Chamber banquet back with awards, celebration

The Aurora Chamber of Commerce celebrated a year of local business growth and success with its first in-person annual awards banquet in several years Thursday.
Forced to an online format due to the pandemic, Chamber members and leaders seemed enthused about the opportunity, which this year featured a more casual, networking style of event hosted at the new Aurora Community Clubhouse.
“We are super excited to have you here,” outgoing board president Sara Sutherland began. “We want you to feel like you have value as members, not only as businesses that you’re representing, but some of our individual contributors as well. What we’re accomplishing together is really trying to put Aurora and Hamilton County on the map.”
Justise Rhoden, the Chamber’s executive director, also welcomed a crowd estimated at more than 115.
“We are super excited for what the future holds for Aurora and Hamilton County,” Rhoden said. “We know that this cannot be done without all the amazing work that you do every single day. I can see even in this crowd that there are many of you here that wear multiple hats and we cannot do a lot of the things that we do without you going above and beyond. A lot of these things are volunteer based and we know that it’s kind of a thankless job, so we just want to say thank you for all that you do.”
One of the highlights of the annual event is recognizing individuals and businesses as this year’s award winners. Five awards were presented, including the Rising Star Award; Civic Business Award; Community Leader of the Year; and Business of the Year, with two winners named in the large and small business categories.
Rising Star Award— “Our Rising Star is someone who is maybe new to the community, or new to business, and he is growing as a business person, (also) wanting to grow our community in general,” Rhoden said. “He has done a really great job of adding new events to our community (including the Small Town Market Days) and is wanting to grow retail.”
This year’s Rising Star winner was Loren Berthelsen, owner of The Grape Frog.
Civic Business Award — This award goes to a business that is helping grow the community in a nonprofit, helpful kind of way, Rhoden explained. “The winner for this year has completely transformed a business on the square and has made something useful for kids to go and do on the weekends, giving the parents kind of a break, making sure that they are in a safe space.”
This year’s Civic Business Award winner was the Hamilton County Youth Center, represented by Paul Johnson.
Community Leader of the Year — With 12 nominations submitted for this award, Rhoden said there are many tremendous examples of local leadership throughout the community. This year’s winner, she said, “stepped up and helped some big programs grow in our community (including the Ambassadors Program). She is super involved in the school and has been busy with having a senior, and we specifically wanted to recognize here for all her help with the Chamber.”
This year’s Community Leader of the Year Award went to Bridgett Svoboda, a Chamber board member and co-owner of Svoboda Benefit Solutions.
Large Business of the Year — “The winner of the Large Business of the Year is a newer business and they may not have a lot of employees, but they do have a big name that has brought a lot of people to our community,” Rhoden announced. “They have also done a really great job of making sure to give back to their community,” donating profits from certain days of operation to the Aurora school system. This year’s award went to Scooter’s Coffee, represented by Todd Vettel.
Small Business of the Year — The Small Business of the Year has actually been around for a few years, Rhoden noted, though has grown tremendously in the past year, expanding its line of services on the downtown square. 
“They’ve added four or five new programs and are really taking a hard focus on the wellness of our community to a higher level,” she said. “A lot of people think that they have to go to Omaha and Lincoln to get some of these services, but we have them right here in Aurora, so we want to thank our Small Business of the Year for all that they have done for our community.”
This year’s award went to Hello Gorgeous, represented by co-owners Georgia Berthelsen and Megan Newman.

Annual report
Rhoden also reviewed some of the organization’s events and achievements throughout the past year, which were detailed in an annual report made available to the public.
“This is the first time we’ve done this,” she said of the eight-page document. “We wanted to have one place that you can see everything we have accomplished in the Chamber and I just want to say that we couldn’t accomplish all of this without you guys.”
Rhoden reported that the board conducted a strategic planning session early in 2022, establishing 10 goals for the year. Eight of those 10 goals were accomplished, including reintroducing the Ambassadors Program; delivering consistent events, such as Bands on the Bricks, Scare the Square and Come Home to Christmas; streamlining internal and external messaging; increasing numbers in long-standing programs such as the Hamilton County Leadership Tomorrow Class, Business After Hours and newer programs like Coffee & Connecting.
Another example Rhoden noted is a new QR code program, which provides easy access to people looking for specific kinds of information.
“People come through Aurora all the time and they always say it is a great place, that they want to spend more time here, but what is there to do? Now they can actually find that with this QR code, which connects to our website. We’ve done a lot with technology, because that’s where everything is at.”
Rhoden also noted the Chamber’s third season of hosting podcasts featuring local businesses, though the biggest accomplishment of the year was the debut of a new tiered dues structure.
“We know businesses are changing so we wanted to make sure the Chamber was changing for your needs,” she said. “We will be spending the next 12 months contacting all of you and getting more familiar with this, figuring out your needs and hopefully growing this program as we go.”