Missouri Chamber of Commerce President, Dan Mehan, has retired after 29 years with the state’s largest business organization, 26 as president. Mehan looks back with pride on the Chamber’s accomplishments, especially its wins in the Missouri Legislature, pushing for workers compensation updates, changes to civil jurisprudence, economic development, and infrastructure.
“Nothing less than historic,” he said. “This last year, when we’ve funded I-70 reconstruction and serious improvements for Interstate 44 as well.”
Mehan also led the Chamber to be more assertive politically by forming the Missouri Chamber Political Action Committee and the Missouri Political Institute.
“This is not a sport for the timid, politics that is,” he explained. “Business deserves and has the right to be heard as much as any constituency out there.”
Mehan also helped the Chamber establish a 15-year strategic plan called Missouri 2030: An Agenda to Lead, which he said has been instrumental in passing some needed economic proposals.
“I’m very proud of that impact that we’ve been able to have and the support that we’ve been able to earn,” Mehan said. “First, there’s going to be doubt in any new idea, but once you prove it and once we were able to do what we said we were going to do, then the support and the confidence and the trust just flowed from that.”
Kara Corches is the interim president and CEO of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Missouri Chamber Board of Directors Executive Committee will begin a search for the organization’s permanent president and CEO.
By Brent Martin of Missourinet affiliate KFEQ in St. Joseph.
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