When Suzanne Wittman was a teenager, her father suggested she should become an ambassador.
“I don’t know what he saw in me that made him think that. … I think it’s this idea of continually embracing people and wanting to learn about them, and I’m just so people‑centric,” Wittman says.
She ended up in the right place. For more than four years, Wittman has led the 100‑year‑old Shawano Country Chamber of Commerce, which covers both Shawano and Menominee counties. Wittman draws upon a vibrant career working with communities and nonprofits to serve as an ambassador for the region and promote it as a great place to live and work.
“It’s really easy to go somewhere and find the people and find the good in the area, and then basically be the cheerleader for that area,” she says. “And Shawano is no different.”
Talking to people and finding out their stories is the first step, she says. “You just have to be curious and want to know about people. After that, it goes one step further, which is how can I help you, and how can I see you succeed?”
Wittman has a personal background befitting any ambassador: She was born in Canada and came to Wisconsin in the 1990s with her parents, who are originally from the Philippines and met in Montreal. Wittman lived in Buenos Aires for two years and speaks both Spanish and French. Her mom worked as a nurse, her dad as a chemical engineer whose work brought him to the pulp and paper industry in Appleton. She’s a UW‑Stout graduate whose roots grew strong in the New North, having raised three now‑adult children with her husband, Ward, a former educator.
Wittman, who is a former Insight Publications graphic designer and marketing specialist, has held various roles in New North communities, including at the Clintonville Chamber and at the Green Bay YWCA, where she led the Women’s Empowerment Center during COVID.
While there, she came across a binder with information about a former after‑school program called Tech Girls, a STEM‑focused initiative, and restarted it. She decided to connect with local businesses about sharing their work with the program’s target population: marginalized girls between third and eighth grade.
“I started calling businesses and saying, ‘Would you be willing if I brought in a group of young girls and showed them how to make a boat? Would you show them how to dissect a sheep’s eyeball?’” She spent two summers getting on a bus with the girls and taking them to places like NWTC, UW‑Green Bay and The Art Garage, “just showing them women in positions of leadership that they may have never seen before,” Wittman says.
Efforts like these led to her being named one of Wisconsin’s 34 Most Influential Asian American Leaders by Madison365 in 2021. Wittman also serves on the Wisconsin Department of Tourism’s IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility) committee, which, among its efforts, helps increase visibility of accessible amenities on the Travel Wisconsin website. “I feel like I have a great job, to be able to talk to people in Madison or Milwaukee about what’s going on in our two counties,” she says.
As chamber president and CEO, one of Wittman’s key priority areas is working with the three tribes in the two counties, which includes Menominee and Ho‑Chunk nations as well as the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. She works on building connections and learning “how I can help them succeed, whether it’s their business or the growth or even the workforce there.”
Wittman also serves on the Bay Area Workforce Development Board’s immigration task force, representing employers from her area “to better understand concerns surrounding the impacts of immigration on their workforce, sharing those concerns with legislators.”
She says bringing workers here is about building quality of life for everyone, “because we need them, companies need them,” Wittman says. “If more people working in our area can increase that quality of life for other families, I mean, this is a community initiative. This isn’t just about making money.”
Workforce development is always top of mind for Wittman. Last year, the chamber spent part of the year on strategic planning, and as Wittman focused on the chamber’s tourism division, she recognized opportunity to go beyond promoting Shawano’s reputation as a popular vacation spot and use the office as an economic driver.
“We don’t just want [people] here as tourists. We want them to come in and say we love it here, and we want to bring our family here, or we want to work here, because it is a wonderful community,” Wittman says. “It’s still continuing to grow.”
Just as the chamber works to draw people to the area, some of its programs aim to retain residents. Each year, the chamber hosts a tour for third graders and a career fair for eighth graders, as well as educational workshops and seminars. Its Leadership Shawano County program usually includes about two dozen participants, Wittman says.
Despite the chamber’s programming, she says it’s sometimes a challenge to convince people of the value of membership because the chamber’s impact is often intangible. Strong chambers help attract growth, for one thing, and they’re “about building communities and connecting people with other people or other resources that they need,” she says.
That’s important for busy entrepreneurs and business owners who don’t always have the capacity to seek out the right people to answer the right question. “We make the time,” Wittman says. “We create those opportunities for you to do that, and I think that’s a privilege if you can have that in your community.”
By the numbers
Shawano Country Chamber of Commerce
Founded: 1926
Area included: Shawano and Menominee counties
Businesses and organizations represented: 400+
Population of Shawano County: About 41,000, up 1.7% since 2020
Population of Menominee County: About 4,250, down about 1.2% since 2020
