New chamber associate director eager to promote Fort

By Kim McDarison 

“It’s funny where life takes you,” Associate Director of the Fort Atkinson Area Chamber of Commerce Anna Jensen said. 

Hired in her role as associate director about two months ago, Jensen said, as a kid, she wanted to be a meteorologist, but instead found herself embarking upon a career focused on downtown event planning and local tourism. As she developed those skills, she found the work fit with her personality, she said.  

Joining the staff at the Fort Atkinson Area Chamber of Commerce has given her an opportunity to utilize her skills while broadening the scope of her work, and the move has brought her closer to home, she added.

From meteorology to Main Street

Jensen grew up in Edgerton, where, while participating in an eighth-grade job fair, she said, she was introduced to Channel 27 Chief Meteorologist Bob Lindmeier and offered a chance to shadow him at the Madison TV station. 

She had an immediate fascination with the work, she said, adding that it appealed to her because it offered something different every day. Also, as a TV meteorologist, she said, “you are like a local celebrity and people get to know you and trust you.” 

After high school graduation, Jensen said, she put her plan of becoming a meteorologist in motion, attending MATC in Madison where she earned an associate degree in general studies, and Northland College, a private institution in Ashland, a school chosen, she said, because it was one of only three within Wisconsin that offered a degree in broadcast meteorology, and, she said, it offered a chance to explore a portion of the state that was new to her and not close to home.  

While studying at Northland, she said, she accepted internships, working with NBC in Madison and at a station in Duluth, Minn.

After graduating from Northland College in 2014, Jensen said, she returned to Edgerton and began looking for a job in her chosen profession. 

“I was willing to go anywhere in the state. I love Wisconsin,” she said. 

Several months later, she landed a job at 92.5 Buzz Country, a radio station in West Bend, working in sales. 

She discovered that she liked working in sales, she said, adding: “I was good at it.” 

While engaged in that role, she joined the West Bend Chamber of Commerce and began serving as an ambassador, and that’s when one thing led to another, guiding her into a whole new career, she explained. 

Jensen said she made friends with a fellow chamber ambassador who also served as a board member for the Downtown West Bend Association, a nonprofit group which worked to bring events into the community’s downtown area. Jensen learned that the group’s executive director was leaving. At her friend’s urging, she said, she applied for the job. 

“And I got it!” she said. 

The achievement prompted a quick pivot from advertising sales to downtown event planning: the Downtown West Bend Association was responsible for some 45 events annually, Jensen said. 

Run by a 12-member board, the organization was staffed with two employees: a full-time executive director and a part-time event coordinator. 

The Downtown West Bend Association was not a membership-based group, Jensen said, meaning it had no members. Nobody paid dues. 

“We were small, but mighty,” she said. 

The group organized such events as a summer concert series, a car show, farmers markets and even a kayak race, among others.  

‘Downtown Anna’

“I’m very much a people person,” Jensen said, adding that once she made the shift into community event planning, she never looked back. Instead, she said, she came to realize that as a meteorologist, she would have spent her time with computers, while her new career brought her closer to people. 

Jensen described work associated with downtown event planning as fun and physical. 

It required carrying tents, tables, barricades and signs. “We had wagons and wagons of stuff to walk with and set up,” she said. 

She described the organization as well-received by the downtown community, with business owners noting that their choice to open a business downtown was influenced by the events and traffic the organization was bringing.

A community with a population of just over 31,000, West Bend has about 200 downtown businesses, Jensen said. 

Part of her job was finding and organizing volunteers for the myriad events designed to bring visitors into the downtown area.

Volunteers were a big part of the organization’s success, she said. The organization was dedicated to maintaining a steady flow of visitor-oriented events while working with an annual budget of about $100,000. 

Finding creative solutions was another intriguing part of the job, she said, adding that it could sometimes be challenging to find enough volunteers. 

As a solution, she said, she discovered that it was beneficial to ask other organizations or even businesses to help. She’d invite business owners and employees to wear their company t-shirts, volunteer, and meet, first-hand, their potential customers. 

“The volunteering offered face-to-face interaction with the public,” she said.  

In time, Jensen added, she became known in the community as “Downtown Anna.”  

The job was more like a lifestyle and came with a bit of local celebrity, she noted. 

Meeting people and learning about their businesses was high on her list of favorite activities, Jensen said. 

Still, she continued, after being away from family for six years, she thought she might like to move a little closer to home. 

About a month later, she noted, she saw an ad for the associate director’s job and made an application. 

The opportunity seemed perfect, she said, adding that she knew she wanted to find work with a chamber. She saw it as a natural progression, where she could build upon her event planing and management skills, while learning more about working with a membership-based organization.  

Feeling at home in Fort 

Once she was selected for the job in Fort Atkinson, Jensen moved closer to home, in fact, she said, she moved back in with her parents. 

“That’s called ‘boomerang.’ It’s happening a lot to people in my generation,” she added.  

Since her arrival into the area, she has spent time learning about the community. She is also looking for a place in Fort Atkinson to live, she said. 

When she accepted the job in Fort Atkinson, she said, her dad asked if she would visit the catfish. 

“I said, ‘What?’ but now I know about the catfish. Before I came here to work, like a lot of people, I had been to the Fireside. I’d come on a school field trip and with my grandparents. Now I know that Fort is so much more,” she said. 

“I love that we have the river and Lake Koshkonong, I love waterfront restaurants and being by the water, and people in Fort — everyone is so friendly,” she added.  

Most appealing about her new position, she said, is the opportunity to network with community members to build excitement, showcase venues and develop events. She particularly likes building business connections, she said, including visiting businesses, meeting the owners, hearing their stories, and then looking for ways to bring those stories out into public view. 

And like what initially gave meteorology its appeal, she said, with chamber work, every day is different. 

She described two days in October during which she found herself working with a manufacturer to schedule a student-based tour, and then pivoting to coordination work for the chamber’s upcoming holiday parade, a task that included finding volunteers, writing press releases and assigning numbers within the parade lineup to floats and other entries. 

She also made a call to “Mr. and Mrs. Claus” confirming their appearance time. 

The following day, she said, she was working with members of a neighboring community that does not have a chamber of its own, looking to collaborate and find mutually beneficial promotional opportunities. 

While she came with a skill set developed through community event planning, she said, her job in Fort Atkinson offers the right mix of satisfaction and challenge. 

“This job adds the promotion of businesses who are members,” she said.

“I’m excited to meet people and learn why they chose Fort Atkinson as a place to have their business, she continued, adding, “I’m learning something new every day.”  

Jensen said she is spending her free time exploring the area, and hopes people will seek her out to say hello, and while she has not yet reached celebrity status, “Fort Atkinson Anna” has a nice ring.