Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce hosts annual meeting

The Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce held its annual meeting at the city’s Amber Room Colonnade on Oct. 6, with dozens of local business owners and members of critical local industries in attendance.

Danbury Mayor Dean Esposito welcomed the Chamber members warmly, telling them he appreciated all of their work and the economic impact which he said has made Danbury the “shining star of Connecticut.”

“As I was getting out of my car this morning, I grabbed the roll of ribbon and scissor because I thought this was a ribbon cutting,” he quipped. “We’ve been doing quite a few of those.”

Cynthia Merkle, the chairwoman of the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce and also the CEO of Union Savings Bank, presided over the annual meeting’s official proceedings. She put forward a number of new board members starting their initial terms and others being reappointed for three-year terms. They were all accepted without opposition.

Josh Riley of M&T Bank and George Mulvaney of Mulvaney Mechanical both retired after long service to the board, and Merkle announced that the Chamber will make donations in their honor to charities of their choosing as a show of thanks.

“As you can imagine it was a pretty exciting year for us as we brought back many of our in-person events,” Merkle noted while recounting what had transpired since the previous meeting. “For two years most of our events were virtual. It’s pretty amazing how we were able to put that in play very quickly and it was really based upon the leadership of the chamber.”

Merkle also praised the return of the annual Economic Breakfast and Forecast, the Woman’s Business Council, and efforts to better include businesses in the area surrounding Danbury as the Chamber of Commerce put an emphasis on the “Greater Danbury” part of its name.

The event’s keynote speaker was MannKind Corp. CEO Michael Castagna, who stated he was grateful for the opportunity to speak to the Chamber.

“It’s an honor and not something I could have imagined happening when I was a kid growing up in a small community that’s very similar to Danbury,” he said. “It reminds me of where I grew up, a small-town with hard-working people and lots of independent businesses run by everyday people.”

Castagna said that he was the first in his family to graduate from high school. He became a pharmacist and followed his passion for medicine into the corporate world, where he ultimately found himself leading MannKind at a precarious point in its history. Through the sales of properties, the cashing in a promissory note left by the founder and canny maneuvering, Castagna said he and his leadership team managed to set the company on a better track.

MannKind has built its business on researching and developing treatments such as diabetes and pulmonary arterial hypertension. Diabetes, Castagna noted, is a disease with a personal dimension for him.

“I never thought I’d find myself running a diabetes company, but I grew up with a single mom and no father,” he recalled. “When I found out who he was, he had already passed away from complications of diabetes.”

Castagna added that Affreza, an inhalable form of insulin that is the current flagship product of MannKind, has the potential to change the face of diabetes treatment. The drug, which kicks in faster than injected insulin, is being produced alongside its proprietary inhaler units at the company’s Danbury facilities. Attendees at the Chamber meeting were presented with sample Affreza inhaler units as examples what is being created by local manufacturing.

At the end of Castagna’s address, Chamber President and CEO P.J. Prunty took the podium to close the meeting, noting that he had worked as a roofer one summer during college for a company that held the contract for MannKind’s current Danbury facilities.

“So, I apologize if there are any leaks, that’s probably my fault,” he joked.