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Patti O'Brien
Monte Sereno resident is new Chamber head
By Oakley Brooks
The guards changed quietly at the tiny Village offices of Saratoga's Chamber of Commerce on March 26, as Monte Sereno resident Patti O'Brien became the Chamber's new executive director.
But O'Brien's predecessor, Abby Krimotat, predicts O'Brien's presence in Saratoga will be anything but quiet. "I think she'll be a shot in the arm for the Chamber," said Krimotat, who recently left the Chamber to take a job with the Mountain Winery.
O'Brien comes to Saratoga after a richly textured business career in the South Bay. She was a longtime business development specialist and executive with defense contractor Lockheed Missile and Space Inc. She started with the company in 1977, and progressed within the new technologies division, before switching to Lockheed's divisions of human resource and then community outreach.
In 1994, O'Brien left Lockheed for the nonprofit world. She helped organize St. Jude Children's Hospital's "Race for Research," to raise funds for pediatric cancer research and care in Oakland and Palo Alto. She also worked with San Jose's Center for Living with Dying, a group that--among other things--provides grief counseling. After a September 2000 car crash on Fruitvale Avenue claimed the life of two Saratoga High School girls, the center provided counseling for the school.
O'Brien returned to the private sector in 1997, when she began building up a high-end auto repair service in Campbell. Before she sold the company in last April, she shaped WOAB Inc., into a million-dollar corporation, O'Brien said.
"We were trying to be the Nordstrom of the industry," said O'Brien, from her new office on the Saratoga-Los Gatos Road. "We were able to service someone who came out of a train wreck and make it a positive experience. I loved that about the business," she added.
O'Brien says she hopes to bring her broad business experience--from billion-dollar Lockheed and her own 11-employee start-up--to Saratoga's Chamber.
"Large or small, you'll not be lost here in Saratoga," O'Brien said with a laugh.
Chamber President Preston Wisner, who headed the executive-director search, says O'Brien's presence had a lot to do with her selection from some 50 applicants for the job.
"She meets the public well," said Wisner, adding, "I think she brings great organization to the Chamber."
Both Wisner and O'Brien acknowledged that following Krimotat, who has begun work at the Mountain Winery, would be no easy task. Since taking over the director spot in May 1999, Krimotat boosted the Chamber's membership to 350 and, in Wisner's words, had "done a hell of a job."
The Chamber is responsible for promoting the city's businesses and boosting tourism in the city. To that end, it organizes the Celebrate Saratoga! festival each fall and the regular gatherings of the business community.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
