Main Street Alliance Announces Staff Updates; Chanda Causer as Executive Director

March 24, 2022

With recent staff updates, Kelly Conklin, Main Street Alliance Board of Directors Chair had this to say:

“At the end of March, Main Street Alliance will say goodbye to longtime leader and Co-Executive Director Stephen Michael after a decade of service to supporting authentic small business voices. The MSA Board thanks him for his service and looks forward to working with Chanda Causer as sole Executive Director.

When we organize like-minded small business owners to present their lived experience and share their genuine and compelling personal stories, we can change the narrative of what’s good for business. We are organizing to counter a half century of cultural indoctrination led by powerful, national, conservative corporate interests that have used small business as a disguise. We organize small businesses to move a progressive, common sense policy agenda.

From our first organizing project that had a direct impact on passage of the ACA to policies that support small business owners, their employees and their communities, Main Street Alliance has been out front –including leading advocacy around robust COVID relief programs that saved the small business sector. Our model of putting small business owners in face to face engagements with policy makers at all levels of government has a proven record of success.

Our continuing work on tax fairness, access to capital, and reining in monopolies is timely and targeted. We are expanding engagement in communities that have been denied both public and private investment, the kinds of investment that lead to real equity and inclusion. 

Over the last four years, while much of this work was being done externally, MSA was going through a series of internal structural transitions from financial partnership to independence. After ten years of dedicated hard work and extraordinary leadership, we wish Stephen Michael all the best as he moves on to his next chapter.”