Pasadena Chamber Installs Real Estate Veteran Bill Ukropina as New Board Chair

Bill Ukropina has spent 40 years putting his name on commercial real estate signs across Pasadena. On Friday night, June 26 at a gala in the Langham Huntington Hotel’s Viennese Ballroom, the city’s business community gave him something even more challenging to hang on a post: the chairmanship of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.

Ukropina, a well-known broker with Coldwell Banker Commercial, was sworn in as the chamber’s incoming board chair at the organization’s annual Inaugural Gala, with Congresswoman Judy Chu administering the oath before a room packed with members, business owners, nonprofit executives, corporate honorees, and scholarship recipients.

The evening moved between celebration and candor, with speaker after speaker acknowledging that Pasadena’s recovery from a brutal stretch of wildfires is real — but unfinished.

Outgoing chair Frank Girardot of BYD|RIDE was recognized for a year of leadership that included launching a fire-membership initiative in the wake of the Eaton Fire.

Mayor Victor Gordo, addressing the crowd, framed the evening with characteristic directness.

“You are the backbone of this community,” he said, “the people who not only contribute but employ and support the people of this community.”

Ukropina has logged years on the volunteer circuit — two terms as president of Pasadena American Little League, 11 years coaching youth soccer, stints on a city commission and two municipal task forces, and a seat on the Cancer Support Community board. He brings that résumé and a broker’s instinct for the pitch to a chamber that counts more than 1,150 member businesses.

In remarks he promised would land somewhere between the Gettysburg Address and the “I Have a Dream” speech — and which ran closer to the former — he laid out a straightforward agenda: stimulate economic growth, expand networking opportunities, advocate for business-friendly policy, and boost the visibility of Pasadena businesses.

He was equally pointed about what the chamber is not.

“We don’t care about your nationality, your political party, your sexual orientation, your religious preference,” he said. “What we focus on is making Pasadena an even greater and safer place — because if we create more jobs, that helps everybody.”

He closed by happily announcing that his MasterCard was already at the Langham’s Tap Room bar, and that 40 drink tickets — one for each year of his marriage to his wife, Linan — were available to anyone who could find him before 11:30.

The evening’s Corporate Citizens of the Year awards went to Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, represented by Provost David Tirrell, who described the institutions’ ongoing contributions to the city: assisting displaced Eaton Fire employees, reducing campus water use by nearly 50 percent over 15 years, and attracting major employers to the area. (Amazon Web Services, Tirrell noted, expects to bring roughly 450 engineers to its New York Drive facility within the next two years.)

Union Station Homeless Services received the nonprofit Corporate Citizen of the Year honor. Founded in 1973 and now serving three dozen cities across the San Gabriel Valley, the organization has already served more than 3,500 people this year and contributed more than $500,000 in direct assistance to Eaton Fire victims. CEO Katie Hill accepted the award and used the moment to deliver an unvarnished assessment: Union Station has absorbed a 20 percent drop in government funding in a single year — its steepest ever. “We need your support more than ever,” she said.

The chamber and its foundation awarded $2,500 scholarships to two community college transfer students, both former foster youth: Kathy Artiega, a Los Angeles Trade Tech graduate heading to the University of Southern California, and Giselle Espinoza, transferring from Rio Hondo College to Cal State Fullerton. A third scholarship, from member firm Womble Bond Dickinson, went to Rio Hondo student Orlando Briego, bound for Cal State Dominguez Hills. All three spoke from the stage with striking stories about homelessness, instability, and the hard work of finding a path forward.

Their remarks landed as something of an unplanned coda to the evening’s larger theme: that Pasadena’s strength runs deeper than its corporate tenants, and that the work of building a city worth living in is never entirely done.

More information on the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce is available at pasadena-chamber.org.