By Maria Saporta
For decades, the Commerce Club served as a focal point for Atlanta’s business and civic leaders seeking to guide the city through changing racial and economic challenges.
The Commerce Club’s board members served as the gravitational center since the Club’s founding in 1960. On the first Thursday of every month, up to 40 top business and civic leaders would gather in a private room for lunch where they discussed the key issues facing the city, region and state.
Their sole agenda? Doing all they could to strengthen the Atlanta community.
Over the years, the Commerce Club board’s influence waned as Atlanta’s business and civic leadership became more fluid. Then COVID hit, and the Commerce Club board became dormant.
Until now.
On March 23, longtime backers of the Commerce Club convened a Zoom meeting of about 20 past and prospective board members, who galvanized around an initiative to reinvigorate the board.
Most significantly, they elected Michael Russell, CEO of the Atlanta-based H.J. Russell & Co. and son of the firm’s founder – the late Herman Russell, as chair of the board.
“The Commerce Club board has had a strong legacy impact on so many things that have happened in Atlanta,” Michael Russell, said. “The Commerce Club was falling off before the pandemic. People were not showing up to meetings. The energy of the board was wavering. Then we had the pandemic.”
Russell agreed to serve as the new board chair because he believes there’s a need to re-engage the community’s leadership in a forum that is “not beholden to the political environment of the day.”
Several people interviewed for this column were enthusiastic that Russell had agreed to take on the task of leading the Commerce Club during its next chapter.
“In the election of Michael, we have found a splendid leader,” said Tom Johnson, retired president of CNN who has been one of the strongest voices to revitalize the Commerce Club board. “With the heritage of his father and his family, Michael exemplifies the type of diversity and leadership we need in 2023. There are so many leaders who want to mobilize behind Michael to reinvigorate the Commerce Club.”
Russ Hardin, president of the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, agreed saying there were “a lot of good vibes” during the Zoom call.
“A theme that kept coming up was developing the next generation of leadership,” Hardin said. “We still need to be intentional about engaging people in the community.”
Russell acknowledged there currently are more questions than answers. “We are very early in this process,” he said.
Among the questions facing the Commerce Club board is how often it will meet, who will serve on a reconstituted board, whether they will meet at its current home on the 49th floor of the 191 building, what responsibilities the Commerce Club has with the management entity – Invited Clubs (formerly Club Corp), how can it have the greatest impact on the community and how can it help Atlanta’s leadership become more inclusive, to name a few.
“Part of our secret sauce in Atlanta is we get together and add value,” Russell said. “What does that look like moving forward? How do we develop something that’s impactful? Atlanta has changed in so many ways. Leadership has become so much more diverse.”
Russell is enthusiastic about leading the effort to answer those questions and bringing together long-time leaders alongside the next generation of leaders.
Doug Hertz, chairman and CEO of United Distributors and a Commerce Club board member, said having multi-generational leadership is especially important – as it was when he was starting out in the business world.
“For me, it was a spot where younger business leaders could come and spend time with current business leaders and veteran business leaders,” Hertz said. “It really exposed me to a lot of those folks Whatever your definition of the Atlanta Way, you had mentorship. We need a way to bring the next generation in.”
Hertz said the board had not met in three years until the meeting in late March. During that period, there’s been turnover in Atlanta C-suites and the Atlanta region has continued to grow. Board members now have an opportunity to decide what the future Commerce Club board will look like.
“It will be a group decision,” he said. “There are so many other organizations that provide some of the things that the Commerce Club used to provide.”
But most of those organizations do not include former executives and they often don’t include philanthropic foundations and other civic institutions.
“There’s so much talent available from the retired business leaders who are still in the community,” Hertz said. “The Commerce Club board can be a place to access these folks. I think there’s a spot for the Commerce Club, and I want to be supportive.”
John Glaser, who has been general manager of the Commerce Club for the past 15 months, welcomed the news that the board had met.
“It will be good to see the board come back and be an active participant of what’s going on at the Club as we move forward in a post-COVID world,” said Glaser, who added the parent company has extended its lease for the space until mid-2028. “It’s only going to add more fuel to our fire. They can’t do anything but make us better, stronger and faster.”
Caroline Hubbard, associate general manager, probably knows more about the Commerce Club than anyone else. She started working for the Commerce Club on April 1, 1971, when it was located a block away from Five Points on top of a parking garage. That was the Club’s home until it moved to 191 Peachtree St. in 2010 when it was celebrating its 50th anniversary.
“I welcome them back,” Hubbard said of the board. “They bring such a distinguished feel and prestige back to the Club. They have great interest in the Club and its well-being. I’m very excited about it.”
Hubbard was working at the Club when it first accepted Black members in 1972 and when it first accepted women members in 1976. “Things have changed so much,” she said.
Now is another moment of change.
“I’m so pleased that a restructuring and a revitalization of the Commerce Club is underway,” Johnson said. “It is important for the leadership of this area to assemble periodically to examine how its leadership can strengthen the community in every possible way. The Commerce Club has had a profoundly important impact on this city.”
Note to readers: In 2010, my colleague Kathy Brister and I wrote the 50-year history of the Commerce Club outlining the multiple ways it had helped guide Atlanta through the decades.
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