By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce President Patt Lilly plans to retire at the end of the year.
Lilly served as Chamber president and CEO from 1996 to 2006 before leaving to become Chief Administrative Officer for Triumph Foods from 2006 to 2013. Lilly returned to lead the Chamber in 2013.
Lilly says the timing just felt right.
“For me, I’d gotten to a point in my life where I began to ask the question a couple of years ago when do I retire, how long do I work?” Lilly tells St. Joseph Post. “I’m fortunate that I have a job that I enjoy and have people that I work with that I enjoy, but there are other things that I would like to do.”
Lilly says he considered retiring last year, then reconsidered when the coronavirus pandemic hit.
“Frankly, everything, not only my retirement, but many other things in life kind of got put on the shelf while we tried to deal and work though that,” Lilly says. “I understood pretty early on in the pandemic that I wasn’t ready to retire at that point and I don’t know that I think the Chamber was prepared to change CEOs in the middle of the pandemic.”
Lilly is a native of Texas, but says he has no plans to return to his home state and will remain in St. Joseph.
Lilly served as St. Joseph City Manager from 1990 to 1996.
Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors chair, NPG Executive Vice President Bill Severn, says the Chamber will conduct a comprehensive executive search to fill the President/CEO position.