Written by Melissa Karen Sances

Northampton Living: Tell me about your path to executive director of the Downtown Northampton Association (DNA).

Jillian Duclos: I’ve been working downtown for 15 years. I started at Sylvester’s Restaurant when I was 19, and worked my way up to ownership. My mentor Peter St. Martin, who was coaching me to become a restaurant owner, had been on the DNA board for a long time, and he said our community could use the younger generation to become more involved. I sat on the board for two years, and when Amy Cahillane announced that she was moving on, it seemed like a natural progression. I had that background and insight of a restaurant owner, especially of navigating a business during the pandemic. I held the interim role until December 2023, when the board hired me.

NL: How has the position changed in the past year?

JD: As you talk to me today, it is my one-year anniversary of coming into this role. Last year I was announced as the interim director during the Sidewalk Sale. I was walking around thinking, ‘Nobody really knows me yet. I wonder what it’s going to be like.’ I felt like I landed in the right role at the right time.

When I came in, I said, ‘Let’s identify all those people that are driving things already downtown. Let’s support them so their vision can be successful.’ For me, that’s the biggest reward. When you feel that you’re not alone and that you’re all in this together, there is this weight that is pulled off your shoulders. Just knowing that when life happens, we’re not going to let each other fall. It takes the onus off of the difficulty of being an entrepreneur. We are so much stronger together.

NL: What’s a typical day like for you?

JD: I spend a lot of time out in the world talking to people. As we build a solid foundation, I’m on a listening tour. What should be our top 5 priorities?

NL: Have you decided what they should be?

JD: We have five committees that reflect some of those priorities. The DNA[rmy]  is our advisory committee Our Building Paradise committee is working to support the mitigation efforts for businesses during the redesign, as well as looking at funding sources. Our Back-to-Paradise committee drives downtown clean-up. Our Play-in-Paradise committee is our events committee. We have our finance committee, Funding Paradise, which helps explain why it’s worth investing in the work we do, especially when everything that comes in goes directly back to the business community. Small businesses generate a lot of revenue for Northampton. To me, small businesses are the safety net of our community, and we want the DNA to be the safety net for the safety net.

For more information, please visit: https://www.northamptondna.com/