Kim Daggy, began her new position as executive director of Enjoy Oxford on Monday, determined to help others see and enjoy the town she has come to love.
The dog loving, health conscious, family woman joined Enjoy Oxford’s team in 2012. She said the organization, which acts as the city’s visitors’ bureau, was then being in “direct need of help,” something that attracted her to the position seven years ago.
Jessica Greene was then brought on as executive director and the new team turned Enjoy Oxford into the vibrant, active and relevant organization it is today. It spearheaded the levy campaign to support the Oxford Area Trails System (OATS), helped raise funds for and encourage other local projects, organized a steady stream of activities in the uptown parks, worked closely with the hotel and restaurant owners and became a near indispensable concierge for visitors to Oxford.
Last month, Greene took a new position as Oxford’s assistant city manager and after interviewing candidates, the Enjoy Oxford board promoted Daggy to executive director.
Daggy graduated from Ball State University in Indiana with a Bachelor of Science degree. With that degree she became an exercise physiologist and trained cardiac patients that suffered from heart attacks and helped those following a surgery. Exercise physiologists help patients improve their health by recommending exercise plans to improve their health.
The degree allowed Daggy to have a one-on-one connection with people which is what she enjoyed the most. Although, she is no longer working in the medical field, Daggy said that she is still able to have that connection with others.
“Instead of applying it for fitness and getting healthy, it’s more towards economy and projects and doing a lot of engagement and highlighting things that are great about our town.”
As she walked around uptown Oxford this week, stopping by Bagel & Deli and Kofenya, Daggy described her first visit to Oxford in 1983, when she came to town for what was then known as Little Siblings Weekend to visit her older sister at the university.
Little Siblings Weekend is now known as Family Weekend and is one of what Enjoy Oxford calls the five impact weekends of the year in which thousands of visitors fill every hotel within 20 miles, local restaurants are crowded and Enjoy Oxford strives to make sure everybody has a good time.
But when the crowds recede and the students leave for the summer, Oxford is still a great place to enjoy, Daggy said.
“When I first started working (at Enjoy Oxford), I was impressed with the openness and kindness of people here. I’ve lived in other communities throughout my adulthood and having that warm hospitality isn’t always there, where you feel connected to your community,” she said. “It’s easy to get involved and people will come up and talk to you at Kroger, they will see you out taking a walk in the community and come up and have a conversation and they know you by name. It’s refreshing.”
As far as future projects are concerned, Daggy and the executive board of Enjoy Oxford met Wednesday, June 2, to discuss the organization’s strategic plan that was put into place in January.
“We generally meet as a board and staff in January to brainstorm our initiatives and projects we want to accomplish for the year,” she said. “We will revisit that together this week to see where we want to concentrate our efforts and the areas we want to continue with in light of the transition,” she said.
Alan Kyger, board president said future projects will be discussed in more detail during a full meeting of the board in July. At that time the board also will take formal action to advertise for someone to fill the operations director job that opened when Daggy was promoted.
