Our very own President/CFO, Melissa Conti, received the Community Champion CFO of the Year award presented by Atlanta Business Chronicle on Thursday, May 19th at the Chick-Fil-A Football Hall of Fame. Her relentless dedication to serving the community has not gone unnoticed.
In the most recent years, Melissa has continued to steer Innovative Fitness towards success while adding a more intentional focus on giving back to our local community. She has created a work culture in which personal and professional growth is just as important as business growth.
In 2020, it was Melissa’s idea to establish the Chris Conti Memorial Grant (CCMG) to honor the memory of husband and co-founder, Chris. The purpose of the CCMG is to provide a free fitness center, complete with design and installation, to a qualified organization in need in the state of Georgia. The inaugural recipient of the CCMG was Goshen Valley Boys Ranch and the 2021 recipient was Chatsworth Police Department. This July 30th, we will award our third recipient.
In 2021, Melissa spearheaded a campaign to change the company’s mission statement to align more closely with our commitment to serving the community: “Uniting fitness and philanthropy to create and inspire healthier communities”.
As another way of honoring co-founder Chris’s memory and mantra, “to do all things with love”, the Service with Love Giving Fund was established to provide more opportunities to contribute and improve the overall wellbeing of others. So far, the fund has made contributions to both Sweetwater Mission, to help fund their annual Christmas dinners, and Reflections of Trinity, as a monetary contribution to their food pantry in which they distribute over a thousand grocery boxes a week.
In December 2021, Innovative Fitness teamed up with a local non-profit, Village Connection, Inc. to establish the Fostering Education Scholarship Fund for the purpose of providing scholarships to children who are aging out of foster care in the State of Georgia and lack the funds needed to attend college. The integral scholarship recipients will be notified and awarded in June.
Melissa has also implemented monthly service projects. Some of these past projects include: serving meals at M.U.S.T. Ministries, raising funds and awareness for SafePath Children’s Advocacy Center, writing letters to deployed soldiers, creating and distributing Valentine’s to the seniors at Colbert Square Senior Living, collecting and donating over 300 books to Cobb Collaborative to fill their free little libraries, collecting and donating items from the Cherokee County Homeless Veterans Programs, donating women’s clothing to the Drake House, creating birthday boxes for Foster 4 Love, participated in Cobb County Police Department’s “Back the Need” school supply drive, collected and donated items for the cats and dogs at Mostly Mutts, partnered with Georgia Family Connection Partnership to create and donate Easter baskets, and even built a horse jump to donate to the Rolling Hills Saddle Club.
At the CFO of the Year awards, Melissa made her acceptance speech and left her fellow CFOs with a challenge to “go back to your workplace, be intentional about giving back to your community, make philanthropy a priority, and create a work culture of giving”.
