The first-female leader of the Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce is resigning from her position.

The chamber accepted President and CEO Lynn Olberding’s resignation this week.

“My family has really loved the community, we have made it our home,” Olberding said. “It feels very bittersweet to be leaving a community that we really love. It has not been an easy decision to look at moving onto something new.”

Her husband accepted a new job and will be moving their family out of the Marshalltown area.

Olberding will remain with the chamber until June to help with the transition.

Her journey in the Chamber of Commerce began in 2002 when she first moved to Marshalltown, and was invited to join the Chamber’s marketing committee by a then member.

“I got to learn what the Chamber was all about from a volunteer perspective, I just really fell in love with the idea of what the Chamber is good for and what the Chamber was doing in the community,” Olberding said.

She officially joined the Chamber of Commerce in 2007, hired as the director of membership and marketing, responsible for membership recruitment, retention and events.

In 2013 when former Chamber of Commerce President Ken Anderson retired, Olberding became executive director and oversaw all operations of the Chamber such as economic development, tourism and the day-to-day operations of the Chamber. After the Chamber’s restructuring in 2019, she assumed the role of president and CEO.

Focusing on growing the organization, Olberding helped grow the Chamber of Commerce membership to more than 500 members, and helped kick off the Chamber’s housing initiative aimed at growing Marshalltown’s population and improving the community.

Since Olberding joined in 2007, the Chamber has gone from a three star accredited Chamber to five stars by the United States Chamber of Commerce in 2018 after the tornado.

“That’s a really big accomplishment that I’m very proud of, not only because I think it shows the value and the strength in this particular chamber, but it was done at a time when our community was going through something so devastating,” Olberding said.

In 2019, the Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce was named Chamber of the Year by the Iowa Association of Chambers of Commerce, another recognition Olberding was proud to receive.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Olberding said she’s proud of how the chamber supported business and put information out for the public.

“A lot of things were changing very, very quickly at a time when information was being overloaded to both the business community and our non-profit partners and really to the public in general,” Olberding said. “We tried to sort through that information and share what we felt was most important so that we were seen as a reliable source of information.”

She said she is excited to watch the growth and development of Marshalltown from afar, feeling there are many exciting things coming for Marshalltown in the future. She hopes to find Chamber or non-profit work after she leaves Marshalltown.

“There have been countless staff, members and colleagues and volunteers over the years that helped shape me and helped shape my experience, and that’s the hardest thing to leave,” Olberding said.

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Contact Trevor Babcock at 641-753-6611 or tbabcock@timesrepublican.com.