Chamber names new executive

By David Delcore
david.delcore @timesargus.com
BERLIN — The board of the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce ended a national search for the organization’s next chief executive by practicing what its membership preaches. It bought local.

In a decision announced Monday, the board unanimously elected Kevin Eschelbach, a Barre man with executive experience, to fill the vacancy created when Bill Moore stepped down as the chamber’s last full-time president in July.

Since Moore’s departure, veteran board member and treasurer Edward Larson has served as interim president. The board launched a search Larson said attracted nearly 30 applicants from across the country, including several, like Eschelbach, from here in Vermont.

According to Larson, the list of applicants was quickly screened down to seven and then five. Those semi-finalists — one from Minnesota, one from Florida and three from Vermont — all participated in two rounds of Skype interviews before three finalists were chosen.

Though one withdrew, Larson said the two others — both Vermonters — were interviewed in person with Eschelbach receiving the unanimous nod.

“We talked to qualified candidates from throughout the country, but we found the right candidate in our own back yard,” board chairman Joseph Choquette III said of Eschelbach, who is a senior district executive in the northeast quadrant of Vermont for the Boy Scouts of America.

Choquette said Eschelbach, who grew up in Vermont, graduated from Burlington High School in 1995 and now lives in Barre, is up to speed on the issues facing the state and familiar with its politics and people. That, coupled with Eschelbach’s experience running a nonprofit organization, recruiting volunteers and managing events, more than made up for the fact he doesn’t have a history with the chamber.

“He (Eschelbach) had the combination of skills we thought were a good fit for the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce,” Coquette said. “We’re very pleased to welcome him aboard.”

Eschelbach is set to start work on Dec. 9 and the chamber’s six-month arrangement with Larson, which runs through the end of the year, will provide some meaningful overlap.

Choquette said plans are in place for Eschelbach to attend a four-day program on organization and management that is offered by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in January.

Eschelbach said he is eager to get started.

“I’m excited for the opportunity to work with the business and professional community in central Vermont,” he said. “There’s a lot we can do together.”

As a senior district executive with the Boy Scouts, Eschelbach lead more than 200 volunteers and approximately 1,000 youth in Chittenden, Franklin, Grand Isle and Lamoille counties. He was responsible for all aspects of district operations, including administration, fundraising, volunteer recruitment and support, youth recruitment and programming. He was also responsible for the soup to nuts management of events from financing and promotion to making sure they were well-staffed and well-attended.

Like Choquette, Larson described those attributes as assets and said they explained why he emerged as a finalist and was ultimately offered the job.

“His (Eschelbach’s) ability to manage volunteers is going to be huge for us,” Larson predicted.

Larson said the search was both thorough and successful.

“It was a very rigorous process,” he said, noting the search attracted a deeper pool of qualified candidates than the one that led to Moore’s hiring four years ago.

That search produced more than twice as many applicants, but Larson said Moore was one of the few that were actually qualified to run the organization that represents businesses throughout Washington and Orange counties.

Choquette said Larson has ably done that in the interim, bailing out the local chamber as it prepared to launch what was only its second administrative search in more than 40 years. The first ended when Moore was hired four years ago to replace George Malek, who served as the chamber’s chief executive for 37 years before retiring. Malek, a longtime Orange resident, died in 2017.

Choquette described Larson as a “consummate professional” whose willingness to step up and ability to stand in bridged the gap between Moore, who left to take a comparable job in Connecticut, and Eschelbach.

“We were really, really lucky that we had Ed (Larson) available,” he said.

Eschelbach has an associates degree in criminal justice and a bachelor’s degree in general studies from Ashworth College. Prior to taking his current job with the Boy Scouts in 2013, he worked in retail. Most of that time was spent working for Shaw’s supermarket, though he worked briefly for Rite Aid pharmacy in Montpelier, and for a year at Dollar General in Barre.