New Metro Atlanta Chamber leader brings change in style

Resides: Buckhead

Work experience includes: president of Church's Chicken (1995-2004), president and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure (2006-2009), president of Arby's Restaurant Group (2010-2013)

Past and present civic experience includes: Women Corporate Directors, International Women's Forum, Brand Atlanta Campaign, Atlanta Police Foundation Board, Georgia Southern University Foundation Board of Trustees, Clark Atlanta University Board of Trustees, Atlanta Committee for Progress

Source: Metro Atlanta Chamber

When Hala Moddelmog takes over as the successor to Sam Williams as president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber in January, she will oversee an organization that has tried to tackle the region’s thorniest issues from the old state flag to congested roads.

For better or worse, no one ever said the group of business executives was not ambitious in its reach, or that it touched anything less than millions of metro Atlantans by its will, power and vision.

Now, after 17 years of Williams, the very public instrument of that clout, Moddelmog enters as a longtime CEO with a history of corporate success and community service, and becomes the chamber’s new lever and voice.

The contrast in styles between Moddelmog and Williams is striking to friends and colleagues.

Moddelmog, announced last week as the chamber’s first female president, is an experienced restaurant and nonprofit executive. She is known as someone who can build and hold a coalition of differing viewpoints and keep it focused on a mutual goal. Williams has been viewed as a motivator of a different sort. He’s known more for his muscle, an executive unafraid to wield the persuasive sledgehammer.

Whether what is expected to be a new leadership style will make the organization more effective at tackling the area’s considerable challenges is the most intriguing question of the transition.

In her new post, Moddelmog shifts from being a member of the CEO club to being a chief executive who serves at the pleasure of the leaders of dominant corporations like Coca-Cola, Home Depot and Delta Air Lines.

Williams said if they are impatient and want fast action on some issue such as transportation problems, the chamber president has to be more aggressive. Style isn’t so much about individual personality, he suggested, but about how to best meet members’ wishes. Collaboration and cooperation are great, but eventually action is needed.

“One of my mottoes is, remember who you work for,” Williams said. “The chamber is responding to the pressures and expectations of the business community.”

Williams, however, has been known to push hard, not only groups with opposing agendas but even politicians and executives on the chamber’s board.

Moddelmog knows the rough-and-tumble world of corporate America. She ran Arby’s Restaurant Group, Church’s Chicken and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Though she was on the chamber board of directors in 2004-2005, she’s known more for her civic work outside the chamber. She’s anchored women’s organizations and tried to foster a support system for entrepreneurs, particularly among women.

One advantage Moddelmog will have is that she won’t have to develop a whole new strategy for the chamber. However, the organization did alter its course last year when it announced its Forward Atlanta program. The $30 million-plus initiative hinges on cultivating startup businesses, integrating the business and higher education communities and marketing the region as a global hub for industries like health care IT and mobility.

In an interview last week, Moddelmog spoke like the driven manager she is. She was emphatic about implementing Forward Atlanta.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about execution,” she said. “It’s very focused and it all layers up to the economic growth we’re trying to achieve at the end.”

She said the chamber also won’t shy away from its historic role as a power player in more than just business issues, such as its efforts to save Grady Memorial Hospital. But how it approaches those might be different with Moddelmog at the helm.

“The styles of Sam and Hala are very different,” said Vicki Escarra, a former Delta Air Lines executive who’s now chief executive of Opportunity International, a Chicago-based micro-lender to would-be entrepreneurs.

Williams, who “has done a great job,” is “very head-on” and businesslike, Escarra said, while Moddelmog is “extraordinarily collaborative.”

The coming change has some chamber critics anticipating new opportunities.

Julianne Thompson, co-chairman of the Atlanta Tea Party, has never met Moddelmog, but she said the change may offer an opportunity for political conservatives to influence how the organization tries to reach its goals.

“I would hope there would be a new spirit of cooperation and outreach to the tea party and to conservatives,” she said.

Thompson said the party is seeking more of a “willingness to work together” than it found in dealing with the chamber under Williams on the T-SPLOST, the regional transportation referendum that failed in metro Atlanta last year. Opposition from tea party groups was a major factor.

“I was on several different news panels with him discussing T-SPLOST, and there really wasn’t any interest in working with us,” she said. “It was an attitude that they don’t really count.”

Ken Bernhardt, an Atlanta business marketing consultant and retired Georgia State professor who has known Moddelmog since her first stint at Arby’s, called her a good listener. He said the chamber board will see that there is “a fellow CEO coming in, whom I’m sure they have a lot of respect for.” That, he said, could help quell potential conflict.

Moddelmog will be taking over from a large and often dominating presence in Williams, and that alone poses a challenge, however.

“Whenever anyone follows an esteemed leader, it’s very difficult,” said Joel Koblentz, whose firm, the Koblentz Group, does executive and board searches. “There’s the aura of that (outgoing) leader and the way they’ve imprinted themselves on the organization.”

He said the next person needs the latitude to establish their own brand of leadership.

“For her to win trust and for people to not say, ‘That’s not the way Sam did it,’ she’s got to have the strength and courage to make judgments and to tackle priorities,” Koblentz said. “Everyone will say we have to tackle transportation. But how do we do that? It’s a complicated problem.”

Moddelmog said she will rely upon Williams during the transition, and he has promised his help. She talked about following in Williams’ footsteps and wanting to build on his legacy.

“If I were a normal person, I’d be concerned about that,” Moddelmog said. “Following a legend is never easy, but if I’d been afraid to do things in my career, I’d never have the opportunity to sit in this chair.”