2025 Hall of Fame Inductees: Dan Cathy & Shirley Franklin

Dan Cathy

Service-oriented Leadership

Dan Cathy got an early start working in his family’s business. When he was just a boy, his father Truett Cathy would bring home sacks of cash from the Dwarf House (originally named the Dwarf Grill), the restaurant he opened in Hapeville in 1946, and dump them on the bed.

Photo credit: Daemon Baizan

“I was responsible for stacking the cash and making sure all the presidents’ faces on the bills were facing in the same direction,” Cathy says. “Then Dad would count it all up and make bank deposits on Monday mornings.”

Once he was old enough, Cathy started working in the restaurant, mainly doing odd jobs. After graduating from college, he began working there full-time. By then, the franchise was widely known as Chick-fil-A, although the original Dwarf House is still open. “I’ve been immersed in the business ever since,” he says.

After serving as the CEO of Chick-fil-A, Inc. for nearly a decade, Dan Cathy passed the leadership torch to his son Andrew in 2021. “I like to say that the company had a leadership upgrade when Andrew took over as CEO,” Cathy says. “We’ve had incredible continuity from the first through the third generation of family business ownership.”

Though he’s no longer involved in day-to-day restaurant operations, Cathy is continuing to help steer the company’s future by encouraging and mentoring the next generation of family leadership. “The new leadership generation needs to find their own way while building on the work ethic, passion and generosity that have been established at Chick-fil-A,” he says. “This is what gives the business a true competitive advantage.”

In his current role as board chair, Cathy focuses on how the restaurants can improve their customer service even more. “I like to call myself the ‘service’ chairman of the board,” he says. “The word restaurant means ‘a place of restoration,’ which is what we strive to provide for our guests.”

Chick-fil-A has always been willing to do things differently – whether this was opening restaurants in shopping malls before every mall had a food court or closing restaurants on Sundays. “This is non-negotiable,” Cathy says of Chick-fil-A’s long-standing closed-on Sunday policy. “We like to say that the food tastes better on Monday because we’re closed on Sunday.”

“I like to call myself the ‘service’ chairman of the board. The word restaurant means ‘a place of restoration,’ which is what we strive to provide for our guests.” Dan Cathy

While great-tasting food is essential to any restaurant’s success, it isn’t a sustainable competitive advantage on its own. “A new milkshake flavor or salad is easily replicated,” Cathy explains. “It’s harder to replicate a service model because you need strong employee retention to build a service culture. We’re extremely proud of our 98% retention rate among restaurant operators, which is unheard of in our industry.”

Chick-fil-A restaurants are also dedicated to serving their local communities. “Our restaurant operators … are on the community front lines, and if they see needs in their communities, they jump in immediately to help.”

Cathy’s commitment to service extends to what he calls “second-mile service” that has an impact on society. “Fortunately, Chick-fil-A is at the size and scale that we can help support community leaders in addressing societal issues, like the disparity in life expectancy between Bankhead and Buckhead,” he says.

Cathy was an early supporter and investor in the Westside Future Fund, a nonprofit that’s dedicated to revitalizing five historic Westside Atlanta neighborhoods via its signature program, Home on the Westside, which is devoted to building high-quality, permanently affordable housing. Cathy says these neighborhoods “accentuate the tremendous inequities that we’re seeing in society.”

Cathy’s commitment to improving society includes serving as an adviser for Eagle Ranch, a residential children’s program dedicated to restoring and renewing families; and on the boards of the Atlanta Committee for Progress and the Georgia Aquarium. He was chair of the Carter Center’s Board of Councilors in 2019 and also previously on the board of the Metro Atlanta Chamber.

Today, Cathy spends much of his time overseeing the expansion of Trilith Studios, a 1,000-acre film studio in Fayetteville that he was instrumental in starting a decade ago. Trilith Studios is interwoven with Town at Trilith, a master-planned community with 1,000 residents and 710 full-time employees. The expansion includes a 7-acre live entertainment complex known as Trilith LIVE, which will have two soundstages and an 1,800-seat music venue.

For some, it may seem surprising that Cathy would get into the film industry in his 60s. But he also has a creative side. He’s an amateur photographer and a talented musician, even playing the trumpet professionally in his late teens. And he likes adventure; he’s a licensed pilot, an avid motorcyclist and has completed several marathons. Businessman, philanthropist, athlete and artist: Put it all together and you may just have a Renaissance man. 

Shirley Franklin has stepped out of her comfort zone. In her passion for public service, the trailblazing first female mayor of Atlanta and first Black woman to lead a major Southern city has always played a partisan role.

That changed last June when she accepted an invitation to join the bipartisan Democracy Defense Project. The group was formed the same month with a goal of strengthening democracy by working to restore faith in statewide elections. It focuses on states where election challenges seem most likely. Besides Georgia, those states are Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. State teams, composed of former elected officials and leaders of both major parties, use the project’s platform to defend the transparency, safety, security and validity of the nation’s electoral system. In addition to Franklin (a Democrat who served two terms as mayor, 2002-2010), Georgia’s team includes two former governors, Democrat Roy Barnes (1999-2003) and Republican Nathan Deal (2011-2019), and former Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (2003-2015).

“I have never done anything quite like this,” says Franklin. “I have always been involved in the partisan side of politics. So, it was a big step for me to take a nonpartisan position.” How big? In many ways, she says it is a culmination of all she has worked for in her political life. “It reflects my commitment to ethical leadership and taking the moral high ground, not ignoring the facts but understanding the data [and] understanding the complications, certainly in the electoral process.”

The Georgia team attended an Atlanta Press Club Newsmaker Leadership Series last September. During a panel discussion about trusting in the integrity of elections, Franklin explained why she joined the project. She spoke after Barnes, who talked about losing his 2002 re-election bid. “Unlike Roy, I did not lose an election, Franklin said. “But I barely won one. My first election for mayor, I won by 50.01% of the vote. It was challenged, and there was a recount. I lost three votes in the recount, but there was never a question as to whether [the election] was fair. It seems to [me] that that is fundamental about democracy. It is fundamental to our values as a country, and it’s fundamental to our success as a country. So, I joined this group for those reasons.”

“If you have to talk about your legacy … there’s a big question about what your legacy is. Your legacy should speak for itself.” Shirley Franklin

Her faith in accepting election outcomes, Franklin added, goes “back a long, long way” – to her childhood in Philadelphia, sitting around the dinner table with grandparents and parents who backed different political parties. “My grandfather and father were Republicans, and my grandmother and mother were Democrats. Every Sunday dinner was a debate about the [1952 Dwight] Eisenhower-[Adlai] Stevenson election. I learned in those family dinners the significance and passion that my parents and grandparents had for politics. I had no idea I would actually run for office, but I understood the value of having rigorous debate [and] differences of opinion but being guided by the outcome of the election. We didn’t stop the family dinners after Eisenhower won. My grandmother still cooked dinner, [and] they continued to have debates.”

Prior to November’s tightly contested election, when asked what she would say to Georgians bitterly disappointed about the results, Franklin said she would say the same thing she has said after every election. “I stand with the outcome.”

Besides her work for the Democracy Defense Project, Franklin is an active member of the board of directors and past chair of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and serves or has served on other boards in the areas of supporting upward mobility, innovative education,water infrastructure and tackling homelessness. She likes to spend her free time in her garden growing ornamentals and edibles. Putting her hands in the Georgia earth, she says, is rejuvenating, calling it “therapy for me. It calms my nerves, it slows me down, it takes my mind off whatever might be troubling at the time.”

In 2023, the Atlanta City Council began working on a plan to celebrate Franklin’s many accomplishments as mayor. Among those are collaborating to launch the Atlanta Beltline, investing more than $5 billion in airport and other infrastructure improvements; and leading the effort to acquire Martin Luther King, Jr.’s personal papers for Morehouse College. “I am humbled by the notion,” Franklin says of the plans to honor her, adding, “I am staying completely out of it! That is not for me to decide. If you have to talk about your legacy … there’s a big question about what your legacy is. Your legacy should speak for itself.”

Franklin’s legacy continues, as she works alongside Atlanta City Council member Andrea Boone to provide community support for Benjamin E. Mays High School and an in-school food pantry. Whatever trails she might blaze next, she promises that they “won’t be more of the same. I am always finding something new to do. I think I’ll just keep looking.”