hamber President and CEO Tom Edd Wilson was inaugurated as president of the Chattanooga Downtown Rotary Club on July 8. He will serve a one-year term.
A member of the Downtown Rotary since 1992, Wilson served as vice president of membership and of programs in past years.
Wilson took the helm of the Chamber in 2002 following a 35-year career in the banking industry. He concluded his banking tenure in Chattanooga as president of the East Tennessee Region of Bank of America, holding that position from 1992 through 2001.
When he assumed leadership of the Chamber, Wilson began assembling a highperforming senior management team to run the organization with the professionalism and accountability expected of the community’s leading business organization.
To the basic economic development, membership, marketing and accounting areas, he added a new public strategies department and later brought the Center for Entrepreneurial Growth under the Chamber’s aegis. He made strengthening public schools a priority and has worked to build alliances between business leaders and educators.
Soon after Wilson came aboard, the Chamber was charged with publicizing and marketing Enterprise South Industrial Park (ESIP). He appointed a director of business development to focus on recruiting companies for ESIP, now home to the $1 billion Chattanooga Volkswagen plant.
In 2006 Wilson’s restructuring and revisioning of the Chamber resulted in his being named the Chattanooga Area Manager of the Year.
From the time he arrived in Chattanooga in 1992, Wilson immersed himself in civic activities and quickly gained a reputation as a business leader, a volunteer with the ability to manage non-profits in crisis and a fund-raiser extraordinaire.
He has served as president of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera and Allied Arts of Chattanooga, helping both organizations overcome financial challenges and build their endowments. He led the 2000 United Way campaign that generated over $11.6 million, the most money ever raised -- at the time -- in a single campaign for United Way in Chattanooga.
In 1998 Wilson received the National Philanthropy Day Leadership Fundraiser of the Year Award, presented by the Southeastern Tennessee Chapter of the National Society of Fundraising Executives. The following year Wilson and his wife, Barby, co-chaired the annual Siskin Foundation benefit, Star Night, and raised $245,000 for the Siskin Children’s Center.
Then Chattanooga Mayor Jon Kinsey proclaimed May 5, 2000 as Tom Edd Wilson Day, noting that Wilson “has contributed his time, his talent and his tireless energy to the civic community of Chattanooga, and has used his business and management skills and experience to encourage and take initiatives and to support and benefit the healthy growth and development of the arts and cultural organizations of this city.”
A native of Crossville, TN, Wilson received a B.S. degree in accounting from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Rutgers University.
Wilson serves on the boards of the Convention and Visitors Bureau and United Way. He is an elder at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church.
The new Rotary president, who served as chairman of the board of the Cherokee Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America, received the Silver Beaver Award and was the Council’s Eagle Class Honoree in 1997.