Meet the Chamber’s Executive Board Member

Bill Macfadyen is the founder and publisher of Noozhawk, Santa Barbara County’s leading source of local news and information.

With a staff of 10 professional journalists and five sales and marketing representatives, the 24/7 website boasts a daily audience of 23,000 readers and more than 1.7 million stories read each month.

Bill is the immediate past co-chairman of the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce and was a lead architect of the 2020 merger of the Carpinteria Valley, Goleta, and Santa Barbara chambers of commerce.

“A healthy small business environment is the surest sign of a healthy community, and we believe a unified chamber can be the most effective advocate for both — throughout the South Coast,” he says.

A member of the chamber’s Executive Committee, Bill serves as board liaison for the organization’s new Economic Development Committee, whose primary mission is the revitalization of State Street in downtown Santa Barbara.

He previously served two terms on the board of the Goleta Chamber of Commerce and was board chairman in 2009 and 2019-2020.

Bill is also a board member of the Santa Barbara Club, Santa Barbara Partners in Education, the Westmont College Foundation and the Montecito Association, and is a member of the Santa Barbara Council on Alcoholism & Drug Abuse’s Fighting Back Steering Committee.

He has served as senior warden at All Saints By-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito, where he completed two separate terms on the Vestry and is a past board member of All Saints Parish School.

In 2008, Bill was named Entrepreneur of the Year by both the Goleta Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Santa Barbara Technology & Industry Association. In 2012, he received the National Journalism Education Association’s Friend of Scholastic Journalism Award in recognition of Noozhawk’s work with The Charger Account, the student news website at Dos Pueblos High School.

Bill and his wife, Missy, live in Montecito with their latest Alaskan malamute, Sadie, and they have three adult children.