photograph by wendy adams
Editor's Note: Community leaders gathered at Memphis Botanic Garden on May 7th to honor this year’s CEOs of the year, honoring five business leaders who are making the best kind of impact on the Mid-South: Boo Mitchell with Royal Studios, Brett Batterson with the Orpheum Theatre Group, Laurie Powell with Alliance Healthcare Services, Dr. Stewart Burgess with the Children’s Museum of Memphis, and Ted Townsend with the Greater Memphis Chamber. Here, we spotlight Ted Townsend and the work he's done with the Chamber.
Ted Townsend is a CEO among CEOs. As leader of the Greater Memphis Chamber, he works with and spends time with bosses around the region in a dynamic that aims at improving the region’s fortunes. He’s had meetings with hundreds of CEOs, telling them what the Chamber can do to make their businesses thrive.
“For me, it is a resource, a gaining of perspective,” he says. “And I would encourage any CEO to afford yourself the opportunity to meet with other peers, even if it’s in a different industry or organization, whether it’s nonprofit or for-profit, because there’s great opportunity for mentorship, there’s great opportunity for growth and perspectives, and in each of those interactions you have the availability to bring it back into your own.”
In his own role as a CEO, Townsend relishes the sense of community with other leaders — and there are 26,000-plus businesses in the region. “I can reach out to share scenarios and challenges and gain advice and counsel and then apply that here,” he says. “But it’s always an opportunity for me, especially meeting someone for the first time, where I can educate them on what the Chamber is. Some of those are legacy and traditional, but I close out every meeting with a CEO recognizing that they had no idea we do so much.”
“I don’t think I could have prepared myself for the embodiment of representing a team that we have here of individuals that are so dedicated to a Memphis that is not even in some people’s dreams.”
Townsend joined the Chamber as chief economic development officer in 2020 and was named president and CEO of the nonprofit in 2022, succeeding Beverly Robertson. “We had to face some really difficult decisions during the pandemic, which Beverly effortlessly led,” he says. “And then we had to figure out how to build back, and that’s what I’ve been focused on. When I came in, we had an operating budget, and I said, the work that we’re doing is as though it’s double that.”
He looked at comparable chambers around the country and saw they had larger budgets, but he felt the Memphis Chamber was having a greater impact. “I wanted to increase our ability to scale, to add capacity, to invest in our team and our resources and our space, and really see a major upgrade,” he says. “So, I set a goal of doubling that operating budget and doing so by the end of 2030, which coincided with our Prosper Memphis 2030 strategic plan.”
Townsend was determined to grow revenue, not just through membership, but exploring other avenues. “I’m proud to say that we have reached that goal ahead of 2030,” he says, “so now I’m setting new goals.” He is very much about establishing the mindset of winning, which has enabled the Chamber to eclipse original goals and set new ones.
The Chamber’s reliance on research, data, and being ready to go into action has paid off, whether the project has been simmering for a long time (facilitating the America’s River Crossing for a new bridge across the Mississippi), or developing rapidly (xAI’s fast-moving decision to locate in Memphis), or ongoing (the Digital Delta technology innovation project).
It’s been a dream job for Townsend, for whom this has been a destination role since college. “I knew that I wanted to work at the Chamber because of the business exposure that I would get,” he says, “so even as a college student, that was something that I aspired to.” It wasn’t a straight line — he’s been an entrepreneur and owner of a startup as well as working in the public sector with the state — but that experience led to this eventual, and inevitable, position.
And while he’s developed the kind of sound leadership that gets an organization to that high degree of effectiveness, Townsend admits to some surprises. “I don’t think I could have prepared myself for the embodiment of representing a team that we have here of individuals that are so dedicated to a Memphis that is not even in some people’s dreams,” he says.
But that happens when the groundwork is laid. “It’s where we get to be the practitioners and the behind-the-scenes conduits and actors of change, where we can make the Memphis Dream become a reality from an economic development perspective,” Townsend says. “I get to see that devotion and dedication each and every day from each and every team member. That is incredibly inspiring. And there’s a great responsibility with that to curate it, to support it, to keep them energized, despite the myriad challenges we face. But I was never prepared for that devotion that is exhibited exuberantly every day from every team member. It really lifts me.”
