Pam Wheat, Possum Kingdom Chamber fill many roles

The Possum Kingdom Chamber of Commerce (PKCOC) and its Director Pam Wheat fill many roles in the community including acting as a visitor’s bureau, event planning and traditional roles of a chamber.

The Chamber’s mission, Wheat said, is “to serve the membership, advance and promote area commerce in the Possum Kingdom community, and the region. All necessary means of promotion shall be considered and particular attention and emphasis shall be given to economic, civic,› commercial, cultural, industrial and educational interests of the area.”

Wheat said while the chamber does support and promote local businesses and members, they have begun to act as visitor’s bureau by promoting and advertising the lake.

“That’s what we do a lot of, we try and get tourism out here via billboards, our website, our annual guide that we produce, So, we are really focused on a lot of tourism,” she said.

Wheat said the chamber hosts many holiday events throughout the year including Children’s Christmas with Santa, an Easter egg hunt, Trunk or Treat and the Mardi Gras parade and shrimp fest. She said the chamber has undertook these events celebrating the holidays because it is hard to host these functions anywhere else in the spaced out community.

PKCOC hosts many other fundraising events throughout the year including Possum Fest, a barbecue and chili cook-off and a silent auction that raises $30,000 for the chamber, which is always the first weekend of October.

“It’s fun because the cooks get to come out here and compete and we usually have reoccurring participants,” Wheat said. “We really don’t get a lot of revenue from that, where we do get our revenue for our fundraiser is the auction and a lot of our membership or businesses out here will donate something.”

The PKCOC also has a 12 person Board of Directors who are voted on by the members of the chamber. Each board member serves a three-year term where they help manage the budget, plan events and vote on most of the things which occur at the chamber.

Wheat said she has been with chamber for almost 13 years, starting out as an administrative assistant before taking over the director role in December 2017.

Before coming to the PKCOC, Wheat said she worked for the cooperate offices of Dominoes Pizza, a few management companies, tech companies and lastly Double Diamonds, which owns The Cliffs Resort, where she ended as Vice President of Hospitality.

Wheat said she enjoys many aspects of working of at the chamber including coordinating events, marketing, reporting and accounting but her favorite is the connection with the community.

“I think my favorite part is that I stay connected with a lot of people in the community, I really like that,” she said. “... I like the connection, I like to stay connected and I like them to be connected to what is going on within the community.”