Discover our mission, values, and leadership.
Explore benefits that power your success.
Browse our network of businesses.
Explore opportunities to connect and grow.
Don’t miss our upcoming Government Affairs Forum with Massachusetts State Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg.
12/09/2025
9:45am - 11:00am
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce
Take advantage of exclusive perks and programs for members.
Browse our directory to find and connect with member community.
Join experiences that build relationships and spark ideas.
City Awake empowers young professionals in a variety of ways that encourages these rising leaders to stay invested in the region’s future success.
Our Boston’s Future Leaders (BFL) program provides emerging leaders with a socially conscious and civically engaged leadership toolkit, as well as the opportunity to apply their knowledge through experiential assignments.
The Massachusetts Apprentice Network convenes employers, training providers, and talent sources interested in developing and implementing apprenticeship programs in occupations across industries and statewide in fields such as tech, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and more.
Level up your leadership and communication in this Boston Chamber workshop for professionals—gain essential skills in team alignment.
The Chamber Foundation invites the business community to engage with Boston Public Schools leaders and their students to help build the future workforce.
Learn how we advance talent and small business growth.
Explore our key priorities and strategic efforts.
Join us at our next Foundation event.
Natalia Urtubey is the Executive Director of Small Businesses at the City of Boston. She is also a 2019 alum of our Boston’s Future Leaders Program, a yearlong professional development program that activates emerging leaders under the age of 40 to confidently lead Boston into the future, and a 2020 Ten Outstanding Young Leaders Award winner. Throughout the program, participants build their socially conscious and civically engaged leadership and effective management toolkit through academic sessions at Harvard Business School, and exposure to established public, private, and nonprofit leadership practices, access to our region’s top leaders, experiential behind-the-scenes learning opportunities, and a cross-sector network.
Interested in applying? Nominations are open until December 18!
Natalia Urtubey arrived to Boston with her life packed in suitcases, a snowstorm swirling around the city.
Just ten days earlier she accepted an offer to attend Suffolk for a graduate program in Public Administration. An Arizona native, she was eager to set her sights on new skylines and explore the East coast. “Grad school,” she explains, “was important. But what was more important was the city and the ability to build connections and create community.”
As soon as Natalia’s (freshly bought) boots hit the ground, she searched for a place to call home. Her top two priorities were access to public transportation and a neighborhood that felt like a community. These priorities continue to inform her work and life today.
A combination of chance and luck landed Natalia in East Boston. After the snow cleared, Natalia went for a walk with her mother and found La Sultana, a local Colombian bakery. Natalia’s eyes lit up realizing that she could taste and see the comfort food of her childhood.
She knew Boston was where she was meant to be.
Ten years later, she fondly recalls those first few years in a city she has come to call her own…and reflects on her feelings now:
“I have fallen in love with Boston deeply. Part of it is because [this city] has embraced me back.”
Eight years after her original touchdown in Beantown, Natalia applied to the Boston Future Leader’s program. Already she had demonstrated the qualities, dedication, and determination of a leader. But this program helped her to connect with like-minded peers doing the same in their respective corners of the city.
As Natalia put it, “ most people tend to only associate with their industry or where they live. For me, the largest takeaways of any leadership program are the connections and network you build, and how you are able to implement the things you learn.”
She shared that what this program has done well is tying many pieces together: first building a cohort intentionally, then bringing in high-quality speakers, and, finally, allowing participants to have space to connect and collaborate.
One highlight for Natalia was the curriculum at Harvard Business School, which allowed her cohort to share different perspectives and taught them how to question. The Harvard Business School model teaches participants to tap into the other side of their brain. It allows different people to share different perspectives. It teaches you how to question. Says Natalia, “Everything I look at and read now, I’m asking those questions still today.”
Natalia has played an integral and essential role within the City of Boston before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under Mayor Walsh’s leadership, her team in the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development and is focused on small business development, working with residents, partners, and City officials to create opportunities for anyone to do business in Boston. In the past eight months, she led the team in distributing more than $7 million in relief grants which have supported thousands of small business owners. In September of 2020, she received a Ten Outstanding Young Leaders award for her incredible leadership demonstrated through the challenges of this year.
When asked to share about either her hardest challenge or greatest victory during this time, Natalia responded that her answer to both questions was the same: being in a position where you have to help, to be the bridge that allows people to walk through their fears, to have solutions for problems that are global.
It is tough – and the only certainty is uncertainty. Being a leader in Boston during this time is no small feat.
But she’s up for the challenge. This is for her chosen home, after all.
Popular Resources