WILMINGTON – The Delaware State Chamber of Commerce announced Tuesday that Marie Holliday, managing director of Wilmington accounting firm Cover & Rossiter, has been elected as chair of the organization’s Board of Directors.
Holliday takes over the lead role of the chamber following the retirement of her predecessor Nick Lambrow, the former Delaware regional president of M&T Bank. He had about five months remaining in his two-year term, meaning Holliday’s tenure at the helm will be a little bit longer than typical.
John Gooden, president and chief operations officer of mechanical fabricator M. Davis & Sons, has stepped into the role of vice chair, and will succeed Holliday in 2026.
Holliday joined Cover & Rossiter in 1997 and was elevated to managing director in 2016. She is a longtime volunteer at the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, having served on multiple committees, including tax and Superstars in Business. In 2019, she joined the State Chamber’s Board of Governors and in 2021, she was elected to the Board of Directors to serve as treasurer. She became vice chair in 2022.
“Marie is a natural leader and dedicated advocate for our mission. Her years engaging with our organization as both a member and a volunteer make her an ideal fit as our chair,” DSCC President Mike Quaranta said in a statement. “Her leadership will help us grow and thrive as we continue to serve Delaware’s business community.”
On Tuesday, Holliday told Delaware Business Times that her time as treasurer allowed her to get to know the organization’s finances and served as a valuable primer toward leading the organization.
“Right now, I think the chamber is in a really good financial position, which you can’t say about a lot of nonprofit organizations as a lot of them are struggling after COVID,” she said.
Holliday said that she sees talent attraction and development to be the biggest need for Delaware businesses and she believes the state chamber can be a valuable part of the solution.
“We’ve started doing a lot of workforce development training, so we’ll continue doing that,” she said.
The pandemic’s impact on the state legislature, which caused proceedings to be moved online and the State House closed to the public for a period, also hampered the relationship between lawmakers and the business community, Holliday said.
“I think that we need to go back to that business relationship with them, so they understand the things that are going on in the business community because I think many of us are out of touch to be quite honest,” she said, noting that she sees it in her own professional conversations with clients who may not know what’s being debated in Dover. “We’re all hunkering down and trying to stay in our lane, and the things that we need they may not know about.”
