Before Amanda Wike became the executive director of the Dixon Chamber of Commerce & Main Street (Discover Dixon), she was already dedicated to strengthening Illinois' economy. She started her career in the manufacturing industry, learning the benefits employers can bring to local communities. She has spent the last decade managing nonprofits with a focus on providing individuals and organizations with the resources they need to thrive.
Amanda's passion for supporting others led her to take on the role she holds today. "This opportunity really brought everything together,” she said, “Discover Dixon is a nonprofit organization that serves the whole community at large, both the businesses and all the people who live in it."
Recognizing the Need for an Innovative Approach
While attending a class through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Organization Management, Amanda learned about the Business Leads Fellowship Program. The program, developed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, offers business leaders tools to strengthen their communities by connecting education and career outcomes. She applied to be a Business Leads Fellow because she wanted to create new solutions to address how early education challenges were affecting workforce development in Dixon — especially in the wake of COVID-19's impact on test scores. "I knew the educators were working on it, but somebody in the community needed to start digging into the issue from the business perspective," Amanda remarked.
Through the program, Amanda learned about the various problems facing early childhood education, including the complexities around childcare affordability. When the largest childcare center in her region faced closure, she applied the insights from Business Leads to form a local task force dedicated to saving the center. Amanda recruited partners, formed a new childcare board, and secured necessary funding, recognizing that her community needed childcare centers to ensure an effective workforce.
To support childhood education in Dixon, Amanda has made the case to local stakeholders that childcare is a workforce issue. She collaborated with Birth to Five Illinois, a nonprofit focused on early learning, to develop a toolkit explaining this connection. Amanda has also seen success in conveying to legislators the negative effects the workforce may face if childcare needs are not met, highlighting how employers benefit from prioritizing support for their employees' children. "Often childcare is seen as a service for families, and it is, but sharing that it also serves our businesses has been very impactful," she said.
Amanda also took what she learned during the program back to the businesses in her community, asking them to provide educational lessons to students at local career fairs with a focus on experiential opportunities. This has included manufacturing companies bringing in mechanical parts for hands-on projects. These career fairs are designed to connect classroom learning with real-life business practices, helping students understand how what they're studying applies to the workplace.
Amanda credits her time as a Business Leads Fellow with providing her the opportunity for continuous learning and offering new ideas in the education and workforce areas that she has passionately brought back to her region.
Learn more about business-led solutions for improving K-12 education outcomes here.
