For a shy, very private person, Caldie Rogers’ public, innovative accomplishments as president and chief executive of the Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce loom in giant contrast.
“Shy, yes, but I have developed feelings of compassion and caring for people over the years, and I learned that the chamber gave me opportunities for accomplishing much more in groups than I could individually. That was my inspiration to work in the public arena,” Rogers said.
And, work in the public arena she did, guiding the chamber from a world of debt and staff scandal to become one of the most successive, influential and progressive chambers in the state and the first in the nation to partner with a sovereign nation, the Tulalip Tribes. That outreach effort brought the chamber both state and national attention, including being featured at former Gov. Gary Locke’s first statewide economic development conference.
Following the historic partnership with the Tulalip Tribes, she organized a series of award-winning North County Summits that successfully brought together eight diverse communities for the first time to partner on behalf of economic development efforts.
She has served in a variety of leadership roles on boards and commissions throughout Snohomish County and the state of Washington, and is currently on the boards of the Association of Washington Business, Washington Chamber of Commerce Executives, Economic Development Council of Snohomish County and Marysville Economic Revitalization Commission.
“I really credit our active board of directors and chamber staff members for their efforts, support and dedication. We’ve worked well together,” Rogers said. She laughs thinking about the changes she wrought in the chamber and on the board since she joined the chamber in 1993.
“I remember once when a new board member expressed concern about being able to accomplish a new program I proposed for the chamber. A more seasoned director leaned over and told him, ‘If she says we can do it, we can. You’ll learn not to be afraid.’”
That has been Rogers’ attitude, too, learning not to be afraid. A single mother, she raised son Nathan during many lean years, eventually parleying her chamber experience into building a successful Marysville-Tulalip organization that her son even became part of for several years.
Her background may not have prepared her to overcome her shyness, but it taught her which passions and goals were most important to her. Born in Berlin of U.S. Army parents — her father was an officer, her German mother an Army nurse — Rogers learned compassion from a woman who showed her the tattoos the Nazi regime marked on her arm at Auschwitz.
She developed her inspiration for helping people improve their lives by playing as a child with hobos who befriended her in their camp outside Washington, D.C., where her father worked in the Pentagon.
Because of her father’s role as an intelligence officer who uncovered Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s effort to place guided missiles in Cuba, she learned leadership. She recalls that as a girl of 7, she played with President John Kennedy’s children at the White House on one of her father’s visits there, although, she said, “Carolyn and John were much younger than I was and didn’t really interest me at the time.”
Her father, she said, “was a charismatic figure, one of my heroes, along with my grandfather, who was president of the University of Connecticut. He taught me the value of education and told me to never worry about the competition, just do my best with my own talents and skills.”
Throughout her life, she has competed with that attitude, helped in her personal and professional growth by “being blessed with a wonderful IQ, a photographic memory and a brain that operates equally in left and right modes, something only 5 percent of the population has,” she said with matter-of-fact honesty.
Recognizing those blessings, she has tried to use them well. When she joined the Army for four years, she graduated from a grueling, intensive Russian military school, then served as a translator. That education came in play later when she worked with a group establishing Everett’s “sister city” relationship with a Russian city.
“All my life I’ve wanted to make a difference in the world,” said Rogers, who graduated from Cascade High School and the University of Washington and holds a master’s degree from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute of Organizational Management, through the University of Delaware.
“The chamber of commerce and so many people have helped me to make those differences. It’s a long way from becoming the first girl Captain of Patrol in the state of Virginia when I was an elementary school crossing guard,” she said, with a characteristic Rogers laugh.
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