Jeannette Duerr recalls driving through Holly Hill for the first time six years ago this past week to check out Bishop's Glen as a potential retirement community for her mother.
Duerr, who relocated to New Smyrna Beach from Maryland in 2010 with her husband Bart, remembers seeing homes and small commercial buildings in need of sprucing up.
"I thought this is a town that can use some love," she said.
She now has an opportunity to help give it that needed TLC.
This past week, Duerr was installed as 2018 board president of the Holly Hill Chamber of Commerce.
Fittingly, the installation breakfast was held at Bishop's Glen, where Duerr's late mother, Jeanne Scammon, wound up living for three years. Scammon died in 2015 at age 87.
Duerr became involved with the chamber in 2015 after Synergy Billing, the Daytona Beach company where she works as senior vice president of communications and marketing, announced plans to build a future headquarters campus on the site of the former Holly Hill Middle School on Center Avenue.
Duerr applied to work for the promising, but still relatively young medical billing and coding company the previous year after reading about it in The Daytona Beach News-Journal.
Prior to moving to Florida, she spent several decades working as a communications and marketing professional in the healthcare industry in Maryland, in a county halfway between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
"I love healthcare. When I saw that article, I thought, why not?" she said of her decision to contact Synergy Billing to inquire about possibly working there.
To her surprise, upon arriving for an initial interview, she wound up spending an hour chatting with the company's founder and CEO, Jayson Meyer.
Meyer, now 35, impressed Duerr with his passion and vision for growing his company so much that she agreed to become an unpaid "extern" for a month to get on-the-job training, which led to her getting hired as a junior billing associate.
Never mind that Duerr, who was 64 at the time, had been a regional executive for major healthcare companies and organizations, including Kaiser Permanente.
But Meyer had bigger plans for Duerr, frequently calling her into his office to get her opinion on various ideas.
After three months, he promoted her to director of corporate communications, a newly created position, which eventually led to a subsequent promotion to her current title.
Duerr said Meyer has encouraged her to become active in the community, which includes serving as current Volusia-Flagler chapter president of the Florida Public Relations Association.
She also credits her late mother for instilling in her "a strong social conscience" and a commitment to helping others. Scammon received multiple awards for community service in Maryland.
Duerr also credits the support of her husband, a retired lobbyist for Bell Atlantic, who today is an active volunteer with Habitat for Humanity as well as their church.
Duerr said she also sees her company's Fountainhead project and her boss's plans to add 400 jobs by the end of 2021 as "an opportunity to transform Holly Hill and the lives of the people who live and work here."
The planned $25 million, 25-acre headquarters campus, on track to break ground this spring, will include a permanent home for the company's Synergy Career Academy, a daycare center, a fitness center, a cafe, a business incubator and office space for other businesses, apartments for employees and their families, as well as walking trails.
City Manager Joe Forte last year told The News-Journal, "This project is the most important project the city has been involved with since the Marina Grande (condo) project (in 2006).”
"It makes me proud to have (Duerr) represent me and Synergy," said Meyer. "To see her passion for her adopted community is really special."
Said Duerr: "I'm an old hippie. I want to change the world."
Clayton Park can be reached at clayton.park@news-jrnl.com or at 386-681-2470.