Who are you and what do you do?
I am Jan Woycheshin. Its pronounced like your wristwatch, "a"
and then the sun. I do a lot of things, I am a small business owner, my Husband
and I are partners in J & P Video Productions, we produce corporate event
and training videos along with audio reinforcement, background music for
receptions and parties. I also volunteer at the Chamber 2 days a week, I am
also at the Chamber for event coordination. I am on the board of Friends of San
Leandro creek. We organize creek cleanups and are stewards for the creek. I am
on the San Leandro Senior Commission, I am the chair for that. I am on the
board of directors for a nonprofit called the Acme Foundation out of Lake
County, they provide monetary assistance for the elderly and disabled for their
seriously ill dog and cats (Jan is also a Chamber Ambassador)
What do you love about San Leandro?
I love San Leandro because it is so centralized to
everything, its 25 minutes from San Francisco, its 4 hours from the mountains.
I love the weather. I love the people. It has a small town feels, but it's a
big town. It's a good place to live, the weather is great and I like being involved
in the community, it's a very community oriented city.
You have been involved in Coffee connection for a long time, tell us
about that?
I took over coffee connection in 2005 when we were still at
the Davis street location, there was only about 3 people in attendance, it was
just coffee, we tried to get people to talk about their business. Especially
for the small business owners. I thought
if you feed them, they will come, let's have an open house at the Chamber. So that December we had what I thought would
be just an open house, during the course of it the then CEO said "Let's
get the meeting started". I had not planned on a meeting. That is how I started out with Coffee
Connection. It grew, we out grew the conference
room. For a while we had our meeting at the Englander, when the Englander
couldn't accommodate us any more we started moving the venue around.
That works out better. Each month we have a speaker that can
talk about their business, they must be a Chamber member and the venue must be
a Chamber member . Changing the venue allows each venue to show off their place
of business.
It seems a fairly relaxed networking event.
It's a networking opportunity for about 20 minutes, then the
speaker gets about 25 minutes, then everyone gets a chance to introduce
themselves. Coffee connections tend to be anywhere from 20 to 60 people
depending on the venue and what is going on.
If someone wants to attend a coffee connection do they have to be a Chamber
member?
No. The Chamber does not have a prospective membership or orientation
meeting. I tell people that if they are interested in finding out what the
Chamber is about, come to a coffee connection. You will get a taste of the
people who are in the Chamber, you will find out what we do, you will find a
mix of people. Each coffee connection is about an hour, sometime people hang
out a little longer networking. A lot of people have connected through coffee
connection, it's not always who you know, it's who other people know.
You recently received an award?
Last year I received the leadership award for district 3
from San Leandro City council for some of the things I have done
Any final Words of Wisdom?
Come to San Leandro, It's a growing city, a growing
community. It's a wonderful place to live. I have lived here since 1975 and I
have seen a lot of changes, and things are still changing and I don't see them
stopping for a very long time. I think everyone who comes here will fit right
in.
Jan, Thank you so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment