OXNARD : Businessman Named New Chamber Leader

Oxnard businessman Don Facciano has been named executive director of the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce after the resignation of Penny Hoffman, chamber officials announced Wednesday.

Facciano, 57, who recently ended a 35-year career with Sears, Roebuck & Co., will assume his new duties Feb. 22. Hoffman’s last day is Feb. 21.

“We wanted to make this a continuous flow,” said Facciano, a longtime chamber member. “We are not going to drop a step, we are not going to pause the momentum that has been gathered under Penny.”

Hoffman, who became executive director of the chamber last May, said she resigned her post after her husband, Eric, accepted a position as president and partner of a Kansas City pharmaceutical company.

Hoffman said she has applied for an executive director’s position at a small chamber of commerce in the Kansas City area.

“It was obviously something that was not planned,” Hoffman said of her departure. “We thought we would be in California forever.”

Hoffman said she is most proud of the chamber’s role in reopening the city’s tourism bureau and of the effort to put the chamber office under the same roof as the newly formed Greater Oxnard Economic Development Corp. and the Greater Oxnard and Harbors Tourism Bureau.

Those three agencies will be housed at Oxnard’s Heritage Square starting March 1.

“I think I was just starting to make a little bit of a difference,” she said. “Now I don’t get to stay to see the fruits of my labor.”