FORMER STAFF MEMBER WILL RETURN TO LINCOLN TO LEAD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

LINCOLN- A familiar face will be returning to lead the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce.

The chamber announced that Jason Ball, who worked for the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development for five years, will succeed Wendy Birdsall as chamber president in January.

Birdsall, who has led the chamber for the past 16 years and was its first female president, announced in June that she would be retiring at the end of the year.

Ball, who's 44, worked as director of business development at the partnership, which is an arm of the chamber, from early 2008 to the end of 2012, when he left to become head of the chamber of commerce in Hutchinson, Kansas, a city of 40,000 an hour north of Wichita.

He later was president and CEO of the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce in South Dakota and for the past two years has led the chamber in Round Rock, Texas, a fast-growing suburb of Austin that is home to computer maker Dell.

"I could not be more thrilled to return to Lincoln. It is a community that has afforded me so much opportunity -- first as a student, then my career, which began at the Lincoln Chamber,” Ball said in a statement. “It is truly humbling to return there to do the work I love in the city we still consider home.”

Ball grew up in Sidney, graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University and got a Master of Business Administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a certified economic developer and also is a graduate of the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Organizational Management and the University of Oklahoma’s Economic Development Institute.

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