After nearly a year of interim leadership, Greater St. Louis Inc., the St. Louis region’s largest business advocacy organization, announced Thursday Ron Kitchens as its next permanent CEO.
In a release, the organization says Kitchens will take over the top spot “after an extensive national search.” He begins working for GSL in early November, taking over from interim leader Dustin Allison. Allison served in that role since last December, after the organization’s first CEO Jason Hall announced he was stepping down to take over the Columbus Partnership.
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Kitchens comes to St. Louis from his most recent role as CEO of the Wichita Falls, Texas, chamber of commerce. Before that he served for nearly 16 years as the CEO of Southwestern Michigan First, a business advocacy organization based in Kalamazoo, and then just under two years as the CEO of Birmingham Business Alliance before stepping down from that role.
“We are thrilled to welcome Ron back to Missouri and look forward to the impact he will have on the St. Louis region,” says Andrew C. Taylor, executive chairman of Enterprise Mobility and founding chair of GSL. “Ron is a proven leader who has the strategic vision, operational expertise, and deep passion required to lead Greater St. Louis Inc. into our next chapter.”
Kitchens’ move takes him from a metropolitan area of about 150,000 people to one that’s more than 10 times larger, with about 2.8 million residents. GSL’s release touts his accomplishments in Wichita Falls, such as expanding the local tax base five times over.
His move to the St. Louis region is a homecoming in some senses, having married a St. Louisan and having grown up in Ozark, Missouri.
“Over the course of my career, I have had the honor of helping communities rediscover home, reignite growth, and reimagine what is possible,” he says in a release. “St. Louis is near and dear to my heart and I am excited to play a role in building a more prosperous future for this region.”
The path forward isn’t trivial. The St. Louis region faces significant challenges with population growth and a downtown core slowly working to regain its footing, although there are recent bright spots in the region’s growth of gross domestic product and employment.
The region is also in the midst of increasingly contentious considerations of massive data center developments, which Greater St. Louis Inc. and other local business leaders have staked a clear position of support. Kitchens appears to be in line with that, having worked to shepherd these kinds of developments forward in Wichita Falls this year.
Tune in to Sarah Fenske’s interview with Ron Kitchens on The 314 Podcast.
