Business & Professional Development
Us! Your Chamber of Commerce
Business Development Partners
Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network
The Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network is committed to helping your business succeed in Massachusetts. We provide free, confidential, one-to-one business assistance and free or low-cost educational training programs to prospective and existing small businesses throughout the Commonwealth. The MSBDC fosters the start, growth and sustainability of small business by providing high-quality, in-depth advising, training and capital access.
Areas of assistance include, but are not limited to: business plan development, preventure feasibility, cash flow analysis, personnel and organizational issues, conventional and non-conventional financing, marketing, international trade, SBIR and government procurement.
The Chamber hosts monthly office hours in-house at the Chamber Office with a Senior Business Advisor.
Small Business Development with Dee Dice of Valley CDC
Valley Community Development’s Small Business Development Program provides a range of free services to meet the needs of low and moderate income individuals engaged in start-up and existing small businesses. Their program is designed to help you start, stabilize, and grow your business and is customized to meet your needs.
They offer one-on-one business assistance, from access to capital to sales and marketing, from record keeping to staffing, everything you need for your business to thrive. We also offer educational workshops to polish your skills and keep you ahead of the business curve. These workshops can also create a network of small business owners who can be your peers and mentors as you and your business grow.
Downtown Mindfulness with Shalini Bahl PhD
Downtown Mindfulness is a nurturing space in the heart of downtown Amherst to sip a cup of tea, develop mindfulness skills with a certified mindfulness teacher, and be part of a community of people exploring ways to shift the paradigm of how we live, work, and play.
Shalini is an advocate of mindfulness in business, higher-ed and society. She is committed to integrating the transformative potential of mindfulness in education, business and policy to revitalize classrooms, organizations and communities. She has a doctoral degree in marketing from the Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst, where she is an Affiliated Expert/Lecturer. Her award-winning research on mindfulness has been published in premier marketing and public policy journals. Through her organization, KnowYourMind.training, she designs and delivers mindfulness-based solutions that address organizational challenges. In her studio, Downtown Mindfulness, she is co-creating a community to promote mindful living. As a District Councilor in the inaugural Town Council in Amherst, MA, she is now collaborating with multiple stakeholders to co-create mindful towns and cities.
She has been practicing mindfulness for over fifteen years and received professional certification to teach mindfulness from the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School and the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (the mindfulness-based emotional intelligence program that started at Google).
When she is not working, Shalini loves all kinds of creative projects, cooking, being in nature, meditating and Zumba.
See the full list of training and resources of by Shalini Bahl, PhD. here.
Joshua Hornick Coaching
Joshua Hornick is an internationally certified business coach who lives in Amherst. He works with small business owners, partners, executives, managers, non-profit leaders, and even some folks who aren't in business at all. He has trained coaches for more than 10 years.
LT Consulting with Lisa Totz
LT Consulting aids businesses to save time and money through process improvements and change. Our services include observations, discussions, immersion and investigation that lead to the identification of opportunities to streamline the workflow for efficiency and effectiveness. Engineering and Lean Six Sigma Master black belt training have provided a well-developed problem-solving skillset, varied analysis tools to use and to draw information from. An analytic system-level thinking approach that can be applied to products/processes in any industry. Find out more about Lisa Totz and her work here.