The Seminole County Chamber announced its new Apopka area council, the West Seminole Council, in a Nov. 24 press release. 

“We’ve had a lot of businesses from the Apopka area over the past year looking for just another way for them to connect with more businesses and community leaders,” Rebekah Arthur, Seminole County Chamber president and CEO, said in an interview.  

The new council will serve the Semoran Boulevard corridor, from downtown Apopka to the State Road 434/436 intersection. According to the Seminole County Chamber, more than 20,000 people and 1,600 businesses reside between those two local landmarks. 

Seminole County Chamber, five-star accredited chamber and current Florida Chamber of the Year, has seven other councils throughout the county, with the common goal of uniting local business leaders. The West Seminole Council will meet on the first Monday of every month for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Bahia Shrine, located at 3101 E. Semoran Boulevard. Its first meeting is currently set for Feb. 2, 2026, with Seminole State College Center of Business Development’s Jessica Rosario-Fortis serving as guest speaker. 

“One thing as business owners we sometimes forget to do is our continuing education,” Collette Rance, West Seminole Council chair and A-HA! Insurance president, said in an interview. “Unless there’s some sort of industry requirement, people don’t do it. They just kind of plod along and do what they know. So it’s good, I think, from an educational standpoint, but [also] from a business standpoint, to do this sort of format.” 

Rance said her current job is to teach seniors about Medicare, but one of her most significant ties to Apopka started when she was a schoolteacher. 

“I’m an old teacher — I spent 22 years teaching,” Rance said. “My first gig after my master’s degree was [at] Apopka Middle School, and I spent a lot of years there. And then I moved to Piedmont, so I have a lot of ties to Apopka, actually going back to the ‘70s, when I was just a kid.” 

Rance is hoping for at least 50 attendees at the initial meeting. On Jan. 14, 2026, she and her team will share more about the council with local businesses during a “handshake day.” 

“What we hope to do is just get folks to come and see the sort of synergy that happens in a room when a Seminole County Chamber [meeting] happens — it’s interesting,” Rance said. “Often in businesses, when you go to conferences and things like that, people are more guarded. They hold their cards close, and they don’t tell you what the secret sauce is. I find people at the chamber are willing to [share] maybe not all the ingredients of the secret sauce, but they share how they make it work.” 

To register for the Feb. 2 council meeting, visit seminolebusiness.org. Registration is $15. 

“Commerce doesn’t stop at a city line or a county line, especially now,” Arthur said. “We’re looking regionally [at] how different things that are even happening in downtown Orlando impact our businesses here and how our businesses can benefit from all the different things that are happening throughout this tri-county region.”