Candance Castlen Brake is the President and CEO of the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce. Candance, who has held the CEO position since 2015, has a career dedicated to community and economic development. She served as a three-term City Commissioner from 2004 to 2010 serving on commissions that led the downtown placemaking strategy and the region’s shift to a knowledge-based economic development strategy. Prior to holding public office she served as Executive Vice President of the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Corporation and Deputy Judge/Executive for the Daviess County Fiscal Court. She has also served as an adjunct professor in the Department of Government at Western Kentucky University.
She has served on numerous boards and commissions throughout her career including Brescia University Board of Trustees, Owensboro Riverport Authority, Wendell Foster Center and Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence. She is currently on the board of the Wendell H. Ford Government Education Center, the Owensboro Health Board of Directors and an ex-officio member of the Kentucky Chamber Board of Directors. Brake is also a member of the American Chamber of Commerce Executives, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Executives and Kentuckians for Better Transportation.
Brake holds a bachelor degree in history from Brescia University and a master of public administration from Western Kentucky University. She is a graduate of the public leadership program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
She and her husband, Dr. Nicholas Brake, have two children; Anna Caroline, a recent graduate of Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and Nicholas, a junior at Western Kentucky University. They also have a beagle named Rosie and a calico named Daisy.
