GUILDERLAND — Sandra Dollard, a woman known for her warmth and sense of style, ran Evoke Style, a women’s fashion boutique, in Stuyvesant Plaza for more than a decade.

“I had cancer and I got myself through chemo and I wanted to help other people,” Dollard says in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “When I closed my business, I wanted to find someplace to help somebody run their business.”

She found that place at the Guilderland Chamber of Commerce. Dollard is the chamber’s new executive director.

Raised in Albany, Dollard grew up in what she describes as a close Irish Catholic family. “I married a Voorheesville boy 34 years ago,” she said, and they now live in Altamont.

Her sense of style came from her mother, “a very stylish woman,” Dollard said. “She could take a room and just make it beautiful.”

Her strong work ethic came from her father whom she described as “a self-made man,” owning an insurance agency and becoming a lobbyist. “He was just a brilliant and charismatic kind of guy,” Dollard said.

A common thread running through her life has been creating connections.

“I love people,” said Dollard. “I love to connect people.”

Reflecting on her shop at Stuyvesant Plaza, Dollard said, “I think what made the shop so special is that I really wanted to run an 1890s salon. Remember when women would just talk and come up and support each other and come up with creative and great ideas? …

“That’s what my shop was about … connecting women. We really created a community of women, of very strong women who became friends.”

Dollard ran charity events with these women every month.

“Shopping is not frivolous,” she asserts.

During the pandemic, before she was leading the chamber, Dollard spoke to The Enterprise about the importance of shopping locally to support the community.

It’s important to shop locally, Dollard said then, because it’s important to have our roads paved.

To keep connected with her customers during the pandemic, she made videos — a skill she is using now. Every Monday and Friday, she posts a video of a member company and what it does.

“I’m reaching out personally to all of our members,” Dollard said. “I’m reaching out to members who have left us and hopefully getting them back … We need them to be part of the community.”

The Guilderland Chamber is celebrating its 50th year. Dollard’s predecessor, Danielle Walsh, had the goal of getting 50 new members this year.

“We’re up to about 36,” Dollard said of new members. She’d like to get 60 businesses to join the current 250.

While a former chamber director, Kathy Burbank, filled the post until Walsh’s replacement could be found, Burbank last summer said that business had “totally changed” since she was the chamber’s director seven years ago. Burbank thought that, because of the pandemic, business owners were no longer as interested in physically gathering to network.

Since last summer, though, Dollard said, things have changed. “People want to go back out,” she said, and mixers are well attended.

“So many people are working at home right now that what we’re finding is they don’t have that social outlet,” said Dollard; reaching out through the internet simply isn’t enough.

Guilderland’s chamber, like others, lost members during the pandemic. “We need to get them back,” said Dollard, who is working with leaders of other local chambers, particularly those in Bethlehem and Colonie.

Dollard plans to be there for businesses — “boots on the ground,” she says — to meet whatever their needs are in the way that her predecessor, Walsh, helped her during the pandemic.

Dollard says it’s important to involve big businesses in the chamber as well as small ones.

“The big businesses, yes, they have their own social media; they have a way to get together with people. They have the business,” said Dollard, “but they also need to support the community that they’re doing business in …

“Businesses support your area. They support your schools. They support your fire department … And the chamber is here to support those businesses.”