Yuri Huntington announces resignation from Breckenridge Chamber of Commerce director position
By Tony Pilkington and Carla McKeown/Breckenridge Texan
After about two and a half years as the executive director of the Breckenridge Chamber of Commerce, Yuri Huntington has decided to pursue her life coaching career full-time. Her resignation from the top position at the Chamber will be effective May 30, after the community’s annual Frontier Days event.
In the meantime, the Chamber board will begin looking for a new executive director.
“I want to make sure that it is a seamless process, a seamless transition, that even the community members and the Chamber members don’t feel a big drop, you know,” Huntington said. “And my hope is that whoever they get in for the new executive, whoever comes in as a new executive director, really has a heart for the community, a heart for the members. And my take is that there’s going to be someone with a lot more wisdom and grace and knowledge when it comes to Chamber stuff. So whoever comes in after me is going to have that understanding. So I’m confident that the board will choose the right fit, for sure.”
Huntington took on the position in October 2022. Prior to that, she had worked for the Betty Hardwick Center in Abilene and The Open Door, and she had started her own life coaching business, Huntington Coaching.
When she started the job, Huntington said she was planning to spend a lot of time talking to and listening to local business owners, and now, as she prepares to move on to a new chapter in her life, she mentions her connections to the business owners as the thing she’s most proud of.
“Whenever I think of the biggest accomplishment, my mind goes to the Chamber members. And what I mean by that is just loving on them, caring for them, calling them, checking in and seeing how things are,” she said. “One of the things that I wanted to do was when I walk into their business, I didn’t want them to think of me as someone who comes in and they think, ‘Oh, gosh, what are they going to need now?’ … I feel like that was part of the thing that I did, that when I walked in the office, it wasn’t to ask for anything, but it was to help serve and ask questions on how I can serve, how the Chamber can serve them. So I feel like that was one of the biggest accomplishments, personally for me.”
In the past two and a half years, Huntington said, she has learned a lot about the Chamber, the Breckenridge community and about herself. She also said that she appreciates having the opportunity to work with other local leaders, such as City Manager Cynthia Northrop and Prairie Freeman, superintendent of Breckenridge Independent School District.
Huntington said she and her husband, Paul, plan to continue living in Breckenridge while she expands Huntington Coaching. She is also going to be a Chamber member and serve as a Chamber Ambassador, a program she introduced a couple of years ago.
“I’m still dedicated to this community, literally,” she said. “After being exposed to all the businesses and people and leaders in the community, it really does something to, I think, anybody who has this position. In my heart, for me, it connected me deeper with the community … I have friendships because of this job that I wouldn’t have otherwise. So I am still part of the community. I still have this idea of investing in the community, now, just in a different way, as a coach.”
Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan
