsung hero in the Better Rochester neighborhood for a long time, contributing her time, assets, and skills to plenty of philanthropic and financial growth initiatives. In partnership with her spouse, Dutch Summers, Sandy’s contributions to, and passion for, educational endeavors were unmatched.”

Duffy mentioned that, “Without exaggeration, hundreds of younger minds ended up shaped and enhanced thanks to the generosity of Sandy, who observed these children by from grammar faculty to their university graduations. Sandy quietly seeded goodness all through the Rochester group for many years, sitting on dozens of boards and councils, never ever seeking consideration or recognition.

“Sandy Parker experienced a pr
ofound effects on me individually and skillfully, usually providing a must have assistance and direction during every single stage of my profession. Sandy’s story will be instructed in the coming times, weeks, months, and a long time by the lots of, lots of people today whose lives ended up touched and created far better by her,” Duffy mentioned.

Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren issued this statement on Sunday:

“Sandy Parker was a warrior and winner for employers in Greater Rochester, serving to lead the location by challenging moments. She was at any time vigilant in guaranteeing that Rochester’s small business neighborhood was listened to by community leaders and that they responded to the needs of our regional economic system.

“I will recall her from my days doing the job for former Assemblyman David Gantt with whom she experienced a robust partnership. Her passing is a unfortunate day for our town, but we will stay grateful to her for generating our neighborhood a terrific put to stay and work. My sincere condolences go out to her spouse, John “Dutch” Summers, and all of her loved ones and loved kinds,” Warren explained.

Jaime Saunders, President & CEO at the United Way of Bigger Rochester stated that Parker was a mentor for her and quite a few many others. “Sandy, really for many years, was a person of pretty number of gals in the space and she held opening doorways for many others alongside her path. Most recently she has the Parker Students at Mercy Significant Faculties, she’s been passionate in creating chances offered to any one and absolutely everyone. She considered in alternatives and options,” Saunders stated.

David Andreatta is Editor at City, a media partner of WXXI. He can be arrived at at [email protected].

Randy Gorbman is News Director at WXXI, He can be achieved at  [email protected] 

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