Leslie Abshier was brought into the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors effective May 25, 2022. 

"I am honored to join this group of community leaders to serve on the Board for the Chamber of Commerce on behalf of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bloomington. The Chamber has a strong history and reputation of supporting nonprofit members and I am pleased to be a part of that continued effort in the years to come." 

Leslie Abshier has served as Resource Development Director for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bloomington since 2014. She has grown the organization from a $900,000 annual operating budget to a $3.2 million operating budget today. She successfully led an $11 million Capital Campaign for the Club in 2016. She leads a Resource Development Team of three professionals at the Club doing work in fundraising, events, marketing, communications, grants and donor relations.

Leslie has earned national and state recognition for her work in development at the Club. In 2020, she won the Resource Development Professional of the Year for the Midwest Region of Boys & Girls Clubs of America. She also won the Indiana Area Council of Boys & Girls Clubs Professional of the Year in 2021. She has earned awards locally, as well, including the Fast 15 MVP Award in 2021 and the 10 Under 40 Award from the Chamber’s Young Professionals Bloomington group in 2019.

Previously, Leslie worked two years in full-time ministry, and spent two years as Development Director at LIFEDesigns. 
Leslie is a proud O'Neill Alum holding a Master’s of Public Affairs in Fund Development & Nonprofit Management, a Master’s Certificate in Social Entrepreneurship and a Bachelor’s of Science in Public Affairs all from Indiana University, Bloomington. Leslie enjoys giving back to her Alum Mater as an adjunct faculty at Indiana University teaching undergraduate students about the non-profit sector and fund development.

Leslie has lived in Bloomington since 2005 and is very active in the community. She has served on the Prospect Hill Neighborhood Association board, the Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission, Business Networking International (BNI) leadership, and with the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce Young Professionals group. She is also a volunteer staff member and teaching pastor at Genesis Church.
​
Leslie has been married to her husband Chris, a lifelong Bloomington resident, since 2011. She has two young sons, Jack and Charlie. The Abshiers like to fix-up their 100-year-old house, go antiquing, attend IU sporting events of all kinds, watch the Colts play football, visit local markets and shops, and are very involved in activities with their children.

For a time, it looked like the long-discussed expansion of the Monroe Convention Center was about to come to pass. Bloomington and Monroe County officials were talking about how to make it happen. They didn’t always agree, but they were talking. Hopes for progress were high.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and everything shut down: tourism, travel, and talk of expanding the center.
Now business leaders and some local government officials want to reboot the process, but they may face an uphill fight. Key decision makers in county government aren’t convinced that now is the time to expand the convention center. Or even that expanding is a good idea.

​“I just feel we’re in such a time of flux and uncertainty, it doesn’t make sense to move forward with a huge project without knowing what’s coming,” says Julie Thomas, president of the Monroe County board of commissioners.

The Monroe Convention Center opened in 1991 in a former car dealership at 302 S. College Ave. Almost from the start, local tourism officials argued it needed to be larger. A 2003 Herald-Times column lamented that the center was “considered too small to attract even medium-sized conventions.”

It took years of lobbying, but finally local leaders got the Indiana General Assembly to authorize a 1 percent food and beverage tax to fund the convention center expansion or “related tourism or economic development projects.” That was in 2009. Then it took until December 2017 for the Monroe County Council to vote, 4-3, to impose the tax, despite vocal opposition.

“That was the hard part, the big, heavy lift,” says Eric Spoonmore, president and CEO of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. “But there’s been no progress since.”