In 1859, a group of Atlanta merchants formed a mercantile organization to fight railroad companies that were discriminating against their city. One hundred and sixty years later, the organization those merchants created — now called the Metro Atlanta Chamber — represented approximately one million constituents through its member companies, including the third-highest concentration of Fortune 500 headquarters in the United States and 29 Fortune 1000 companies across 29 counties.
The arc from railroad advocacy to Fortune 500 recruitment defines Atlanta's history as well as any other institution's. The Chamber was there for the city's most consequential decisions — and often behind them.
The Big Moments
Hala Moddelmog, the Chamber's president and CEO in 2019, reflected on an institutional resume that included three Super Bowls in Atlanta (most recently Super Bowl LIII at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in February 2019), advocacy for removing Confederate symbols from the state flag in the early 2000s, and opposition to "religious liberty" legislation in 2016 that business leaders warned would damage the state's reputation and economy.
Each of those moments required the Chamber to take positions that extended beyond traditional business advocacy. The state flag debate put the Chamber at odds with a significant portion of Georgia's political establishment. The religious liberty fight required corporate leaders to make public statements about social policy. The Super Bowl bids demanded coordination among city, county, state, and federal entities. In each case, the Chamber served as the organizing force that brought Atlanta's business community into alignment with the city's broader ambitions.
ChooseATL
In 2015, the Chamber launched ChooseATL, a talent-attraction initiative targeting millennials and Gen Z professionals. The program represented a recognition that Atlanta's competitive advantage was no longer just corporate headquarters and convention infrastructure — it was quality of life, cultural energy, and the kind of urban experience that younger workers prioritized when choosing where to build their careers.
The initiative marketed Atlanta as a city where professional ambition and personal life could coexist — a message that leveraged the city's relatively affordable housing (compared to New York, San Francisco, and other major metros), its growing food and arts scenes, and the diversity that had been Atlanta's defining characteristic since the civil rights era.
The Downtown Connection
The Chamber's 160-year history mirrors downtown Atlanta's evolution. The railroad fights of the 1850s were about ensuring that Atlanta — a city that existed because of its railroad junction — received fair treatment from the transportation companies that controlled its economy. The Fortune 500 recruitment of the late twentieth century built the office towers that define the downtown skyline. The Super Bowl bids and major event campaigns filled the hotels and stadiums that the Chamber's corporate members had helped build.
At 160, the Metro Atlanta Chamber was the oldest continuously operating business organization in the city — and the one whose institutional memory stretched from the railroad era through the Civil War, Reconstruction, the civil rights movement, the Olympics, and the digital economy. The organization that started fighting railroad discrimination in 1859 was, in 2019, fighting for the talent that would define the city's next 160 years.
Original reporting by Georgia Public Broadcasting, October 3, 2019.