The Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce is 136 years old. It's impossible to say whether a 25-year-old is the youngest person ever to sit on the chamber's board of directors.

But it's fairly certain that 25-year-old Sid D'Sousa is the first person ever named to the board largely because he's 25 years old. D'Sousa is the designated "young professional" special director, nominated for a one-year term on the board for 2004.

Granted, he's also a Clifton native, a graduate of Walnut Hills High School and Yale, and an associate at the local venture firm River Cities Capital Fund. D'Sousa has been involved with groups helping young professionals get involved with Cincinnati, as an inducement to keep them from moving away.

The chamber, sharing a concern that the young and educated prefer New York and Seattle to Cincinnati, helped bring together young professionals' groups last year, and putting D'Sousa on the board brings their voice to the city's establishment.

"This is an opportunity to take action," D'Sousa said. He said too many young professionals are recruited to work in Cincinnati but fail to make a connection here. At worst, they end up working with other transplants, or their co-workers are older and have families, so they never meet locals who can show them the better side of the city.

"If they were just connected with the right things, you'd have a match," he said, and that's one reason D'Sousa helped found Cincy Ivy - to bring together young Ivy League-educated professionals and help them get involved locally.

He'll get the chance to carry that message to the city's powers that be during the year, and he said he hopes the chamber will appoint a young-professional successor for 2005.

That may depend on how much change the chamber can handle all at once. Don't forget that in 2004, the chamber gets its first-ever woman as chairwoman of the board - Janet Reid, president of Global Lead Inc.

John Byczkowski