Former chamber director seeks to take new step
By KEITH KNEPP
Associate Editor
Who says you can’t come home? Despite her belief her days of living in Rochester were behind her, prodigal daughter Amy Roe did return to her hometown a few years ago, and the result has been amazing.
Having moved to South Carolina in 2007, Roe was comfortably settled into her life in the Palmetto State. A 1998 graduate of Rochester High School, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology in 2002 from Grace College in Winona Lake, it was several years later when she felt the call to return to Fulton County.
She explained following a stint with the Fountain Inn Chamber of Commerce near Greenville, S.C., she had accepted a new job in the area and was prepared to begin when she was unexpectedly told because of an accounting error, they were no longer able to fund the position as they had promised. This sudden change of course left Roe in an admittedly precarious position, both financially and emotionally.
As fate would have it, however, the adage of “one door closing and another opening” held true. A friend in Indiana told her the executive director position at the Fulton County Chamber of Commerce in Rochester had become available and encouraged her to submit her resumé. Things fell into place and in the fall of 2015 Roe was packing her belongings and heading back to the Hoosier State.
Stepping into a familiar business in a familiar city allowed Roe to hit the ground running. She immediately began meeting with chamber members to give her ideas on how to improve the organization’s visibility and viability in the county. Gradually, new programs were introduced and existing ones improved.
In 2018, Roe stepped away from her responsibilities at the chamber to pursue new opportunities in the community. She became the co-founder and president of Fulton County HOPE, a non-profit group whose mission is “to be the driving force in providing awareness and education to the residents of Fulton County regarding resources as well as provide pathways to accessing those resources.”
“I needed a break,” Roe noted of her transition away from the chamber. “I had saved some money knowing this was coming, which allowed me to go (without another job in place).”
Last December, she took a part-time position as a registrar with St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in Plymouth. She also became an advisor to Round Barn Lab, a maker space movement in Fulton County expected to launch in the near future. Additionally, she is pursuing a master’s degree in management and leadership through Western Governor’s University.
Roe’s latest venture is into the realm of public service. She recently announced her decision to run in the upcoming Republican primary for one of two at-large positions on the Rochester City Council. For Roe, this decision is not about politics and more about finding a new way to serve her community and to bring new and fresh ideas to the city’s government. “For me, it’s a desire to add a new voice,” she said of her candidacy. “I’ve never run for public office before, but I believe that there is a natural progression from the chamber of commerce to public office.”
She noted her interest in public service can be traced back to when she was 9 years old, when she wrote in her personal journal an entire section on how we could help with the Persian Gulf War, which was ongoing at the time.
“Do I live for myself or do I do something worthwhile?” she concluded. “I will never love politics but I want to serve people by giving them a voice. It is something innate to my being.”
