Darrell Randle, vice president of Small Business Development at the Mobile Chamber, will retire on August 31 after 22 years of service, closing out a career that took him from repairing television sets and telephone systems to leading one of the Chamber’s most personal and far-reaching missions: helping small and minority-owned businesses grow.

Randle joined the Chamber in 2004 after a winding path through the telecommunications industry. A graduate of Toulminville High School in 1977, he earned an associate’s degree in electronic technology from Ret’s Electronic Institute in Birmingham before working on telephone systems for companies including Mitel, first in Boca Raton, Florida, and later in Mobile with Omniphone. While in Boca Raton, he also attended Broward College to round out his education with a formal understanding of business management.

When Mitel later offered to relocate Randle and his family to Fairfax, Virginia, he and his wife chose instead to stay in Mobile and start their own business. Their family, including their parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, was rooted in the area, and they were not willing to leave that support system behind. That decision led to Randle starting his own business: Elite Telephone Services (ETS), which sold, installed and maintained business telephone systems for nearly five years before the rise of voice over IP reshaped the industry.

That entrepreneurial chapter, Randle said, taught him lessons he would carry into his Chamber career for decades. While running his own business, he informally mentored other minority business owners on bookkeeping, staffing and finding customers, work that mirrored what would later become his job description.

“I was doing what I’m doing for the Chamber before I worked for the Chamber,” Randle said.

After stints with engineering firms BCM and Malcolm Pirnie, including a year commuting between Mobile and Birmingham, Randle learned about the opening at the Chamber. He interviewed with a panel that included former Chamber leaders and elected officials, an experience he described as intimidating for someone raised in Prichard in a house of nine.

“I said, what God has for you, nobody can take away,” Randle recalled of steadying his nerves before that interview. “If it’s meant for me, I’ll get it. If it’s not, there’s something better out there for me.”

He got the job, and over the next 22 years built out the Chamber’s small business development work around three pillars: training, awards and recognition, and minority business development. Among his proudest accomplishments is elevating the Chamber’s Eagle Awards into one of its most anticipated annual events, and leading the Minority Business Development Agency Center, which the Chamber operated from roughly 2006 to 2016 and which connected minority-owned businesses with state and federal contracting opportunities.

Randle also guided the department through the COVID-19 pandemic, adapting service delivery while keeping outcomes strong, and has spent years wrestling with what he calls the field’s toughest and most persistent challenge: helping small, minority-owned businesses build the capacity, bonding, staff and equipment needed to compete for large scale contracts.

“It’s almost a chicken and an egg,” Randle said. “You’ve got to get the jobs to grow the capacity, but you need the capacity to get the jobs.”

Colleagues describe Randle as a steady, unassuming presence who measured his success not by personal legacy but by service to the community. He said his outlook on the work shifted over the years, from wanting to build something lasting for himself to seeing the Chamber’s small business department as something entrusted to him for a season.

“I realized we are stewards of this organization and of the benefits it offers the community,” Randle said. “We’re not doing this to build a legacy. We’re doing this to make our community better because we’re good stewards of what our community has entrusted us with. We’re just doing this for a period of time, and then we pass on something better to the next person: a better community, stronger businesses, a better system to work in here in Mobile.”

As for what comes next, Randle plans to take the first two months of retirement off entirely, spending time traveling with his wife, whom he met in high school. Beyond that, he says he is listening for direction before committing to his next chapter, though he has one aspiration in mind.

“If I had an infinite amount of money, I’d want to be a community activist,” Randle said. “Someone who works to make our community better and helps solve some of the problems we see. I’m waiting to hear from God, and I’ll let you know about the next chapter.”

The Mobile Chamber thanks Darrell Randle for 22 years of dedicated service and wishes him well in retirement.