Melissa Cantrell to bring ‘small business lens’ as Cobb Chamber chair | News

“I decided in high school I wanted to design schools because I wanted to impact children, because they are our futures,” Cantrell said.

That early sense of purpose has guided Cantrell from job sites in Cobb County to leadership roles in architecture, business and community advocacy — and now to the helm of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce.

After more than two decades of involvement with the chamber, Cantrell will officially take the reins as chair, succeeding Chris Britton, regional president of Brasfield & Gorrie.

Cantrell assumed the role during the chamber’s annual dinner Saturday, held in the recently expanded Cobb Convention Center Atlanta – formerly the Cobb Galleria Centre.

Although she ultimately graduated from Pickens High School in Jasper, Cantrell spent a portion of her early childhood in Cobb County. She later attended Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, where she earned both her undergraduate and master’s degrees — navigating graduate school with a newborn.

“(That) taught me a lot of tenacity,” she said.

That resilience, Cantrell said, was modeled early by her mother, a residential home builder who owned her own construction company and raised three daughters as a single parent.

Cantrell shared that her mother taught her, “as women, we can do whatever we want to do if we set our minds to it.“

After earning her master’s degree, Cantrell said she sought out a firm that aligned with her values.

“I want to make a difference. I want to make sure that I leave this world with… not necessarily a legacy, but knowing that I’ve made an impact and improved the community that I live in through my work, through my relationships, through my business,” she said.

Cantrell began her career at Cumberland-based architectural firm CDH Partners as an intern designing hotels and steadily rising through the firm’s ranks, eventually becoming its first female CEO. Today, she serves as president and CEO of the firm, which has designed projects across education, health care, faith-based, corporate and industrial sectors throughout Cobb and the region.

She is also the principal of CDH Partners’ education studio, where she provides architectural design and master planning to public and private education clients.

CDH Partners’ local portfolio includes work for the Cobb County School District, Wellstar Health System — including the Wellstar Kennestone Regional Medical Center patient tower nearing completion — Marietta First Baptist Church, Smyrna First Baptist Church and corporate facilities such as Arylessence.

“As an architect, we are shaping the world around us and influencing how people experience that world,” Cantrell said. “And that’s more than just the building — it’s how you move through the spaces, but it’s also how you connect. I’ve taken that through into my business, into my personal life, and now hopefully through the chamber.”

Under her leadership, CDH Partners transitioned to a certified women-owned business. Cantrell pointed out only 17% of architecture firms nationwide are led by women. Today, the firm is majority women-owned, with more than half of its staff made up of women and more than 30% representing minority groups.

“We’ve made a lot of progress, and I just hope that as I’m continuing my career through the next 15 or 20 years, that I’m able to help other women businesses also grow and thrive,” Cantrell said. “Also, to make sure that as a community, we’re really driving success for everyone, independent of race or creed, that we’re also looking forward to how to make this a better Cobb County.”

Cantrell added the firm also prioritizes hiring locally, with more than half of its team coming from Kennesaw State University’s College of Architecture.

“KSU has been good to us, and also we’ve done some projects on the Kennesaw campus as well over the years,” Cantrell said. “So it’s mutually beneficial.”

Cantrell credits the founding partners of CDH and her stepfather, Dennis Burnette — a longtime local banking executive — as key mentors who helped shape her approach to leadership and business. She added the connections made through the chamber were just as impactful.

Cantrell’s involvement with the Cobb Chamber began in the early 2000s.

Since then, she has immersed herself in nearly every facet of the organization, including Leadership Cobb, Honorary Commanders, CEO Roundtable, CYP Cultivate mentorship and multiple task forces including the Unified Development Code (UDC) task force.

Cantrell said the chamber’s CEO Roundtable was especially impactful during the pandemic, when her firm was navigating both a leadership transition and a relocation from Marietta to the Cumberland/Vinings area.

“What some people would call hardships, for us, became a reset button, and we were able to really drive cultural change,” she said. “And I think it best adapted us to move forward as a team, to come out of the pandemic and to really hit the ground running with our clients.”

Cobb Chamber President and CEO Sharon Mason praised Cantrell’s long-standing leadership.

“Melissa has been… an instrumental leader for more than two decades with our chamber, and I know that she’ll continue to play such a key role this year,” Mason said. “Coming in and with all of the ways she’s been involved, leveraging that experience to help us continue to expand what we’re doing to champion Cobb’s prosperity. I’m so excited about working with her even more.”

Cantrell credits Leadership Cobb as a turning point in understanding how to reinvest in the community, particularly through exposure to social services and nonprofit work.

“It really opened my eyes as to how we as community members can make sure that we’re taking care of those who may not be able to take care of themselves in a particular time,” Cantrell said. “And that led me into more of my philanthropic initiatives personally.”

Outside of work and the chamber, Cantrell remains deeply involved in philanthropy and civic leadership. She serves on the board of the Center for Family Resources, is vice chair of the Georgia State Board of Architects and Interior Designers — appointed by the governor — and remains active with One Cumberland board of directors as vice chair .

“My hobbies really are my philanthropic opportunities,” she said. “… I love what I do, so a lot of my hobbies are also within that realm.”

Her work with the Center for Family Resources is particularly personal.

“My mother was a single mom, and I saw the struggles that she went through, and I think that really shaped… my intent in driving change,” Cantrell said. “I believe that through education, we can have social reform. Through social reform, we can improve our communities. And all of that really shapes how I approach my career and my personal connections.”

Through the organization’s work addressing housing insecurity, food insecurity and family stability, she hoped to help the community — “one family at a time.”

For Cantrell, stepping into the chair role represents the culmination of decades of professional growth and community involvement.

Through the seat, she hopes to further empower and advocate for small businesses, whose voices can sometimes be “overpowered” by larger companies.

“That’s not a condemnation of those large businesses. We could not survive without them,” Cantrell said. “But I do believe that small businesses are the backbone of our community.”

“If I can be that role model to show them that we have our voice, that we have the ability to contribute in a much larger way than we ever thought we could,” she added. “I think that is what I have learned through my involvement and what I hope to continue into the future.”

In 2023, CDH Partners was named the chamber’s Small Business of the Year.

Mason believed Cantrell’s “small business lens” was very helpful in many ways, especially considering small businesses made up more than 80 percent of chamber membership.

From personal experience, Cantrell believes many of the challenges small businesses face are in “resourcing, attracting and retaining talent.”

“But I will tell you that one of the key reasons that we chose our current location in Cumberland was because of the opportunity to attract and retain talent, and it has been successful,” she said. “It has also helped us with regard to driving business.”

Mason added that the chamber conducted more than 200 business engagements last year, with affordability, workforce and economic uncertainty topping the list of concerns — but also highlighting Cobb’s strengths in workforce development partnerships and education pipelines.

As chair, Cantrell said her priorities align closely with “what’s going on in our community right now,” including a busy election year, a proposed continuation of the county’s Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST), continued education around the Unified Development Code and preparing businesses for the global spotlight of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

“We have a significant amount of elections happening this year, so looking at how we begin to act as that convener and to allow others voices to be heard, I think is going to be a huge priority,” Cantrell said. “While we are a nonpartisan organization, and we will work with whichever candidate is elected — and I think that’s important for us to note — we are here to educate our community on what the issues are.”

She also emphasized the importance of infrastructure planning and land-use education through the Unified Development Code — a document being pitched as a one-stop-shop for all county development, zoning and design guidelines — particularly as Cobb continues to grow.

Both Cantrell and Mason highlighted the economic opportunity presented by the FIFA World Cup, with some matches hosted in Atlanta and training facilities located in Cobb County come June and July.

“I think really this is in comparison to the Olympics for us, from just the economic boom that it’s going to provide for our community,” Mason said.

Mason noted the chamber recently partnered with Verizon to educate small businesses on how to leverage opportunities with the cup.

Both she and Cantrell also emphasized the role of the Cobb County International Airport — which saw over 1,000 private jets fly in for the Super Bowl in 2019, according to Mason.

Mason also highlighted Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game in July 2025, as well as all of the festivities that came with it.

“With the All-Star Game, we had 250,000 visitors come here, and that helps so many different types of businesses to benefit. … It helps our SPLOST dollars for sure,” Mason said. “So there’s just many different ways that a business can leverage that opportunity.”

Mason believes the chamber would be in good hands with Cantrell.

“Melissa … has been an instrumental and impactful leader in so many ways the last several decades, and I know this will be a phenomenal year,” she said.