Todd Maisch, CEO and president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce since 2014, died Thursday, according to a statement from the chamber and an online death notice.
The statement did not provide a cause of death. Maisch was 57.
Maisch was remembered as a fierce advocate for the interests of Illinois’ businesses.
“Throughout his career, he worked to advance proposals to grow the state’s business community, big and small,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said on Twitter. “He was passionate about making Illinois a better place to live, work, and do business and he leaves behind a storied legacy of service.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Maisch fought to keep businesses open, calling on the state’s leaders to do a better job of looking after both the state’s “public health crisis and the economic” issues.
He opposed a movement to increase the minimum wage in 2015, while supporting a gas tax increase in the state in 2019 in the name of meeting the state’s infrastructure demands.
Maisch was also co-chair of the Transportation for Illinois Coalition, along with Illinois Department of Labor Director Michael Kleinik.
“Illinois is the nation’s transportation hub, carrying millions of people to and from work and freight and goods from around the world to their destinations to support our economy,” Maisch and Kleinik wrote in a Chicago Tribune letter to the editor in 2016. “We need to get serious about what it will take to fix our infrastructure challenges for the long term, and those will not be easy discussions.”
He worked at the Chamber of Commerce beginning in 1994, taking over as its president and CEO in 2014.
“Todd was a beloved husband, father, and leader in the Illinois business community. We are deeply saddened by his loss,” Lori Poppe Hiltabrand, the chamber’s chief operating officer and general counsel, said in an email.
A Peoria native, Maisch received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from Illinois State University.
Information on survivors and services was not immediately available.
