As the new executive director of the Chicago Southland Chamber of Commerce, Jennel Hooper said her goals are to ensure a good environment for existing businesses in the region to thrive and to attract businesses.
Hooper replaces Terri Winfree as director of the organization, which works to promote businesses in the south and southwest suburbs.
Based in East Hazel Crest, the chamber was founded in 1935 and serves five counties in Illinois and northwest Indiana.
Winfree was executive director for the chamber for the past four years.
Hooper’s work with the chamber extends to 2007, working as a consultant on digital connectivity in the south suburbs and guiding new and prospective chamber members on the organization’s benefits.
“I want to make sure businesses are able to sustain themselves at a time when brick and mortar places of business are going away,” Hooper said Friday.
A priority is “growing the business communities we have, sustaining the local businesses we have already and encouraging residents to shop local,” the Matteson resident and mother of four said.
A graduate of Rich Township High School District 227, Hooper said that she “remembers the Southland of my teenage years,” growing up in Matteson.
She said that once-thriving business corridors, such as U.S. 30 in Matteson, can be revived around the south suburbs.
“We can get back to that,” she said. “I think we have the potential, and we are perfectly situated for that to be a bustling area again.”
Hooper said that Lincoln Mall in Matteson, since demolished with plans by the village for new development there, took away shopping opportunities for residents.
“We are having to venture further and further out for certain things,” she said.
High property taxes in the south suburbs have been an obstacle to commercial development, with communities having to offer property and sales tax incentives to draw new business.
Hooper said she hopes the Southland Chamber, despite the property tax obstacle, can still work to bring commercial development to the area, focusing on making stronger connections between residents and businesses in the communities where they live.
“I want to come at this from a holistic approach,” she said. “The Southland area is rich in resources and they just need to connect, and we want chamber to be an avenue.”
“If there are more businesses moving into the towns, that would help in reducing property taxes overall,” Hooper said. “Thriving communities are made of thriving individuals that support the local businesses.”
The Southland Chamber has long been a proponent of a third airport in the south suburbs, and Hooper said that support would continue. The proposed airport is intially anticipated to be a hub for cargo.
“It will be a resource for creating new jobs in the Southland,” she said.
Hooper said she was considered among a number of candidates for the executive director job and interviewed with chamber officers.
She has an extensive background as a digital navigator, having received training at the Illinois Broadband Lab in Urbana and working in Cook County.
Her training involved coordinating digital equity programs at the local level, particularly in the south suburbs, and providing support for digital skills and computer training.
Hooper was part of the county’s digital equity program — focusing on underserved county suburbs — for its rollout of the federal Affordable Connectivity Program.
The program offered things such as money for eligible households to pay for internet access, and the county also distributed computers and other devices as part of its broader digital equity efforts. Federal money for the program, however, was paused last February, and the initiative formally came to an end around the country last June.
Hooper continued her work as a digital navigator with the Southland Chamber last summer.
She and her two adult daughters also founded the Matteson-based Kings Hill Development Foundation last year.
“That is their brainchild,” she said.
The foundation is focused on youth mentoring and providing financial literacy and financial planning to area residents.
Hooper said she wants to familiarize herself with the chamber’s strategic plan, and that Winfree “created a solid foundation I will be able to build on.”
Winfree was president of Prairie State College in Chicago Heights from 2013 until stepping down in 2020. She was hired as the chamber’s executive director in August 2020.
At Prairie State, she had held a number of positions, including associate dean and dean for continuing professional education.
The first person in her family to attend college, Winfree was the first woman and first Prairie State graduate to lead the college. She received her associate’s degree from Prairie State in 1996, followed by a bachelor of arts degree two years later.
