The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce is facing a big moment. It is a preeminent voice of business and industry in Colorado, where concerns about an economic slowdown have business leaders worried.
But it’s also dealing with big changes. Half the nonprofit’s staff has departed since August 2024, with more than two dozen people quitting — some with new jobs, some without — or being laid off or fired.
Over the last few months, Denverite has interviewed 25 current and former employees of the Chamber, in addition to board members, civic leaders and others. Our goal: To understand what’s driving departures and to dig into complaints about the organization’s culture and leadership.
Here’s what we found. Read the full story here.
1. Many former employees say the workplace is toxic or problematic.
Among the current and former employees we interviewed, 18 reported negative experiences, and many blamed CEO J.J. Ament, who became the Chamber’s leader in 2021. Their complaints focused on Ament’s interpersonal style, saying he had harshly criticized and undermined some employees.
“The environment was hostile, and it felt like an abusive relationship. If you ignore people or shut them down over and over and over again, people’s confidence starts to wane,” said China Califf, who left her job as director of the Small Business Development Center at the Chamber.
One notable example was Meredith Moon, the former chief economist at the Chamber. Two witnesses described a late-night scene at a company holiday party in 2023. Ament reportedly told Moon in private that he didn’t “like her” — or, as he later explained it to a group, that he didn’t “care for” her, they said.
Moon would later be demoted beneath a male colleague and subsequently fired for “insubordination” when she expressed concern, several colleagues said. Moon declined to comment.
Ament and a current male employee said they couldn’t remember the incident and stressed that the executive would have behaved that way. Others have described Ament as a leader with high expectations.
“They gave me a lot of opportunity. They gave me a really big assignment. They really opened doors,” said Amy Guttman, a former employee who was contacted independently by Denverite.
“I know it’s not the right fit for everybody, but my perspective is it doesn’t necessarily make it a bad situation so much as a very challenging one," a woman who was a vice president said.
Other former employees said women executives seemed to bear the brunt of changes at the organization, often being criticized or forced out. Some felt women were held to unfairly high standards, while men were not. Several alleged bullying, rude behavior and yelling by Ament.
Women made up about three-quarters of departures in the last four years. But Chamber officials said that’s in line with earlier years, since the Chamber has historically had a heavily female workforce.
Stein described allegations of misogyny as “a very large leap in judgment,” saying that none of the employee comments shared in the article reflected “an environment where women were targeted because they were women. It was not misogyny," she wrote.
“Is every criticism or concern in a female-majority workplace by a male CEO automatically misogyny or toxic?” she wrote. She said that much of the discontent may have been driven by tough but necessary changes, such as a five-day return-to-office mandate.
About 60 percent of hires under Ament have been women. The organization remains majority female, although less so than before.
2. Controversial changes at a renowned leadership program.
The Chamber's Leadership Foundation offers a prestigious one-year program, Leadership Denver.
It was led for years under Ament by Jerome Davis, who previously was a top executive at Xcel Energy. He left the Chamber in October 2024, despite plans to stay until late 2025. Several close relations said he had grown concerned about the nonprofit's culture and leadership; he declined to comment.
Former Denver mayor Wellington Webb said Davis’ departure was alarming, suggesting it was part of a broader effort to pull the Chamber back from diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Davis “had a view of America that was inclusive of minorities, of women in strategic positions. And for Jerome to leave abruptly and then all of his staff leave after that is certainly suspect at the best,” Webb said.
Stein denied that Davis’s departure had anything to do with his views on DEI. “Mr. Ament supports efforts to ensure organizations are welcoming and inclusive, and has hired and convened one of the most diverse senior leadership teams in the history of the DMCC,” Stein wrote.
Shortly after Davis left, the Chamber laid off the program’s two directors and a long-time administrative assistant. The terminations were a shock to participants and supporters of the program.
The layoffs at the Leadership Foundation led three members to resign from the 50-person board of the Leadership Foundation.
“These changes have altered the Foundation's culture in ways I believe are not in its best interest or honor the mission we have been fulfilling for decades,” wrote former chair Paul Lhevine, a prominent leader in the nonprofit world, in a resignation letter.
3. The state moved a business center away from the Chamber, allegedly due to cultural concerns.
The Chamber had hosted the region’s Small Business Development Center for about 40 years.
The SBDC, until recently, was jointly overseen by the Chamber and the state Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT). China Califf was its leader.
She told Denverite she reported concerns about the Chamber to her colleagues at the state. Leaders at OEDIT responded by offering to remove the center from the Chamber and find a new host, she said.
“They approached me a couple days later and said OEDIT’s senior team had been alerted to the fact that there were issues over at the Chamber that were directly impacting the center,” Califf told Denverite. The center has since been moved to Red Rocks Community College.
Ament said that he had not wanted to make the change — “not at all.” But Chamber officials said the change was made as part of a larger state strategy to host the business centers at educational institutions.
“In support, we worked with them collaboratively for months to ensure no small businesses were impacted during the transition,” Stein wrote.
OEDIT officials declined interview requests and didn’t directly answer emailed questions about what keyed the change.
“By serving as one of 14 regional service centers across the state, Red Rocks Community College will support the Colorado SBDC’s mission to help Colorado businesses launch, advance, and thrive, through trusted advising, actionable training, and community resources,” OEDIT spokesperson Alissa Johnson wrote in an email.
4. Revenues are rebounding.
Ament and his supporters said that, four years in, he is showing results for the organization. After tumbling during the pandemic, the main Chamber organization’s revenue recently surpassed 2019 levels.
“We're bucking the trend nationally among chambers of commerce, because we're growing,” Ament said.
But its expenses have been growing, too. As a result, the main Chamber organization lost nearly $570,000 in 2022-23, and another $100,000 in the most recent fiscal year for which records were available. The organization hadn’t previously run a deficit since 2006.
Ament said the Chamber has made big investments that skew the numbers, like updating the salary scale across the organization. The Chamber has also lost significant money on the commercial properties it leases, owing to a tough downtown market.
Ament also argued that the Chamber as a whole is seeing success. The full set of Chamber organizations, including the Leadership Foundation, is expected to post a combined profit of $800,000 or more for fiscal year 2025, Stein said.
