The Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce of Georgia plans to expand to cover much of the Southeast U.S.

The chamber has appointed a committee to draft changes to its bylaws to include South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, the states served by the Brazilian Consulate in Atlanta, said Fabiana Di Pietro Xavier, chamber executive director. The chamber's new name will be the Brazilian-American Chamber of the Southeast.  

The chamber would still be headquartered in Atlanta but would hold activities in the other states and recruit members from there, said Ms. Xavier.

"We are just starting to do this," she told GlobalAtlanta. "We don't know exactly how it will work. But we do know that we have members asking us for help in other states."

The chamber, founded in 1996, currently has 50 members. It recently elected six new board members; Rosana Lima, owner of Minas Emporium, a Brazilian grocery store in Marietta; Kevin Lovelace, a project manager with Georgia Power Co.; Kendall Carter, an Atlanta attorney; David Bruce, international business professor at Georgia State University; Don Williams, CEO of Princeton Healthcare Inc. and Gilson Horfmann of Embraco North America Inc., a Brazilian manufacturer of refrigeration compressors.

Atlanta attorney Robert West was chosen to be the new chairman of the board.

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