🔒A new outlook: MetroWest chamber’s new CEO leans into community engagement and growth as he begins his tenure

Reyad Shah believes in the power of connection.

He’s made a career off his ability to build lasting relationships. That skill will be put on its largest stage yet as he steps into his newly minted role as president and CEO of the Framingham-based MetroWest Chamber of Commerce.

With 350 members, the MetroWest chamber is the seventh largest chamber of commerce in Central Massachusetts, according to an annual survey conducted by WBJ’s Research Department. When he started in September, Shah became the first person of color to lead the chamber in its 129-year history.

“He's got a lot of energy. He's young and driven and local,” said Craig Lizotte, board chair of the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce.

Shah plans on leveraging his experience in public education and nonprofit work to promote education among business owners, boost the region’s workforce, and make sure the voices of the chamber’s members are heard.

“As a young kid growing up, I've traveled to all of these locations and have experiences and memories of something in all of these towns and cities that surround Framingham,” said Shah. “I'm really excited to help shape my community impact in the scope of the chamber.”

A native leader

A Framingham native, Shah has a story to tell for just about every corner of the state’s MetroWest region, an attribute Lizotte said was important to the chamber’s board when it selected a replacement for Jim Giammarinaro, who had held the executive leadership role since 2019.

Having grown up attending the city’s public schools, Shah began his career within the Framingham Public School system in 2015 at Walsh Middle School as a special education teacher’s assistant. Shah quickly rose through the ranks, ending his seven-year tenure with FPS as the manager of Flyers After School, where he managed three middle school programs, the high school program, and the adult education program he helped launch.

“It started to really show what community impact looked like for me,” Shah said. “Scope that into, ‘Okay, what is the larger community impact that I can have in the community that helped shape me?’”

After leaving FPS, in 2023 Shah became the executive director of Downtown Framingham Inc., a nonprofit working to bolster the area’s economic and cultural landscape, after he previously served on the organization’s board. He saw the move as a way to support the businesses he patronized and those owned by the parents of children he once taught.

Then the chamber position became available.

Crafting a strategic plan

Shah has been tasked with creating the chamber’s strategic plan. Lizotte said the chamber is made up of a multitude of different kinds of members from small and large businesses. What a large company wants from the chamber is different from what a one-person company wants.

“As we look to the future, we need to rethink ‘What's the chamber's value proposition?’” said Lizotte.

The chamber will send surveys to its members to learn about their wants, needs, and pain points, Shah said, but moreover, he wants to go visit businesses to hear from them directly.

“Emotion isn't conveyed through a survey,” said Shah. “We're going to hear and listen as best as we can so that then we can go back and reevaluate how we best suit our membership and provide benefits and support their needs on a daily, weekly, monthly, year, annual basis, to make sure that that they're being supported to our best ability.”

While that survey work is ongoing, Shah plans to take action immediately.

He wants to start working on ways to keep chamber members informed on government and public works updates. It can be a heavy lift for the region’s businesses to keep up on the minutiae of municipal work, even though everything from signage ordinances to outdoor seating policies to upcoming paving projects impacts businesses.

“They're focused on their business, and they're focused on what they need for their employees and things like that. So being able to keep them apprised to things that are ever changing [is important] as the MetroWest continues to evolve,” he said.

Shah plans to tap into his FPS roots and implement new educational platforms for the chamber. These platforms will help tackle another key initiative of Shah’s: cultivating a thriving MetroWest workforce.

Creating connections

The MetroWest workforce is highly skilled and highly educated, said Jason Palitsch, executive director at the Westborough-based 495/MetroWest Partnership and MetroWest chamber board member.

At the same time,

said the area’s employers are struggling to hire because of both the high cost of housing and the lack of public transport options.

“One of the most critical things that our chambers do is be the voice for small and midsized businesses and to provide them with essential services that they might not otherwise be able to access,” said Palitsch.

In an effort to address workforce challenges, Shah plans to work to improve the region’s internship programs to make them more effective for interns and employers. This will mean working with high schools, universities, and businesses to cater internships to make them mutually beneficial for the short and long term.

The chamber could host workshops to provide students with the soft skills needed to give them a leg up and ease the transition on employers, and it could work with the MassHire Career Centers to help fund internships so the cost doesn’t fall solely on the business’ bottom line, he said. He wants to enhance scholarship opportunities for students by either increasing the number of scholarships available or upping the value of the ones already provided to students.

Providing employers with students who could become future staff members is crucial in building MetroWest to being a more diversified, impactful, and economically vital region, said Shah.

No matter what way Shah’s aspirations end up materializing, they all rely on his passion of building lasting and meaningful relationships with those he serves.

Palitsch is impressed with the relationships Shah developed while working with Downtown Framingham Inc., especially connecting with businesses never previously associated with any other business organization.

“Here at the chamber, we want to be able to help our members connect with other businesses or people that they haven't connected with yet to benefit from either their products, their services, or just the sheer connection,” said Shah.

Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare and diversity, equity, and inclusion industries.