New Board Member: John Sternlicht

John Sternlicht was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA) at the August meeting.

John is the Executive Director of the Economic Development Association of Skagit County (EDASC), a nonprofit membership roganization dedicated to promoting and enhancing the economic vitality of Skagit County. He also currently serves on the international Economic Development Council's Board of Directors. He previously served as Economic Development Advisor to King County Executive Dow Constantine, Deputy Secretary of Commerce and Trade for the Commonwealth of Virginia and as the first General Counsel and Policy and Legislative Director of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.

John spent his childhood in Rhode Island and North Carolina, and has a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, focusing on Western Europe and Latin America, and studied journalism and communications at the Université de Fribourg before earning a law degree from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He practiced law in North Carolina and Virginia and earned his certification in economic development from the International Economic Development Council in 2001.

Sternlicht has been married to James Finley, Seattle University’s head volleyball coach, since 2010. Together they have three grown sons.

On a Mission to Walla Walla

Four years ago there was a notable change at the TASTE of GSBA when we switched our beverage focus to world-class Washington wines. Previously we had served an assortment of wine, but 2011 was the first time we featured local wineries and had several wine makers in attendance. This year we will have our biggest wine district ever, with wines from across our state and winemakers hosting tables for an upgraded wine experience.  With that in mind, a small group from the GSBA including CEO Louise Chernin and partner Mary, Director of Programs & Fund Development Mark Rosén and husband Matt, and Board Member Dena Levine and husband Ron, took some vacation time and travelled to eastern Washington to thank some of our far-flung sponsors and donors and to make new connections with more wine and tourism resources.

Our stay began in the birthplace of Washington wine, Prosser. Longtime supporter Debbie Haggerty Augustavo welcomed us at her lovely guest house, the Seven Gables, just a  stone’s throw from the  Vintner’s Village, where you can walk between over half a dozen wineries. We started our day with a visit to Pontin del Roza where we met with  winemaker Scott Pontin and his husband   and enjoyed the view from his patio and bocce court. Next we visited the Walter Clore Center which honors one of the founders of the Washington wine industry and features tastings from our unique AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) on a rotating basis. Tasting room manager April Reddout  made sure we had a great experience and we left not only with wine , but also with a generous donation to the TASTE auction. We ended our day basking in the warmth of the sunset reflecting off the Horse Heaven Hills as we dined on superb food at Wine O’clock, paired with some outstanding Bunnell wines. Watch for a package at TASTE featuring a stay at Seven Gables, bocce ball and tastings at Pontin del Roza and the Clore Center and more!

Our second day brought us to the world-renowned Red Mountain AVA with stunning views and unique growing conditions. Hightower, Fidelitas, and Kiona were on our list and none disappointed. Look for Fidelitas pouring in our Wine District at TASTE. From the sunny slopes of Red Mountain we headed to what some call the “Napa of Washington” – Walla Walla.  Waterbrook Winery, located  just east of Walla Walla, is one of the most beautiful settings you can imagine. We dined on the patio, sipping rosé, admiring the architecture, and appreciating the wonderful service as the guests of Precept Brands, one of our new TASTE sponsors. Waterbrook, Brown and Canoe Ridge will all be at the TASTE and we have a fabulous stay at the Waterbrook bungalows to auction off as well.

Saturday was devoted entirely to Walla Walla! With our great drivers from Whitman College – Phil and Bri – at the helm, we were free to enjoy all that Walla Walla has to offer. Beginning with a visit to Tranche, we knew we were in for some of the best. Va Piano, with its beautiful setting so evocative of Tuscany, served some of the outstanding wines they are so well known for. Sleight of Hand offered the perfect setting for a little picnic break and more rosé and then it was off to a private tour and tasting at Corliss that blew us away the moment we walked into the restored warehouse which has been transformed into a luxurious tasting room, production facility, and private residence. I couldn’t resist purchasing a large-format bottle to donate to our wine auction, so some lucky wine lover will be very happy!

So much wine, so many wineries, but most importantly so many friends, old and new (Tamara at Owen Roe, Two Mountain, Clore Center) who were all generous when they heard about our mission to support our Scholarship Fund, including so many  recipients from eastern Washington. We now know for certain that when we say Greater” Seattle Business Association, the “Greater” means our family, friends, donors, and supporters from all over the state who we had the pleasure to meet over the weekend. We are already planning next year’s trade mission, so if you love travel and love wine and food (who doesn’t!) then ask about joining us in 2016.

Wells Fargo and NGLCC Award $10,000 to Greater Seattle Business Association

Seattle (08/13/15) – The Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA) is proud to announce that the chamber was awarded a $10,000 grant on Thursday, August 13^th at the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC)’s 2015 International Business & Leadership Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation, this grant was awarded to expand capacity and offer technical assistance to the GSBA’s Let’s Get Certified outreach and workshop program. The main goal of the program is to foster the development, growth, and sustainability of certified LGBT business enterprises (LGBTBEs®). 

“The Let’s Get Certified program has become a vital resource to our members as they develop their businesses and engage in strategic planning,” said Louise Chernin, GSBA President. “We are thrilled to receive this generous grant from Wells Fargo and NGLCC which will allow us to expand and enrich our program.”

“Wells Fargo has a rich history of supporting diverse chambers of commerce, and we share their commitment to helping small business owners succeed financially,” said Lisa Stevens, Regional Marketing, Small Business and Pacific Midwest Bank Executive. “Through our partnership with the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), we are proud to provide funding that will support chamber-led entrepreneur training programs and dedicated resources for education, growth and advancement of diverse business owners in communities across America.”

About GSBA 
Established in 1981, the Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA) is the largest LGBT and allied chamber of commerce in North America, with over 1,100 members. GSBA is widely known throughout the Puget Sound region for its work on business development, connecting community through business, advocacy on both civil rights and business and promoting LGBT tourism through its Travel Gay Seattle initiative. GSBA invests in the next generation of leaders by sponsoring a Scholarship Fund which has given out over $2.1 million in scholarships. For more information about GSBA, visit www.thegsba.org.

About NGLCC

The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce is the business voice of the LGBT community and is the largest global not-for-profit advocacy organization specifically dedicated to expanding economic opportunities and advancements for LGBT people. NGLCC is the exclusive certification body for LGBT-owned businesses. www.nglcc.org

MEDIA CONTACT:

Adam Shapiro

Adam.Shapiro@ASPR.bz

202-427-3603

About Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a nationwide, diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.7 trillion in assets. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, insurance, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance through 8,700 locations, 12,800 ATMs, the internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 36 countries to support customers who conduct business in the global economy. With approximately 266,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 30 on Fortune’s 2015 rankings of America’s largest corporations. Wells Fargo’s vision is to satisfy our customers’ financial needs and help them succeed financially. Wells Fargo perspectives are also available at Wells Fargo Blogs and Wells Fargo Stories.

Rachael Recommends: Summer Social Media Focus on Facebook

Scouring the digital marketing blogosphere….so you don’t have to.

I subscribe to a lot of blogs and newsfeeds from experts in various aspects of the digital marketing field.  This is my roundup of articles, tips, how-to’s and best practices for social media, apps, marketing, pr and some technology thrown in for good measure. If there is a particular subject or social media platform you want to learn more about, please let me know. Check out my comments before the links.  

Now onto this month’s roundup…I am focusing on Facebook posting, advertising, tips and more with a focus on Facebook for small business. And before you delve into specifics, check out this handy overview for Facebook marketing. I also suggest you follow the Facebook for Business page for tips and updates.

Call to Action

At the top of your business page you may have seen a new-ish button next to your like button that says: Create Call to Action. Vertical Response’s blog has a helpful video on what this is and how to use it.

How to Create aCall-to-Action on Your Facebook Page

Advertising

Facebook advertising can be very effective and affordable for small businesses. The articles below offer some helpful tools and tips for creating Facebook ads and also some info on the new way Facebook is charging for its ads.

5 Facebook Advertising Tools That Save Time and Improve Your ROI

Facebook Is Changing How It Charges for Ads 
How to Get 500% ROI from Facebook Ads

Already using Facebook advertising and you want to take your ads to the next level? Check out this article on advance techniques for Facebook advertisers.

Video on Facebook

Video is a versatile, easy and fun way to market your product, promote your brand or show your audience how to do something. And now it is even easier to integrate short videos into many social media platforms. You probably have noticed the growing number of videos that show up in your Facebook newsfeed. You know, the ones that just start playing as you are scrolling through your newsfeed. These are examples of native video, when you actually upload a video to Facebook (as opposed to just linking to a video hosted on a different site/platform). When you publish videos to Facebook, the result is high visibility and a greater likelihood of engagement.

7 Ways to Use Facebook Native Video to Better Connect With Your Fans

How to Use VideoStorytelling in Your Social Media Marketing

Facebook Newsfeed Changes (yes, again)

Facebook recently launched updated controls for one’s news feed. This basically puts more power into the hands of the user as to who and what they see in their news feed. The articles below help decipher what this means for businesses using Facebook for their marketing.

Facebook UpdatesControls for News Feed with See it First: What This Means for Marketers

3 Things You Can’t Do on Facebook Anymore

I Am Still Here, and I Am Still Queer

by Karyn Schwartz, proprietor of SugarPill, 2013 GSBA New Business of the Year and member of the Small Business Council. You can find Karyn at her shop at 900 E Pine Street in Seattle.

Here and Queer came out of my own frustration over reading the endless obituaries that people seem to delight in writing about Capitol Hill. Every time I hear someone say the neighborhood is gone, my only response to it is “I am still here, and I am still queer.”

This spring I kept thinking, “What if the neighborhood was just much more visibly queer again? Could that make a difference?” Through a series of unexpectedly lucky phone calls, I got connected with two young men – Bakar and Giorgi – who happened to be working on a platform to conduct social media campaigns about freedom of speech, and they had exactly the kind of projection capability that I needed. They come from a part of the world where freedom of speech is rarely respected. Through their company Deehubs, they are developing ways for people to communicate publicly about issues that are sometimes difficult to talk about, and in places where it is perhaps too dangerous to talk about them at all.

What Deehubs provided was a way for anyone to create their own messages and images to say what THEY wanted to express about being queer, about being a part of this community and about what they hope for in the neighborhood. Despite a ridiculously short amount of time to make this all happen, and a mountain of technological issues to work out, we received a marvelous variety of deeply moving contributions which were projected at about a half dozen sites around Capitol Hill throughout the entire weekend of Pride.

I think there is enormous value in using visible markers to create a sense of place. While I have admittedly never been the most ardent fan of the rainbow as the most ubiquitous emblem of queerdom (which is why I asked local artist Joey Veltkamp to create a logo for the project and practically begged him to put some pink triangles in there for me), there is something to be said for seeing an entire neighborhood festooned in recognizable symbols of identity and unity. It makes me feel like I am home, and welcome, and with that comes a tangible feeling of safety.

I cannot describe how wonderful the reactions to the projections were, as well as to a number of other really visible expressions of unapologetic queerness that were happening simultaneously. The timing of all of this was so profoundly emotional: not only had the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality just been handed down on the morning that Pride really kicked off, but there was also the wrenching funeral of Reverend Clementa Pinckney of the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston that very same day. It was nearly impossible to feel celebratory while there was still so much grief in the air, and hard to feel victorious when such a violent and hate-filled act had just happened. I was so glad to see people use the project to express their anger and their grief over the very real consequences of hatred that too often goes unexamined and unchecked. The juxtaposition of these feelings alongside those of joy, love and heartfelt appreciation for the progress that has been made struck a chord that was far deeper than anything I could have planned.

 
It was not lost on any of us that while we were celebrating marriage equality here in the United States, queer folks were getting fired at by police with water cannons and tear gas during a pride parade in Istanbul, Turkey. Imagine if we could have projected the kinds of messages that were created here onto the walls of buildings in Istanbul to give people the inspiration to keep insisting on their right to be who they are, despite how they are still being treated there.

Before the project even went live, we were out one night testing the projection equipment and making sure that everything was working correctly. I had asked a few people to send in their contributions prior to the actual launch so that we would have something to test the system with, but I had no idea what would actually be projected or what it would look like. As I was walking to meet Bakar and Giorgi at one of the sites, I found myself alone, at midnight, behind a group of four very drunk, raging homophobes. I couldn’t believe it was happening. They were having the most hateful conversation, and recording themselves on their phones, laughing and saying horrible things about “all the f**king homos”, and if I had not been so close to where I knew Bakar and Giorgi were, I would have been terrified.

Just then, the projector went live, and this beautiful quote appeared, 40 feet high, on the side of the building we were facing. It said, “Our queer community feels like loving arms wrapped around you. We are here.”

We all saw it at the same time, and the most remarkable thing happened: they shut up. Those hateful, ignorant men stopped their conversation, they put their phones down, and they all read the message. It worked. I don’t know what they did with the rest of their evening, but what I do know is that what was happening got interrupted. It was the best thing I could have hoped for – that something beautiful got created which stood, at least for a moment, in the way of the continuation of some gesture of hatred. Maybe it is too much to hope for that something like this could actually stand in the way of outright violence – but I will hope for it anyway. The more we see positive messages about things we don’t understand, and the more we are confronted to re-think the biases and the prejudices we walk around with, the more likely we are to seek a different point of view or a deeper understanding of things we have taken for granted as truth.

I think change does happen this way, and I think we are in great need of a great deal of change still in this country as a whole, but also right here in what should be a safe haven of tolerance and acceptance. With so much pressure on our one small part of town to absorb the huge influx of nightlife visitors and recently arrived residents, it is even more important than ever to maintain a positive and unapologetic presence as a community, and the only way to do that is to BE HERE, and not abandon the neighborhood.

If you want a center of gravity as a community, you have to nourish it by supporting the businesses and organizations that cater to your interests, speak up on behalf of your concerns, and that fly those rainbow flags all year long, and not just on the one weekend that Pride brings us all together.  There are so many of us who are still here, and still fierce about trying to hold on to what makes this neighborhood special. But we can’t hold on to it all by ourselves; we need all of you who have loved this neighborhood and who have your own history rooted right here with us to BE HERE, visible, present and glorious in all manner of queerness. I live for the day that every night feels like Pride when I am walking home from work – that it never feels unsafe to be who I am, and that I still belong to this place that made it possible for me to become that person at all.